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.

Southern Europe has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and, as such, their welfare states have come under acute strain. Unmet need has sharply increased while significant welfare reforms and deep social spending cuts have been prominent in the crisis management solutions implemented by governments, labouring under EU constraints and the strict rescue-deal requirements for Greece and Portugal. This volume provides a systematic comparative appraisal of welfare-state reform trajectories across Southern Europe prior to and during the crisis, and traces the impact of austerity policies and wider recession upon income inequality and poverty. It brings together a number of cross-country studies on major social policy areas, raising crucial questions. What policy choices are driving reforms as Southern European economies work their way out of fiscal difficulty? Can the crisis provoke the improvement of institutional capabilities and recalibration of social? Or, instead, does structural adjustment indicate a significant policy turn towards the erosion of social rights? The contributions critically approach these issues and bring evidence to bear upon whether Southern European welfare capitalisms are becoming more dissimilar. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society & Politics.

The 25 years leading up to the international financial crisis have been depicted as 'capitalism unleashed', containing deregulation, privatisation, demutualisation and financialisation. Yet remarkably, given this economic and political context, co-operatives and mutuals appear to have been gaining ground in many countries, albeit modestly, even before the international financial crisis and the resulting global recession, from which the global economy is still only slowly recovering. The 2007-2008 international financial crisis called into question how appropriate the shareholder-owned model is, certainly if it is allowed to dominate the financial services sector. However the International Co-operative Alliance is determined to make the mutual and co-operative sector of the economy a dynamic, sustainable and increasingly important sector of the global economy. This book looks at the contribution of co-operative, mutual and employee-owned firms to the Asia Pacific economy - both currently and prospectively - and the challenges the standard 'Western' model faces regarding employment and output. It also looks at the role of Governments, the nature of co-operatives in China and the role of the state, and the future prospects for cross-border growth of co-operative and mutual business within Asia Pacific, and more widely. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

The book analyses the emerging centre-periphery divisions within the European Union which result from the unprecedented conditions created by the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. The multiple layers of policy coordination which emerged in response to the crisis have initiated a process by which the EU is increasingly divided in terms of the level of vertical integration between the Eurozone core group and differentiated peripheries amongst the outsiders. At the same time the sovereign debt crisis has created a periphery of predominantly Southern European countries within the Eurozone that became dependent on external financial support from the other member states. The contributions in this book critically examine various aspects of the emerging internal post-crisis constellation of the EU. The main focus lies on national and supranational governance issues, national dynamics and dynamics in the Eurozone core as well as in the periphery. This book was originally published as a special issue of Perspectives on European Politics and Society.

The consequences of the global economic crisis which started in the United States in 2007-08 are still being felt in most of the advanced economies, and the mainstream tools of recovery are not having the required results. It seems that many of the after-effects of the crisis, including the instability of the financial markets, increasing public debts and limited economic growth, require new solutions from both economic policy and theory. Lower aggregate demand during the crisis increased the pressure on firms to be more competitive and at the same time, the crisis in the banking system has had a negative impact on the willingness of financial institutions to give credit to companies for investment. Therefore, the key issue for current economic policy is to find a balance between the stabilisation of public finance and maintaining the momentum of long-term growth. This book offers an evolutionary-developmental analysis, combining elements of neo-Schumpeterian economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics, to show that selection processes within an economy, and the institutional rules shaping those processes, are substantially more important than usually recognised by evolutionary economic theory. Two major challenges for economic theory and policy, in particular, have emerged during the crisis. The first is the rise of unemployment coupled with growing public deficits. The second is the financial instability which threatens the permanence of economic development. This book examines the performance of the advanced economies since the crisis and explores why some of them have been more successful in tackling these challenges than others. It is argued that the reasons for the varied performances of these economies lie in the economic policies which were introduced before and in the aftermath of the crisis and the differences in the regulation of their labour markets. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the areas of macroeconomics, public economics and public management.

The book explores how, to what extent and with what consequences the international crisis of 2007-2008 and the recession which followed have affected European SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in both the well established market economies of the old member countries and in the post-transformation new member countries, and what can be done at the institutional and political level to uphold them.

The financial crash of 2007-2008 and the subsequent global economic crisis have raised questions about the viability of capitalism and the desirability of alternative types of economic system. In this context, Keynesian and Marxist ideas in particular have become more popular. These two approaches, along with some other heterodox perspectives, agree on the need for institutional analysis and for better institutions and governance in order to promote economic development. This volume poses fundamental institutional, evolutionary and ontological questions relating to the emergence of a new mode of governance after the financial crisis. The book argues that, contrary to the recent austerity policies implemented in the EU in particular, a new level of government involvement is required in order to keep aggregate demand stable, make full employment possible, and create a transparent financial sector, serving the real economy and encouraging productive investments. This book will be of interest to students, researchers and policy makers working in the areas of finance, institutional economics, development economics and international political economy.

Some of the worst effects of the global economic downturn that commenced in 2008 have been felt in Europe, and specifically in the Eurozone's so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) and Cyprus. This edited volume is the first collection to bring together ethnographies of living with austerity inside the Eurozone, and explore how people across Southern Europe have come to understand their experiences of increased social suffering, insecurity, and material poverty. The contributors focus on how crises stimulate temporal thought (temporality), whether tilted in the direction of historicizing, presentifying, futural thought, or some combination of these possibilities. One of the themes linking diverse crisis experiences across national boundaries is how people contemplate their present conditions and potential futures in terms of the past. The studies in this collection thus supply ethnographies that journey to the source of historical production by identifying the ways in which the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and refashioned under contracting economic horizons. In times of crisis modern linear historicism is often overridden (and overwritten) by other historicities showing that in crises not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs and can be refashioned according to new rules. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.

From the Great Depression in the twentieth century to the Great Recession in the twenty-first, systemic banking crises have been a recurring problem for both developing and developed countries. This book offers a human rights perspective on financial crises vis-a-vis low-income and least developed countries. It systematically analyzes government's commitment to women's economic rights and basic human rights during systemic banking crises. The book combines a wealth of data with rich theoretical arguments that weave together distinct but related bodies of literature from international development, human rights, and political economy.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy and what began as a localised currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies long considered 'miracles' respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries respond to the crisis? What role did the IMF play?. Why did China, which suffers many of the same structural problems responsible for the crisis remain conspicuously insulated from the turmoil raging in its midst?. What explains the remarkable recovery now underway in Asia? In what fundamental ways did the Asian crisis serve as a catalyst to the current thinking about the "new international financial architecture"?. This book provides answers to all the above questions and more, and gives a comprehensive account of how the international economic order operates, examines its strengths and weaknesses, and what needs to be done to fix it. -- .

Although the triggering effect of economic crises on revolt is a classic sociological topic, crises have until recently mostly triggered large-scale collective action in developing countries. The antigovernment protests that occurred in several European countries in the aftermath of the global financial crisis brought crises to the forefront of collective action research in democratic societies, as well as provide important opportunities for studying how crises can trigger large-scale collective action. This volume focusses on Iceland's 'Pots and Pans Revolution', a series of large scale antigovernment protests and riots that took place in Iceland in autumn 2008 and January 2009. The Icelandic case offers a rare opportunity to study processes that can trigger political protest in an affluent, democratic society. The protests took place in the aftermath of a national financial collapse triggered by the global financial crisis in early October 2008. While having almost no tradition of mass protest, Iceland was among the first countries to respond to the global crisis with large-scale protest. The level of public mobilization was exceptionally high (about 25 percent participation rate) and the protests did not stop until they had brought down the ruling government of Iceland. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this volume situates the protest in historical-cultural context and applies social movement theory to explore how the economic crisis ended up triggering the protests, thus providing a step toward understanding why the global financial crisis has triggered public unrest in other countries.

This second book in the FightBack collection responds to the question: what could the 'new normal' look like? Felix Staeritz and Sven Jungmann believe that business leaders and organizations have have formidable tools at their disposal - not just to cope with this situation, but to recreate the world so they come out of this stronger and more inventive. As entrepreneurs, Staeritz and Jungmann are passionate about solving challenges through continuous experimentation, in search of the solutions that will define and shape the new normal. At its core, this book is about the shared experiences of many business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs around how corporations can most effectively build new digital models to make the most of their existing assets. FightBack NOW is a timely and necessary book, challenging leaders and organizations to consider the new realities and the urgent problems which ultimately impact the future of every person and business.

