This book analyses the financing problems of Greek small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), within a liberalized financial system and within an economic environment of fiscal and monetary constraints. Using recent data covering a ten-year period, the main aim of the research is to explain the interdependence between the situation of the banking sector generally and that of small and medium enterprises. The author argues that the reluctance of banks to lend to Greek companies because of the strict financing constraints, due to the national debt crisis, serves to exacerbate the cycle of economic recession. This factor seriously undermines the efforts of Greek companies to develop growth opportunities, and negatively affects their competitiveness as well as their ability to strengthen their market position. The author examines the supply and demand aspect of the problem: there is lower demand for lending due to the decline of demand for goods and services as well as a tightening of banks'credit standards, whilst on the supply side, the deteriorating financial situation of banks and their willingness to avoid increasing risk are important contributing factors. Finally, the author presents the main conclusions of the analyses carried out in the previous sections of the book and discusses some relevant recommendations for future research. Building on the extant literature, this book analyses the problem from the point of view of both businesses and the banking sector. The study is useful for scholars, businesses and policy decision makers who are interested in the problem of small and medium-sized enterprises financing.

This comprehensive volume explores debt dynamics and the intensification of debt crises across the globe, bringing together several recent but underexplored debt crises from different regional and socioeconomic contexts. Using detailed case studies, the authors recast the perils of debt-based growth in the context of regional/global imbalances; not to advocate 'one-size-fits-all' reforms, but to point to the need for accommodating diversity. They examine how current economic developments put developing and developed countries under new strain. They also interrogate the opportunities and challenges generated for developing countries by the new development finance landscape and newly (re)emerged geopolitical tensions. The book also explores the inability of existing dominant structures and thinking to effectively manage the multiple facets of the ongoing global debt crisis, pointing to responses that exacerbate rather than address unsustainable debt dynamics. The authors illustrate the adverse effects of ad hoc crisis management mechanisms which are not fit for purpose, and indicate the negative consequences that existing policies may have for democracy. They then put forward a framework for alternative thinking as well as concrete ideas on what needs to be done, in response. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals in the field of global debt studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen, and why some have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences whilst others have actually benefited society. They reveal that bubbles start when investors and speculators react to new technology or political initiatives, showing that our ability to predict future bubbles will ultimately come down to being able to predict these sparks.

This book provides a new understanding of the eurozone crisis across three of the worst hit cases: Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. In contrast to accounts which stress the 'immaturity' of the European 'periphery', as well as more critical narratives that understand these countries as victims of German and core 'economic domination', this book recognises that individual peripheral countries have followed dramatically different paths to crisis, making it difficult to speak of the eurozone crisis as a single phenomenon. Bringing literature from Comparative Political Economy into dialogue with scholarship on Europeanisation, this book contributes the concept of 'divergence via Europeanisation'. It explores the much-overlooked ways in which the negotiation of a 'one size fits all' project of European financial integration has been generative of precarious patterns of economic growth across Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. The book shows that far from their failure or inability to do so, it has been the European periphery's attempt to 'follow the rules' of European integration that explains their current difficulties. This novel understanding of the eurozone crisis should appeal to students and scholars in International Political Economy, European and European Union Studies, Comparative Political Economy, Irish Politics, Greek Politics, and Portuguese Politics.

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosperity.

Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government--simply allowing markets to work won't do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life--such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes--and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.

"Animal Spirits" offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits--the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today. In a new preface, they describe why our economic troubles may linger for some time--unless we are prepared to take further, decisive action.

In this volume of the African Development Perspectives Yearbook series, the Research Group on African Development Perspectives investigates the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on economic reform processes in Africa. The analysis is structured in such a way so as to reflect the opportunities and dangers of policy reversals in the face of the GFC. The impact of the crisis on different types and forms of governance in the region is considered. The first question is therefore which macro-economic policy instruments have to be applied in order to overcome the crisis and to continue with sustainable development. The second question is how the GFC has affected Africa's external economic relations and if the path of opening up to the world markets is to be continued. The third question raised is how the crisis has affected social cohesion, impacted poverty alleviation strategies and the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). All these questions are discussed in the various contributions which comprise general studies and country case studies. The book also looks into the role of international financial institutions during and after the crisis. (Series: African Development Perspectives Yearbook - Vol. 15)

What effect did the Great Recession have on innovation efficiency and the effectiveness of scarce resource management? Did countries with high GDPs and GDPs per capita sustain efficient innovation? How did the recession affect the time lag between innovation development and implementation? This book presents the most comprehensive data set in current economic literature to measure and compare the effect of GDP and GDP per capita on the efficiency of fifty-eight countries' national innovation systems during the Great Recession. A total of eighteen different models are applied to different groupings of the data, including data envelopment analyses and time lag effects. The result is a rich comparative resource for policy makers and economists alike.

The book follows a first edition published in 1989, which focused on the severe economic crisis Ghana faced during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In this second edition, the authors extend the review up to the mid-2010s, covering the entire period since independence, with a special focus on shifts in economic policy, starting with the adoption of the Economic Recovery Programme in 1983. Huq and Tribe provide systematic coverage of Ghanaian economic development since its independence, reviewing the two main modes of development that have been practiced; and offer an updated, rich data bank. By analyzing the wider macroeconomy of Ghana; its individual sectors; money, banking and trade; infrastructure and environmental policies; and Ghana's poverty, welfare and income distribution, the authors are able to draw vital lessons from the country's economic development.

Recurrent crises in emerging markets and in advanced economies in the last decades cast doubt about the ability of financial liberalization to meet the aims of sustainable economic growth and development. The increasing importance of financial markets and financial efficiency criterion over economic decisions and policies since the 1980s laid down the conditions of the development process of emerging market economies. Numerous crises experienced thereafter gave rise to flourishing work on the links between financialization and economic development. Several decades of observations and lessons can now be integrated into economic and econometric models to give more sophisticated and multivariable approaches to financial development with respect to growth and development issues. In the markets-based and private-enterprise dominated world economy, two conditions for a successful growth-enhancing financial evolution can at least be brought fore: macroeconomic stability and consistent supervision. But even after the 2007-2008 global crisis, economists do not agree on the meaning of those conditions. For liberal and equilibrium-market economists, good finance and supervision mean market-friendly structures while for institutionalists, post-Keynesian and Marxist economists, good finance and supervision must lie in collectively designed and managed public structures. Drawing heavily on the tumultuous crises of the 1990s-2000s, this book argues that those experiences can shed light on such a crucial issue and lead economic theory and policy to go beyond the blindness of efficient free markets doctrine to economic catastrophes. It also points to new challenges to global stability in the wake of reconfiguration of international financial arena under the weight of major emerging market economies.

Just because there has been a crisis does not necessarily mean there is going to be a change. And yet why, exactly, did nothing change in the face of global resistances and movements which followed the financial meltdown of 2007/8? Based on ethnographic research with the Occupy movement in London - as a case study of one post-crash attempt to bring alternatives about - this book argues that change was ultimately foreclosed by widespread 'common sense' limitations of what was considered possible after the crash. Offering a critically constructive analysis of the Occupy movement in London and incorporating both activist praise and self-criticism of their movement, Occupying London discusses both the political potential suggested by the occupation of space and the slogan 'we are the 99%', as well as the problematic extension of post-crash normativity into the movement through issues of organisation, repetitions of wider norms, and an inadvertent acceptance of wider distributions of possibility. Such positives and negatives are shown to have played out in a wide-range of arenas: from the occupation of space itself, through attempts to organise collective appearance and voice, as well as 'authentic' constructions of resistance and 'cynical' framings of power. The author's intention is to provoke thought on behalf of any 'half-fascinated, half-devastated witnesses' of the financial crash and the political disappointments which followed. It is argued that such movements possess the potential to bring about progressive change, but only if they intervene into wider distributions of 'common sense' by embracing collective symbolic efficiency and avoiding binary framings of 'authentic' resistance vs. 'hidden' power.

Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the EU has been in almost permanent crisis mode. It is witnessing new dimensions of internal differentiation among its member states, and the migration crisis has shown that the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEs) in particular are slowly but certainly transforming themselves from predominantly passive policy-takers towards becoming more active players in the process of shaping the EU's governance agenda. This edited volume offers the first comprehensive and critical insight into how the CEEs position themselves in the EU's changing internal and external environment, their stance towards the European integration process under current crisis conditions, and what political and economic strategies they prioritize.

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 financial 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. Contributors: J. Aizenman, M.D. Bordo, M. Chamon, M.D. Chinn, D. Cho, B. Eichengreen, A. Ghosh, M.M. Hutchison, H.-W. Kim, J.I. Kim, J.S. Landon-Lane, H. Lee, H. Lee, K.-M. Lim, A. Mason, M. Obstfeld, M.-K. Song

Using highly-readable, non-technical language, the authors, both professional economists, describe all the major global economic forces at work in the 1970s and forecast the kind of future which such forces are creating (and which has indeed been the case). Inflation and recession, an energy crisis, international monetary disorder and a food crisis in the developing world are all discussed.

The global health crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak, has challenged all sectors of society, including health, economics, finance, and social inequality. The threats and complexities from the COVID-19 pandemic shock are the core subject of this latest volume in the Contributions to Economic Analysis series. The Economics of COVID-19 contains selected contributions analysing the effects of this pandemic, covering macroeconomics, computable general equilibrium models, financial markets, the reduction in seismic noise due to the slowdown in traffic and economic activities caused by the spread of the virus, the rapid surge in the digital transformation of production and consumption. Also included are health studies proposing to improve the traditional epidemic models, the effects of the pandemic on mental health, Minority Ethnic Groups in the UK, as well as the Lombardy region in Italy. The aim of this collection is to spur much needed research into the effects of COVID on the global economy, the health, and financial sectors, as well as its effects on development and growth and economic inequality.

How should Europe cope with the negative and still unfolding economic consequences of the current economic crisis? And why does Europe seem to be more conservative than the USA in dealing with the crisis? Since the outbreak of the current international economic crisis in 2008, the USA and many of the European countries have been tormented by high levels of unemployment and low levels of inflation, interest rates close to zero and fiscal policies of austerity. As such, the modern economic mainstream has been challenged by these empirical facts. Today, several years after the outbreak of the international economic crisis, supply side effects do not seem to be increasing employment as the modern mainstream claimed they would. Aggregate demand has to play a more important role in macroeconomic analysis than hitherto. That is, there is a need for alternative explanations of how a modern macro economy is expected to function and how the macroeconomic outcome could be manipulated by the right economic policy proposals. As expressed by the contents of the present book, a Post Keynesian understanding proposes such an alternative theoretically, methodologically and in terms of policy measures. This book will present new materials and approaches, especially new evidence and new views on the potential problems of public debt, the European Union and the present crisis, Central Banking, hysteresis in an agent based framework, the foundations of macroeconomics and the problems of uncertainty.

First published in 1984. This book represents a major study of union responses to the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Abjuring governmental or managerial outlooks, it argues that unions, as representatives of essential producer groups, would be central to the renegotiation of the economic world. The work also stresses the importance of situating union responses to the crisis within the socio-historical evolution of their political economies during the rise and decline of the post-war economic boom. The Social Democratic affiliation of unions in Britain, West Germany and Sweden make them particularly comparable. This title will be of interest to students of politics and economics.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, policymakers as well as academicians have been seeking to fathom why subsequent recoveries remain tenuous. Other outstanding issues that they have been trying to understand include: why do some economies grow faster than others? How should the exchange rate volatility be understood and what factors make an economy more likely to fall into an exchange rate crisis? What policies need to be taken during tranquil periods, and how should they be changed once the crisis is triggered? As a partial effort to meet such interests, this book provides insights into these issues. This book examines growth and convergence (Part I), exchange rate volatility and the Asian crisis (Part II), and the global crisis (Part III). In addition, the book also draws lessons from South Korea's experiences - a country which has undergone three different crises and brisk recoveries (Part IV). The book also includes some practical and policy-oriented analysis. This is a truly comprehensive book bringing together varied topics and diversity under one common theme - economic growth and crisis.

Acclaimed by Joseph Schumpeter as 'The greatest economist the United States has ever produced', this book examines the life and work of American economist and statistician Irving Fisher (1867-1947). Fisher's reputation suffered for decades after his incorrect predictions for the stock market in October 1929 and the impact of Keynesian macroeconomics, but the importance of his work came to be recognized through the advocacy of many prestigious scholars including Milton Friedman, Hyman Minsky and James Tobin. With pivotal contributions including his Debt-Deflation Theory, Fisher Diagram and Ideal Index Number, his research in neoclassical economics influenced policymaking in his own day as well as during the recent financial crisis. This volume will be of interest to all those interested in the twentieth century transformation of economics.

This book examines the changing nature of the policies adopted to promote international financial stability. Specifically, it investigates the policies that the IMF followed in response to the Mexican, Asian, and subprime crisis. The book argues that these policies can be explained by the interaction of economic ideas and historical contexts.

Virtually all large banks and other financial institutions in the UK and internationally are public limited liability companies whose shares are listed on one or several stock exchanges. As such, their corporate governance and, in particular, the incentives faced by their directors and senior managers are to a significant extent determined by corporate and securities law rules such as directors' duties, directors' liability in insolvency, takeover regulation, disclosure obligations, shareholder rights and rules on executive remuneration. At the same time, systemically important financial institutions in the UK are licensed, regulated and supervised by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). This book explores the relationship between, on the one hand, the broader corporate law, corporate governance and securities law framework and, on the other, the prudential regulatory framework. Although the book's main focus is on UK law, much of the policy argumentation is relevant globally and therefore appropriate international comparisons are drawn, and analysis of EU law and regulation is included. The book argues that the corporate law regime, which focuses on shareholder empowerment and profit maximisation, operates as an antithesis to prudential regulatory objectives thus undermining the safety and soundness of banks and other financial institutions by encouraging risky behaviour that may be in the best interests of their shareholders, but is clearly not in the public interest.

Fascinating Insight into How the Financial System Works and How the Credit Crisis AroseClearly supplies details vital to understanding the crisis Unravelling the Credit Crunch provides a clearly written, comprehensive account of the current credit crisis that is easily understandable to non-specialists. It explains how the financial system was drawn into the crunch and the issues that need to be addressed to prevent further disasters. To enable an understanding of the credit crunch, the author first examines the rules that constrain how financial institutions operate. He discusses how these institutions do business, what products were central to the development of the crunch, and how they behave. He thoroughly describes how financial institutions raise money and the legal and regulatory frameworks under which they operate. After exploring how the system works, the book illustrates how to change the rules to make financial disasters less likely. Focusing on the rules involved in the game of finance is essential if we want to figure out what happened that led to this financial debacle. This book shows us how the actions of many financial institutions, regulatory bodies, central banks, and investment managers adversely affected the entire financial system.

Crisis is everywhere: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the Congo; in housing markets, money markets, financial systems, state budgets, and sovereign currencies. In "Anti-Crisis," Janet Roitman steps back from the cycle of crisis production to ask not just why we declare so many crises but also what sort of analytical work the concept of crisis enables. What, she asks, are the stakes of "crisis"? Taking responses to the so-called subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 as her case in point, Roitman engages with the work of thinkers ranging from Reinhart Koselleck to Michael Lewis, and from Thomas Hobbes to Robert Shiller. In the process, she questions the bases for claims to crisis and shows how crisis functions as a narrative device, or how the invocation of crisis in contemporary accounts of the financial meltdown enables particular narratives, raising certain questions while foreclosing others.

The collapse of Souq Al-Manakh in Kuwait in August 1982 was the most spectacular financial crash of recent years. The market had developed as a parallel stock exchange dealing in the shares of Gulf companies not resident in Kuwait. Fuelled by manic speculation, the market grew at a phenomenal rate throughout 1981 and early 1982. Inexperienced investors gambled huge sums on the shares of shell companies promoted largely for share speculation. At the height of the market US$92 billion was outstanding on nearly 30,000 postdated cheques, the usual form of payment used in the market. The financial crisis created by the collapse of the Souq Al-Manakh threatened the stability of Kuwait. The government was forced to intervene and absorb the major part of the loss. This book, first published in 1986, traces the growth of the stock market and analyses its collapse. It also discusses in detail the wider impact of this debacle on the economic life of the Gulf.

For over 2000 years, economics was studied in the West as a branch of ethics, or moral philosophy. Presently, though, few economists and no textbook in economic orthodoxy claim any close connection between economic science and philosophy. However, might the current 'crises' in economics, and in the economics profession have their deep roots in the separation of economics from philosophy and ethics? American pragmatism, among the various contemporary philosophic traditions, lends itself specially to dialogue with economics because of its view of philosophy as an instrument for solving the real, concrete problems of human life, both personal and social. The essays in this volume, drawing heavily on the tradition of pragmatism, suggest that the economic crises of our time (the 2008 collapse of real estate and finance markets) might not be merely technical in nature - that is, the result of faulty applications of economic tools by politicians and policy makers, based up conventional economic models - but also due to the faulty philosophical assumptions underlying those models. These essays suggest that the overcoming of our current economic crises requires that economists once again become moral philosophers, or that philosophers once again engage themselves in economic matters. In either case, this volume aims to foster dialogue between the two disciplines and in that way, contribute to the improvement of contemporary economic life. This book is suitable for those who study political economy, economic theory and economic philosophy.