We present a new database of banking-crisis interventions, covering 1,946 interventions in 20 categories across 143 countries. We demonstrate that crisis-intervention patterns are significantly related to income and fiscal variables and to measures of the political system and currency regime. GDP losses following crises are economically significant and are larger for wealthier countries, with some evidence that these losses are mitigated by democratic political systems and liberal currency regimes. Finally, intervention frequencies reached an apex during the post–Bretton Woods era, continuing a secular increase since at least the late seventeenth century.

Taking advantage of key recent advances in long-run economic and financial data, we analyze the statistical properties of global long-maturity real interest rates over the past seven centuries. In contrast to existing consensus, we find that real interest rates are in fact trend stationary and exhibit a persistent downward trend since the Renaissance. We investigate structural breaks in real interest rates over time and find that overall the Black Death and the 1557 “Trinity default” appear as consistent inflection points. We further show that demographic and productivity factors do not represent convincing drivers of real interest rates over long spans.