Abstract
Existing sources of cross-country macroeconomic data suffer from short time series, inconsistent data availability, and systematic errors that make it difficult to use them. The Global Macro Database – a new open-source, continuously updated dataset introduced by Müller et al. (2025) – aims to address these shortcomings. By harmonising and integrating data from 31 major contemporary sources, such as the IMF, World Bank, and OECD, with historical records from 86 additional datasets, they construct comprehensive annual time series for 46 variables covering every country territory. This extensive database allows the authors to revisit the long-run output losses of financial crises, a key input for evaluating the costs and benefits of financial regulation and financial stability policies. The central finding is that financial crises are associated with statistically detectable contractions in real GDP for up to five decades into the future, and that the depth of these economic downturns is considerably larger than previously estimated.