Global Economic Crisis

In 2008, the global economy experienced the most severe crash since World War II. A sharp collapse in international trade followed, leaving no country on the globe immune to a sequence of economic shocks. This timely book explores many of the key issues raised in the wake of the global economic crisis and provides an in-depth analysis of crisis transmission to emerging markets. The expert contributors compare the recent crisis with earlier crises, explore international aspects of the crisis from the perspectives of markets and trade, and examine macroeconomic policy responses. In so doing, they address important questions including: How did this crisis differ from those suffered previously? How and why did flaws in financial markets contribute to the crisis? How important were global imbalances and global overheating in explaining the global meltdown? Did different pre-crisis fundamentals generate different post-crisis performances? And, how severe were the economic shocks to countries such as Korea and other emerging economies? Academics, students and policymakers in the fields of economics, international economics, finance money and banking and Asian studies will find this book to be a thought-provoking and stimulating read.

'Crisis in the Global Economy' reflects on the state of global capitalism, developed in the mobile 'multiversity' of the UniNomade network of international researchers and activists during the months immediately following the first signals of the current financial and economic crisis.

From Greece scrambling to meet Eurozone austerity measures to America’s sluggish job growth, there is every indication that the world has not recovered from the economic implosion of 2008. And for many of us, the details of what led to the recession—and why it has continued—remain murky. Economic historian Larry Allen clears up the subject in The Global Economic Crisis, offering an insightful and nonpartisan chronology of events and their consequences. Illuminating the interlocked economic processes that lay beneath the crisis, he analyzes the changing nature of the global financial system, central bank policies, housing bubbles, deregulation, sovereign debt crises, and more. Allen begins the timeline with the economic crisis in Japan in the late 1990s, asking whether Japan’s experience could be an indicator of the outcome of the recession and what it can teach us about managing a sluggish economy. He then takes a comparative look at the economies of Brazil, China, and India. Throughout, he argues that many elements have contributed to the ongoing crisis, including the introduction of the euro, the growth of new financial instruments such as securitization, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, interest rate policies, and the housing boom and subprime mortgage fiasco. Lucid and informative, The Global Economic Crisis provides an impartial explanation to anyone seeking to understand the current state—and future—of the world’s economy.

Russia After the Global Economic Crisis examines this important country after the financial crisis of 2007–09. The second book from The Russia Balance Sheet Project, a collaboration of two of the world's preeminent research institutions, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), not only assesses Russia's international and domestic policy challenges but also provides an all-encompassing review of this important country's foreign and domestic issues. The authors consider foreign policy, Russia and its neighbors, climate change, Russia's role in the world, domestic politics, and corruption.

ÔThis outstanding book examines whether and how the finance-led growth model can be transformed. The authorsÕ insightful analyses make significant contributions to our understanding of the global economic crisis since 2008 and the search for possible new paths beyond the crisis.Õ Ð Stein Kuhnle, University of Bergen, Norway and Hertie School of Governance, Germany ÔThis book sheds a powerful light on the current uncertainty of the world economy. Indispensable reading for understanding the roots of the crisis and the possible ways out.Õ Ð Carlota Perez, Technological University of Tallinn, Estonia and London School of Economics, UK This timely and far-reaching book addresses the long-term impact of the recent global economic crisis. New light is shed on the crisis and its historical roots, and resolutions for a more robust, resilient future socio-economic model are prescribed. Leading experts across a range of field including macroeconomics, politics, economic history, social policy, linguistics and global economic relations address key issues emerging from the crisis. They consider whether a new era in interactions between state, society and markets is actually dawning, and whether the finance-led economic growth model will be transformed into a new and more stable model. The role of the crisis in economy, polity and society, in shaking up existing institutional regimes and in paving the way for new ones is also discussed. Post-crisis combinations of state-society-economy relations are identified, and the question of whether the crisis has led to the reconsideration of economic relations and their institutional embeddedness is explored. This challenging book will provide a thought provoking read for academics, students and researchers focusing on economics, political science and sociology. Policymakers in the fields of economic, industrial and social policy will also find this book to be an informative point of reference.

Why did the economists of the so-called "mainstream" seem to fail to foresee the global economic crisis that exploded in 2008? And why do they appear to have difficulty in putting forward an interpretation of it that is consistent with the theoretical foundations of their models? These two questions have echoed insistently since the outbreak of the crisis, not only in academic circles but also in the mass media, and appear to reflect increasingly widespread dissatisfaction with the dominant paradigm of economic theory. Many believe that the global recession now underway may constitute an historic watershed for the evolution of economics and therefore that an authentic change of paradigm is called for, rather than only minor adjustments to the dominant approach. Since the start of the crisis, there has indeed been a profusion of contributions from alternative areas of economic study, and in particular from those adopting a critical stance with respect to mainstream economic theory. This collection puts forward promising reinterpretations of the primary schools of heterodox political economy, stringent critiques of the conventional readings of the recession, new schemes of theoretical and empirical analysis of the crisis, and proposals for economic policies alternative to those hitherto adopted. This book contains a selection of some of the most recent contributions to the critique of mainstream economic theory and policy, and discusses the origins and possible evolutions of the current economic crisis. The collection should be of interest to students and researchers focussing on macroeconomics, monetary economics, political economy and financial economics.

The world economy is currently in the throes of a global economic crisis reminiscent of the great depressions of the 1930s and the 1870s. As back then, the crisis has exposed the major structural imbalances in financial and credit markets in addition to global trade forcing many governments, developed and developing, to impose debilitating austerity measures that are exacerbating the structural weaknesses that caused the crisis in the first place. This volume offers historical insights into the origins of the contemporary crisis as well as detailed analyses of the financial and trade dimensions, an assessment of the technological and innovation context along with perspectives on the implications for unemployment and gender imbalances.

The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions around the world. Managing public uncertainty and anxiety is vital in coping with financial crises. This requires not just prompt action but, most of all, persuasive communication by government leaders. At the same time, the very occurrence of such crises raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current government policies and institutions. With the stakes being so high, defining and interpreting what is going on, how and why it happened, and what ought to be done now become key questions in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash. In this volume, we study how heads of government, finance ministers and national bank governors in eight countries as well as the EU engage in such 'framing contests', and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were publicly received. Using systematic content analysis of speeches and media coverage, this volume offers a unique comparative assessment of public leadership in times of crisis.