The worldwide financial crisis has wrought deep changes in capital and labor markets, old-age retirement systems, and household retirement and consumption patterns. Confidence has been shaken in both the traditional defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Around the world, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, policymakers, and households have gained a new awareness of retirement risk. When pressed to reform post-crisis, many would recommend enhancing financial advice for plan participants, emphasizing flexibility and the positive effect of working another one or two years to make up for investment losses in the downturn. Adding to this is the continuing need for financial education, essential as the retirement system moves increasingly toward personal account pensions. Perhaps most important of all is the need for greater understanding of risk throughout the retirement security system, along with new approaches to re-engineering retirement pensions. This volume explores the lessons to be learnt for retirement planning and long-term financial security in view of the massive shocks to stock markets, labour markets, and pension plans resulting from the financial crisis. It aims to rethink retirement in the new economic era, including the resilience of defined contribution plans and how defined benefit plans reacted to the financial crisis.

This book presents the results of extensive international comparative research into the effects of the economic and financial crisis on democratic institutions and social cohesion policies. The collected studies describe and analyse the measures (often referred to as "reforms") adopted to counter the crisis and the effects of these measures.It investigates three areas: the impact on the functioning of institutions, with respect to the relationship between representative institutions and governments, and the organisational structure of administrations at national and local levels; the impact that the austerity policies on public spending have on social rights; and the impact on traditional instruments of public action (administrative simplification, public services delivering, the use of common assets).The general findings highlight the effect of reducing the administrative and government capacity of the democratic institutions: the public sector, rather than being innovative and made more effective, declines, offering increasingly poor public services and making bad decisions, fuelling substantive or formal privatisation solutions, which in turn cause further weakening.

Ray Dalio, the legendary investor and international bestselling author of Principles - whose books have sold more than five million copies worldwide - shares his unique template for how debt crises work and principles for dealing with them well. This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to antic ipate 2008's events and navigate them well while others struggled badly. As he explained in his international best seller Principles, Ray Dalio believes that almost everything happens over and over again through time, so that by studying patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind events and develop principles for dealing with them well. In this three-part research series, he does just that for big debt crises and shares his template in the hopes of reducing the chances of big debt crises hap pening and helping them be better managed in the future. The template comes in three parts: 1. The Archetypal Big Debt Cycle (which explains the template) 2. Three Detailed Cases (which examines in depth the 2008 financial crisis, the 1930s Great Depression and the 1920s infla tionary depression of Germany's Weimar Republic) 3. Compendium of 48 Cases (which is a compendium of charts and brief descriptions of the worst debt crises of the last 100 years) Whether you're an investor, a policy maker, or are simply interested in debt, this unconventional perspective from one of the few people who navigated the crisis successfully, Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises will help you understand the economy and markets in revealing new ways.

Strategy management has always been a crucial business aspect that a company must understand to remain successful in the business world. However, there are a number of different approaches that a company can employ in order to differentiate themselves from thecompetition. Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage During Economic Crisis brings together the various approaches that affect the superiority of a company's organizational performance and the gains they can make over their competitors. By focusing on concepts such as organizational learning and intellectual capital, this book is an indispensable reference source for researchers, practitioners, graduate students, and business managers interested in understanding what approaches are necessary to ensure superior organizational performance.

This book describes how international development works, its shortcomings, its theoretical and practical foundations, along with prescriptions for the future. International Development Law provides the reader with new perspectives on the origins of global poverty, identifies legal impediments to sustainable economic growth, and provides a better understanding of the challenges faced by the international community in resolving global poverty issues. The text is structured into two basic parts: the first part deals with the theoretical and philosophic foundations of the subject, and the second part sets forth issues relating to the international financial architecture, namely, international borrowing practices, privatization, and emerging economies. In particular, the book provides new, innovative analysis on corruption as an impediment to sustainable development. The three interlocking facets of corruption are examined: transnational organized crime, Islamic-based international terrorism, and corruption within emerging economies and the international banking system. Thus fresh new analysis adds depth and clarity to a field that heretofore has been scattered and superficial. Finally, the "right to development" within the international human rights discourse is critically reviewed, particularly in light of new jurisprudence emerging from the African context.This book offers a fresh, new and balanced legal perspective on the development process. The text has been rigorously researched and has many practical facets based on the author's professional experience within the international development field. It is an invaluable research and teaching tool since it takes a multidisciplinary approach to putting complex issues, legal trends and political questions into a clear, new perspective that is highly analytical as well as accessible to the reader. The author's elegant legal prose is both powerful and persuasive.

