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The collapse of the sub‐prime mortgage market parallels several earlier failures within the financial services sector, begging the question why the lessons of past failures were not learned. Throughout history from the tulip bulb crisis of the 1600s to the most recent economic crisis, decision‐makers keep making the same mistakes. This occurs in part because of a failure to recognize similarities between past and current events. This conceptual paper aims to use systems dynamics tools to examine the crisis and illustrate how seemingly independent events are linked.

The paper provides a fundamental review of systems thinking concepts and uses a tool of systems dynamics, causal loop diagrams (CLD), to provide a visualization of the dynamics of the sub‐prime market collapse over time. This approach provides insights that traditional analytic methods do not, which should be beneficial in understanding future cases where speculative demand drives behavior.

The paper uses the CLD tool to understand the evolution of the recent financial crisis. It finds that the dynamics of the collapse closely mirror many historic financial disasters (the paper cites several) and proposes the fundamental CLD of this phenomenon be elevated to a special category of the “limits to growth” archetype model. The paper makes this recommendation in the hope it will allow investors and policy makers to quickly recognize future speculative events when they happen again.

This paper argues that, despite the surface level uniqueness and complexity of the recent economic collapse, there is an underlying simplicity that links the recent collapse with speculative boom/busts going back over 400 years. The representation that the paper develops applies the language of systems thinking to the most recent financial crisis. A mental model of this system and the corresponding systems structure can be used to not only understand what happened, but also inform decision‐makers when similar speculative behavior occurs in the future.

The main purpose of this paper is to reflect on the impact of the financial crisis of 2007 on commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) and to consider how market confidence in this form of financing can be re‐established.

The paper uses a two‐stage approach involving a questionnaire and structured interviews. The questionnaire was distributed to market participants in Europe with the goal of identifying their views on the future of CMBS. Structured interviews were held with the three largest credit rating agencies again with the purpose to illicit their opinions on steps necessary to create the confidence in this innovative financing tool.

The empirical results show that market revival will depend on a simplification of deal structures and transparency by all market players. It is clear that regulation of the CMBS instrument is not a top priority for the main market players, but rather, better and more open risk assessment, greater disclosure of information and more due diligence on behalf of investors are seen as crucial.

The paper finds that there are several pragmatic changes that have to be introduced into the way CMBS are designed if they are to be, once again, significant tools for the securitising loans underlying real estate assets.

As well as the practical applications of this analysis it makes an academic contribution in relation to the perceptions of the main market players in creating the environment for a resurgence of CMBS.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the recent banking and financial crisis in the UK. It discusses the triggers of the crisis from a UK perspective and then examines the immediate reactions in the form of short‐term policies and concludes with a discussion on longer‐term policies.

This is a conceptual paper that argues that some of the triggers of the crisis are real and some are behavioural.

The crisis has its roots in the sub‐prime crisis of the USA with spillover effects for the UK due to its well‐developed and international financial sector. The systemic environment of high leverage in the financial, corporate and household sectors, the international nature of finance, and the opacity in banks' balance sheets are real triggers. In contrast, the underestimation of risks by almost all agents in the economy is behavioural.

The paper argues that some of the conditions that led to the crisis will not change and should now be incorporated in new banking regulations. This is particularly true in the case of behavioural factors. Optimism, greed, herding and underestimation of low‐probability high‐impact events, are all parts of human nature. Human nature will not change. Thus, it need better regulations.

Less privileged groups, such as the poor, the uneducated, and the elderly, need better regulation to make them less vulnerable not only to others' biases but also to their own biases.

The paper is original in discussing behavioural side of the crisis along with the real side of it.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practitioner's guide to mortgage regulation.

The paper explores the mortgage code and the road to statutory regulation.

It was found that the future of mortgage regulation rests partly with those policy makers who decide that change is needed and partly with those who work in the industry. Good firms who strive to run better businesses and deliver improving service to their customers have little to fear from rising regulatory standards as they will always be at least one step ahead of the regulator. What is required is a weather‐eye on the changing market and economic conditions, a strong, unifying voice to campaign on behalf of the industry and a clear commitment to work for the good of the customer. That way, whilst some times will be good, and others will be less so, there will still be business to be done.

The paper offers practitioners a guide to mortgage regulation, advising on what firms need to do, key issues for mortgage intermediaries and the need to manage the sector's reputation.

This article discusses credit migration of diversified loan pool securitizations, as evidenced by the ratings transitions of mortgage‐backed securities (MBS) and asset‐backed securities (ABS). The authors contrast the ratings (i.e., credit) stability of MBS and ABS relative to ratings migration of general obligation corporate credit. They also use holding period returns to compare the total return portfolios of MBS/ABS to portfolios of senior unsecured corporate obligations.

