The sharp end of history

It's been a pretty exciting week on the beach... my paper with Jacopo Ponticelli about austerity and anarchy in Europe, 1919-20009, got a ton of press, including interviews with the BBC, France24, and Die Welt. The fact that London burned a mere week after we posted the working paper surely helped. Typically, with economic history papers, something that seems topical now, when you start working on it, will barely elicit a yawn when you are done. This time, we got lucky... we started working a year ago on the topic, inspired by the Greek protests and an invitation to do a paper on fiscal policy in historical context, for the Central Bank of Chile (a far-sighted lot, it turns out). I first finished a similar paper on Latin America, and then we got this one out.

I hope the paper doesn't become any more topical...via Haaretz, I found the photo above, of what Israeli protesters installed on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv.