In Reinhart and Rogoff's economic history This Time is Different, the authors provide a panoramic view of crises from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Published just as the current global financial storm arrived, the book quickly showed how history could provide not just useful perspective but also, as we can now see, very prescient guidance in the aftermath. In the longer run, the book serves to inspire ongoing work in long-run macro-financial history.

A central question in applied research is to estimate the effect of an exogenous intervention or shock on an outcome. The intervention can affect the outcome and controls on impact and over time. Moreover, there can be subsequent feedback between outcomes, controls, and the intervention. Many of these interactions can be untangled using local projections. This method’s simplicity makes it a convenient and versatile tool in the empiricist’s kit, one that is generalizable to complex settings. This article reviews the state of the art for the practitioner and discusses best practices and possible extensions of local projections methods, along with their limitations.