This article aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

The briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Graafland and Bert W van den Ven provide a sharp analysis of what caused the credit crisis and point the finger at those who are culpable. If anything, they are generous to the perpetrators, while making it clear they will have to be forced to change. Ready and Stecker Truelove's article offers a glowing endorsement of three current business success stories. It Is uncritical, but it Is good to see that these firms exist and that the art of good business practice still thrives. Taylor provides a comprehensive account of China's current standing in the wake of the credit crisis, including the issues that still need to be addressed if the nation is going to fulfill its potential and become the number economic super‐power.

The article provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This paper aims to explore Islamic finance’s resilience in times of financial crisis and considers Islamic finance’s viability as an alternative to the current financial system.

Established on a review of theoretical aspects underlying the notion of Islamic finance being proficient of reducing the harshness of financial crises and a latent solution to financial volatility, this paper assesses actual performance of Islamic and conventional banks during and in the repercussion of the current financial crisis. Interviews were also conducted with managers of Islamic banks.

The paper concludes that performance of Islamic banks during the global financial crisis is found to be supportive of their argued resilience and consistency. However, the latest financial crisis has brought to light a number of theoretical and realistic issues that challenge Islamic finance and its absorbing capacity against financial crises.

The paper is an original work which suggests about moderating risks and proposing various ways in which the Islamic finance can be made more stable and resilient.

Corporate financial communications concern public and private disclosure (Holland, 2005). This paper aims to explain how banks developed financial communications and how problems emerged in the global financial crisis. It explores policy responses.

Bank cases reveal construction and destruction of the social, knowledge and economic world of financial communications over two periods.

In the 1990s, learning about financial communications by a “dominant coalition” (Cyert, March, 1963) in bank top management was stimulated by gradual change. The management learnt how to accumulate social and cultural capital and developed “habitus” for disclosure (Bourdieu, 1986). From 2000, rapid change and secrecy factors accelerated bank internalisation of shareholder wealth maximising values, turning “habitus” in “market for information” (MFI) (Barker, 1998) into a “psychic prison” (Morgan,1986), creating riskier bank cultures (Schein, 2004) and constraining learning.

The paper introduces sociological concepts to banking research and financial disclosures to increase the understanding about financial information and bank culture and about how regulation can avoid crises. Limitations reflect the small number of banks and range of qualitative data.

Regulators will have to make visible the change processes, new contexts and knowledge and connections to bank risk and performance through improved regulator action and bank public disclosure.

“Masking” and rituals (Andon and Free, 2012) restricted bank disclosure and weakened governance and market pressures on banks. These factors mediated bank failure and survival in 2008, as “psychic prisons” “fell apart”. Bank and MFI agents experienced a “cosmology episode” (Weick, 1988). Financial communications structures failed but were reconstructed by regulators.

The paper shows how citizens require transparency and contested accountability to democratise finance capitalism. Otherwise, problems will recur.

We investigate how Korean stock market and its participants react to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Using data for the ABX sub-prime index, we find strong evidence of information transmission from ABX to KOSPI and VKOSPI during 2007 sub-prime mortgage crisis period. Responding to the drop of ABX, domestic institutional investors buy, whereas foreign investors sell. Furthermore, we find KOSPI reacts to ABX less than the response implied by KOSPI response to S&P 500 and S&P 500 response to ABX, which are considered as an efficient channel of information transmission. This phenomenon occurs because domestic investors buy stocks as ABX drops, thus keeping KOSPI from responding fully to information on ABX. On the contrary, foreign investors sell stocks as ABX drops, which show that foreign investors play as a channel for sub‐prime mortgage information transmission. This evidence supports the hypothesis of Kho (2011) that foreign investors have an informational advantage over domestic investors on overseas information.

On September 18, 2007, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee took a major step by cutting the federal funds rate by one‐half a percent (50 basis points). The only time this had happened in the USA was immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then the sub‐prime derivatives market threatened to engulf the US economy under a dark cloud of uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is an attempt to draw lessons relevant to international financial strategy from the US sub‐prime crisis.

This paper presents reflections upon the sub‐prime derivatives market that had begun to evolve since 1993. Reviewing the situation from then until as late as of October 18, 2007, five key lessons are conceptualized. Where possible, insights on the major lessons to be drawn are rendered through simple diagrams.

Five major lessons may be drawn from the sub‐prime turmoil. For easy citation, these are presented as idioms: “Do not put all bad eggs in one basket,” “Excessive demand outbalances risk and return,” “Robustness of actions for resolving a crisis,” “Banks to stay respectable as banks,” “Outcome of innovation, greed, and politics.” In conclusion, all these lessons are integrated through an overview.

These lessons are explained in a manner so as to render them useful for both practitioners in the financial industry globally and a broader audience of interested readers. In particular, a thinking approach to learning is emphasized. Financial innovators are reminded of the wisdom of the ancients (eggs in a basket), and the applications of artificially intelligent forecasts of financial futures; specifically, US$ exchange rates are brought into the discussion.

This is an original piece of thinking on what lessons may be drawn from a major highly turbulent event: the sub‐prime crisis. It is an event that is a direct consequence of innovation in the financial markets.