The macroeconomic performance of individual countries varied markedly during the 2007–09 global financial crisis. While China’s growth never dipped below 6% and Australia’s worst quarter was no growth, the economies of Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom suffered annualised GDP contractions of 5–10% per quarter for five to seven quarters in a row. We exploit this cross-country variation to examine whether a country’s macroeconomic performance over this period was the result of pre-crisis policy decisions or just good luck. The answer is a bit of both. Better-performing economies featured a better-capitalised banking sector, lower loan-to-deposit ratios, a current account.
