Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/57085 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 579
Publisher: 
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Abstract: 
This paper aims to help bridge the gap between theory and fact regarding the so-called 'Minsky moments' by revisiting the 'financial instability hypothesis' (FIH). We limit the analysis to the core of FIH-that is, to its strictly financial part. Our contribution builds on a reexamination of Minsky's contributions in light of the subprime financial crisis. We start from a constructive criticism of the well-known Minskyan taxonomy o f financial units (hedge, speculative, and Ponzi) and suggest a different approach that allows a continuous measure of the unit's financial conditions. We use this alternative approach to account for the cyclical fluctuations of financial conditions that endogenously generate instability and fragility. We may thus suggest a precise definition of the 'Minsky moment' as the starting point of a Minskyan process-the phase of a financial cycle when many financial units suffer from both liquidity and solvency problems. Although the outlined approach is very simple and has to be further developed in many directions, we may draw from it a few policy insights on ways of stabilizing the financial cycle.
Subjects: 
financial instability
financial fragility
financial fluctuations
subprime crisis
Minsky moments
Minsky meltdown
speculative units
hedge units
Ponzi units
JEL: 
B50
E32
E44
G28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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