<p><b>An incisive overview of the macroeconomics of financial crises¿essential reading for students and policy experts alike</b><br><br>With alarming frequency, modern economies go through macro-financial crashes that arise from the financial sector and spread to the broader economy, inflicting deep and prolonged recessions. <i>A Crash Course on Crises</i> brings together the latest cutting-edge economic research to identify the seeds of these crashes, reveal their triggers and consequences, and explain what policymakers can do about them.<br><br>Each of the book¿s ten self-contained chapters introduces readers to a key economic force and provides case studies that illustrate how that force was dominant. Markus Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis show how the run-up phase of a crisis often occurs in ways that are preventable but that may go unnoticed and discuss how debt contracts, banks, and a search for safety can act as triggers and amplifiers that drive the economy to crash. Brunnermeier