Can We Really Blame It on the Credit Market Liberalization Policies? : Assessing the relation between credit market liberalization policies and crisis-resilience in the global crisis

The recent financial crisis, that started in 2007, remains an enigma for world economists, both in terms of its causes and final consequences on the world economy. Many questions are still to be answered and mechanisms to be discovered. One of the central issues that arises in this context is the notion of crisis-resilience. Why have world countries responded to the global crisis in different manners? More explicitly, why were some of the countries hit more severely than the others? One could only search for answers in the institutional characteristics of the countries. This study deals with this issue by examining the relation between institutional characteristics of different world countries and their level of crisis-resilience. It focuses especially on the credit market liberalization policies, questioning the general belief that more liberalized countries have performed worse during the last financial crisis. It finally reaches interesting conclusions that could have important political implications in defining financial liberalization policies of any country.