A leading economic historian presents a new history of financial crises, showing how some led to greater globalization while others kept nations apart   The eminent economic historian Harold James presents a new perspective on financial crises, dividing them into “good� crises, which ultimately expand markets and globalization, and “bad� crises, which result in a smaller, less prosperous world. Examining seven turning points in financial history—from the depression of the 1840s through the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Covid-19 crisis—James shows how crashes prompted by a lack of supply, like the oil shortages of the 1970s, lead to greater globalization as markets expand and producers innovate to increase supply. By contrast, crises triggered by a lack of demand—such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008—result in less globalization as markets contract, austerity measures are imposed, and skepticism of government grows.   By considering not only the times but also the observers who shaped our understanding of each crisis—from Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Larry Summers—James shows how the uneven course of globalization has led to new economic thinking, and how understanding this history can help us better prepare for the future.

The first major global economic contraction of the 21st century, or the 'Great Recession', as it is more commonly known, began in December of 2007, and would prove to be one of the most catastrophic economic events in postmodern history. The bursting of the American housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis that followed are widely attributed as being the primary causes for this economic downturn.The content of this book presents an in-depth analysis of several of the leading causes of the subprime crisis, as well as the subsequent measures that were used to contain a widespread economic recession. It is the aim of this book to provide adequate information and tools for readers to gain insight on how we can prevent the same mistakes from happening again. This analysis also explores an interesting question when considering public policy; was the economic disaster, that ensued, caused by overzealous consumers who borrowed more than they could afford, or was it caused by institutional entities that gambled away the American economy?

This contributed volume combines approaches of the current inequality debate with aspects of finance based on profound macroeconomic model analyses. Research on inequality has had a long tradition in economics. With the financial crisis from 2007, not only output decreased tremendously, but also inequality has risen since then. The book presents selected contributions of a workshop held at Bielefeld University in 2016 and features additional papers written by experts in the field. A mixture of established researchers and young scholars presents both theoretical and empirical frameworks to analyze the subject.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, why has the reform process been incremental although the conditions for more rapid and abrupt transformations appeared to exist? Is there anything specific about financial policy that prevents more radical reforms? Drawing from Comparative Politics and Historical Institutionalism in particular, as well as International Political Economy, this book answers these questions by examining the particular institutional frictions that characterise global financial governance and influence the activity of agents and veto players involved in the process of global regulatory change. The chapters in this volume collectively demonstrate that the process of change in financial rule-making as well as in the institutions governing finance does not fit with the punctuated model of policy change. The book also shows, however, that incremental changes can lead to fundamental shifts in the basic principles that inform global financial governance. 'In this timely, tightly argued, and empirically trenchant study, Moschella and Tsingou provide the strongest statement yet of why national and international post-crisis reform packages have fallen short of their most ambitious goals. Covering virtually every area of the international fi nancial system, the editors and their collaborators detail the origins and consequences of incremental policy changes, but note that, in the end, reforms may produce a subtle transformation in fi nancial market regulation. Great Expectations, Slow Transformations will long remain a major resource for scholars of post-crisis capitalism.' Dr. Orfeo Fioretos, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA 'The Global Financial Crisis was, by any measure, a great systemic shock that has so far led to a series of less-than-great systemic transformations - at least in the area of financial reform. Moschella and Tsingou explain why this is the case. By harnessing the insights of historical institutionalism to those of agent centered constructivism, they show us why great institutional transformations may take a lot longer, and may be significantly more contingent, than we generally think.' Mark Blyth, Professor of International Political Economy, Brown University, Providence, USA 'Many expected the financial collapse of 2007/8 to evoke signifi cant reform of financial systems around the globe. So far, at least, national governments have been slow to act. Moschella and Tsingou's fascinating volume, Great Expectations, Slow Transformations, helps us understand why. In this thoughtful volume the editors have pulled together a series of well reasoned and persuasive essays examining the politics and political economy of financial reform efforts around the globe. Eschewing the temptation to blame specific interests and their compliant politicians, these authors give us a set of nuanced stories that go beyond the politics of fi nancial reform helping us better understand why institutional change itself is so diffi cult. This book will be of great interest both for political economists interested in the politics of banking and financial regulation in the early 21st century, as well as for Historical Institutionalists interested in the politics of institutional change. Sven Steinmo, Professor and Chair in Political Economy and Public Policy, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

What principled business leaders can do to solve America's current financial crisis

"Broke "is a startling wake-up call for America and an honest accounting of what our future holds if we don't take charge and change our country for the better. If the business of America is business, then it's up to our business leaders to solve the mess we're in. "Broke "offers practical, nonpolitical, and nonpartisan solutions that every business leader can implement "today "for a better "tomorrow."

Whether you operate a giant corporation or a local small business, you'll find practical steps to limit future risks, strengthen every business, stabilize the current economy, and help turn the country around. Author John Mumford has spent decades helping business leaders turn around failing companies. Now, he helps them to turn around a failing country.Presents bold initiatives and concrete steps every business leader can use to create a better future-for their businesses and for the countryIncludes practical, actionable steps for every business leader who wants to build for the future, while preserving the best of his or her existing enterprise.Shows how business leaders can contribute to the solutions for our problems concerning public debt, the environment, and international relationsOffers a turnaround plan for the country ideal for use by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, small business organizations, non-profits and others as the centerpiece of a 2010 campaign for America's turnaroundEndorsed by current and former CEO's, top business school leaders, former governors and senators, and leading journalists

Desperate times call for creative, effective measures, not desperation. If you're a business leader, here's how you can do your part.

Crisis and Recovery: Learning from the Asian Experience is a collection of selected articles related to the Asian experience with two crises - the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 and the global financial crisis of 2007-08 - written by Dr Jong-Wha Lee, former chief economist of the Asian Development Bank. These papers are grouped into three broad topics: Anatomy of Asian Growth and Crises, Asian Financial Crises: Responses and Lessons, and Global Financial Crisis and Challenges to Asia's Sustained Growth.The topics include the relation of the East Asia's development strategies with the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the causes of the Asian financial crisis, the desirability of IMF programs, the assessment of recovery and structural reforms, the process of spillovers of the global financial crisis to Asia, regional and global economic linkages, the role of China and the renminbi, and the long-term growth projections of Asian economies.The research collected in this book will be very useful for policymakers who want to learn from the Asian experience with the crises and it is a key contribution to ongoing research and policy debates on the future of Asian economies.

You Spend It. You Save It. You Never Have Enough of It. But how does money actually work? Understanding cash, currencies and the financial system is vital for making sense of what is going on in our world, especially now. Since the 2008 financial crisis, money has rarely been out of the headlines. Central banks have launched extraordinary policies, like quantitative easing or negative interest rates. New means of payment, like Bitcoin and Apple Pay, are changing how we interact with money and how governments and corporations keep track of our spending. Radical politicians in the US and UK are urging us to transform our financial system and make it the servant of social justice. And yet, if you stopped for a moment and asked yourself whether you really understand how it works, would you honestly be able to say 'yes'? In Money in One Lesson, Gavin Jackson, a lead writer for the Financial Times, specialising in economics, business and public policy, answers the most important questions to clarify for the reader what money is and how it shapes our societies. With brilliant storytelling, Jackson provides a basic understanding of the most important element of our everyday lives. Drawing on stories like the 1970s Irish Banking Strike to show what money actually is, and the Great Inflation of West Africa's cowrie shell money to explain how it keeps its value, Money in One Lesson demystifies the world of finance and explains how societies, both past and present, are forever entwined with monetary matters.

This book brings together a good mix of academics and practitioners for a discussion that focuses on how to change financial practice and the academic field of finance in order to understand the current financial crisis and deal with future turbulent financial times. The volume is based on contributions by prominent academics and practitioners from Europe, Asia and the USA. The book contains several essays, most prominently by Maurizio Murgia, an internationally renowned European corporate finance scholar, and Robert E. Krainer, a senior professor with banking and business cycles research interest from University of Wisconsin-Madison. This book also deals with pedagogical, empirical and theoretical considerations in light of the crisis.

Meltdown reveals how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was able to curb important unsafe and unfair practices that led to the recent financial crisis. In interviews with key government, industry, and advocacy groups along with deep archival research, Kirsch and Squires show where the CFPB was able to overcome many abusive practices, where it was less able to do so, and why. Open for business in 2011, the CFPB was Congress's response to the financial catastrophe that shattered millions of middle-class and lower-income households and threatened the stability of the global economy. But only a few years later, with U.S. economic conditions on a path to recovery, there are already disturbing signs of the (re)emergence of the high-risk, high-reward credit practices that the CFPB was designed to curb. This book profiles how the Bureau has attempted to stop abusive and discriminatory lending practices in the mortgage and automobile lending sectors and documents the multilayered challenges faced by an untested new regulatory agency in its efforts to transform the broken—but lucrative—business practices of the financial services industry. Authors Kirsch and Squires raise the question of whether the consumer protection approach to financial services reform will succeed over the long term in light of political and business efforts to scuttle it. Case studies of mortgage and automobile lending reforms highlight the key contextual and structural conditions that explain the CFPB's ability to transform financial service industry business models and practices. Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward is essential reading for a wide audience, including anyone involved in the provision of financial services, staff of financial services and consumer protection regulatory agencies, and fair lending and consumer protection advocates. Its accessible presentation of financial information will also serve students and general readers.

Although there have been numerous studies of the causes and consequences of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 in the US and abroad, many of these were undertaken only for a small number of countries and before the financial and economic effects were fully realized and before various governmental policy responses were decided upon and actually implemented. This book aims to fill these voids by providing a more thorough assessment now that the worst events and the regulatory reforms are sufficiently behind us and much more information about these developments is available. It reviews and analyzes the causes and consequences of and the regulatory responses to the Great Financial Crisis, particularly from a public policy viewpoint. In the process, it explores such intriguing questions as: What caused the crisis? How did the crisis differ across countries? What is the outlook for another crisis, and when? This is a must read for those who are trying to find answers to these questions.

Economics is today among the most influential of all professions. Economists alter the course of economic affairs and deeply affect the lives of current and future generations. Yet, virtually alone among the major professions, economics lacks a body of professional ethics to guide its practitioners. Over the past century the profession consistently has refused to adopt or even explore professional economic ethics. As a consequence, economists are largely unprepared for the ethical challenges they face in their work.
The Economist's Oath challenges the economic orthodoxy. It builds the case for professional economic ethics step by step-first by rebutting economists' arguments against and then by building an escalating positive case for professional economic ethics. The book surveys what economists do and demonstrates that their work is ethically fraught. It explores the principles, questions, and debates that inform professional ethics in other fields, and identifies the lessons that economics can take from the best established bodies of professional ethics. George DeMartino demonstrates that in the absence of professional ethics, well-meaning economists have committed basic, preventable ethical errors that have caused severe harm for societies across the globe. The book investigates the reforms in economic education that would be necessary to recognize professional ethical obligations, and concludes with the Economist's Oath, drawing on the book's central insights and highlighting the virtues that are required of the "ethical economist."
The Economist's Oath seeks to initiate a serious conversation among economists about the ethical content of their work. It examines the ethical entailments of the immense influence over the lives of others that the economics profession now enjoys, and proposes a framework for the new field of professional economic ethics.

In 2006 residential real estate prices peaked and started to fall, then threatened the world's financial institutions in 2007, and confronted the global economy with disaster in 2008. In the past few years, millions of people have lost very substantial portions of their wealth. And while the markets have rebounded considerably, they are still far from a full recovery. Now, professional economists, policy experts, public intellectuals, and the public at large are all struggling to understand the crisis that has engulfed us.
In The Financial Crisis of Our Time, Robert W. Kolb provides an essential, comprehensive review of the context within which these events unfolded, arguing that while the crisis had no single cause, housing finance played a central role, and that to understand what happened, one must comprehend the mechanism by which the housing industry came into crisis. Kolb offers a history of the housing finance system as it developed throughout the twentieth century, and especially in the period from 1990 to 2006, showing how the originate-to-distribute model of mortgage financing presented market participants with a "clockwork of perverse incentives." In this system, various participants-simply by pursuing their narrow personal interests-participated in an elaborate mechanism that led to disaster. The book then gives a narrative of the crisis as it developed and analyzes all of the participants in the housing market, from the home buyers to investors in collaterialized debt obligations (CDOs). At each step, the book explains in a nontechnical manner the essential relationships among the market participants and zeroes in on the incentives facing each party. The book also includes an extensive glossary and a detailed, authoritative timeline of the subprime financial crisis.
Offering a unique look at the participants and incentives within the housing finance industry and its role in the biggest financial catastrophe in recent history, Robert W. Kolb provides one of the most comprehensive and illuminating accounts of the events that will be studied for decades to come as the financial crisis of our time.

Central banks play an important role in the course of national economies and the global economy. Their leaders are regularly feted or vilified, their policy pronouncements highly anticipated and routinely scrutinized. This is all the more so since the global financial crisis. The past fifteen years in monetary policy is essentially the story of two mistakes and one triumph, argues Pierre L. Siklos, a professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. One mistake was that central bankers underestimated the connection between finance and the real economy. The other was a failure to realize how inter-connected the world's financial system had become. The triumph, in turn, was the recognition that price stability is a desirable objective. As a result of the financial crisis, central banks stepped into the breach to provide services other institutions were unwilling or unable to carry out. In doing so, the responsibilities for governing monetary policy and financial system stability became more elastic without due consideration for the appropriateness of the division of responsibilities. Central banks no longer influence just prices they also change financial system quantities. This leads to rising policy uncertainty. And low economic growth, an insufficiently unsubstantiated expansion of central bank responsibilities, and worries over future financial instability are sources of concern that contribute to a loss of confidence in the monetary authorities around the globe. Because no coherent new framework for central bank policy has since emerged, central banking is not broken, but it is in need of repair. Central Banks into the Breach provides an overarching analysis of the current and vulnerable state of central banks and offers potential solutions to stabilize the uncertain future of central banking.

In the years leading up to the Crash of 2008, Iceland had been triumphed in world business media as an economic miracle. Its new breed of Viking Capitalism had become rock stars of the global finance driven economy, even while it was testing the foundations of Europe's financial system. Eirikur Bergmann applies Postcolonial analysis to explain the paradigmatic case of Iceland's fantastical boom, bust and rapid recovery after the Crash. His critical approach to the claims of the financialization advocates relates the questions of the national economy and globalisation to current trends in Europe and the World.

Banks, Bankers, and Bankruptcies Under Crisis uses case studies of failed banks, banks that would have failed without taxpayer intervention, and in some cases banks obliged to merge under government pressure, to better understand global banking today.

Tillmann C. Lauk discusses law-making at the European level and argues that problems with EU legislation, banking regulation and currency debasement are due to a lack of democratic control. He insists on the need for radical reform both of banking and of international money and makes an important contribution to the debate on the future of finance.

This book discusses the relationship between democracy and the financial order from various legal perspectives. Each of the nine contributions adopts a unique perspective on the legal and political challenges brought to the fore by the Global Financial Crisis. This crisis and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis in Europe are only the latest in a long series of financial crises around the globe in recent decades. By their very existence, but also as a result of the political turmoil they have created, these financial crises testify to the well-known tensions between democracy and a market-based economic and financial order. However, what is missing in this debate is an analysis of the role of law for reconciling democracy with a market-based financial order. To fill this lacuna, the book focuses on the controversy surrounding the concept of law, thereby adding another variable to the debate on the relation between democracy and capitalism. Each chapter addresses the concept of law from a particular theoretical angle, be it a full-grown legal theory or an approach in political economy that has a particular view of the law.

This book is devoted to the analysis of the three main financial crises that have marked this century: 2001 Argentina's defaulting on its external debt, the American subprime crisis in 2008, and the current European debt crisis in Europe. The book pursues three major objectives: firstly, to accurately portray these three financial crises; secondly, to analyze what went wrong with mainstream economic theory, which was unable to foresee these types of economic turmoil; and thirdly, to review macroeconomic theory, re-evaluating Keynes' original contribution to economic analysis and pointing out the need to rebuild macroeconomics with a view to studying economic illness rather than trying to prove the non-existence of economic problems.

This book provides a broad overview of monetary developments in Norway over the past 200 years, using a rich variety of graphical illustrations based on a unique data set of historical monetary statistics, which will be documented and made available on the Norges Bank website (in English) at http://www.norges-bank.no/en. Throughout the book, Norway's monetary developments are anchored in a historical context and in the development of monetary thinking. Through their analysis of the historical data, the authors provide new insights and comparisons to other Scandinavian countries, along with an excellent examination of the development and character of the banking and financial system in Norway.

This book deals with the structural origins of economic and financial crises. It explains that both economic theories and policies need to be grounded on a monetary macroeconomic analysis of the working of domestic and international economies. The volume outlines reform proposals to make sure that banking activities respect the nature of money.