The untold story of how FDR did the unthinkable to save the American economy The American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that, when in a bid to pull the country out of depression, he depreciated the U.S. dollar in relation to gold, effectively annulling all debt contracts. American Default is the story of this forgotten chapter in America's history. Sebastian Edwards provides a compelling account of the economic and legal drama that embroiled a nation already reeling from global financial collapse. It began on April 5, 1933, when FDR ordered Americans to sell all their gold holdings to the government. This was followed by the abandonment of the gold standard, the unilateral and retroactive rewriting of contracts, and the devaluation of the dollar. Anyone who held public and private debt suddenly saw its value reduced by nearly half, and debtors--including the U.S. government-suddenly owed their creditors far less. Revaluing the dollar imposed a hefty loss on investors and savers, many of them middle-class American families. The banks fought back, and a bitter battle for gold ensued. In early 1935, the case went to the Supreme Court. Edwards describes FDR's rancorous clashes with conservative Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, a confrontation that threatened to finish the New Deal for good-and that led to FDR's attempt to pack the court in 1937. At a time when several major economies never approached the brink of default or devaluing or recalling currencies, American Default is a timely account of a little-known yet drastic experiment with these policies, the inevitable backlash, and the ultimate result.

The European Union entered into an economic crisis in late 2009 that was sparked by bank bailouts and led to large, unsustainable, sovereign debt. The crisis was European in scale, but hit some countries in the Eurozone harder than others. Despite the plethora of writings devoted to the economic crisis in Europe, present understandings of how the political decisions would influence the integration project continue to remain vague. What does it actually mean to be European? Is Europe still a collection of peoples that rallied together during good times and then retreat to nationalism when challenges appear? Or has Europe adopted a common identity that would foster solidarity during hard times? This book provides its reader with a fresh perspective on the importance identity has on the functioning of the European Union as exemplified in Jurgen Habermas' seminal text, 'The Crisis of the European Union: A Response'. Rather than exploring the causes of the crisis, the contributors examine the current state of European identity to determine the likelihood of implementing Habermas' suggestions. The contributor's interdisciplinary approach is organized into four parts and examines the following key areas of concern: Habermas' arguments, placing them into their historical context. To which degree do Europeans share the ideals Habermas describes as crucial to his program of reform. Influence of Habermas' cosmopolitanism through religious and literary lenses. Impact of Habermas' notions in the arenas of education, national economies, austerity, and human rights. Jurgen Habermas and the European Economic Crisis will be read by scholars in the fields of Political Theory and Philosophy, European Politics and Cultural Studies.

Studies of the recent financial crisis have been largely dominated by economists, but the similarities and differences between European countries' response reflect both economic and political perspectives which have resulted in considerable differences in their decisions. Drawing on uniquely comprehensive research data, this book presents an in-depth comparative analysis of how 14 European governments tackled the challenge of fiscal consolidation, and analyses the political decision-making behind these measures. By exploring national responses not just in fiscal terms, but also from a political perspective, it reveals that decision making has been driven by political factors with profound effects on public administration and management. This ground-breaking book fills an important gap in the research literature for scholars of public management, public administration and policy, and will be a benchmark for future work on the global economic crisis.

The world economy fell into a global financial crisis in 2008/9 and is still jittered by its aftershocks. Like other financial crises happened in the world economy, it came as a surprise. In historical perspective, financial crises should be understood as a natural fact of life in the world economy and a more pertinent question that should be posed would be why people so easily forget and do not learn from the historical experience. This book deals with the question in two ways. First, it investigates the frame of mind that distances people from the reality of life. At the heart of it, it argues that there are wrong perceptions on the working of the world economy, in particular, the international financial market. It summarizes them as 'the five conventional wisdoms' in the international financial market and, by critically examining them, it draws on 'the five financial theorems', which would provide intellectual pillars for a more realistic understanding of the global financial market. Second, the book examines in detail the case of an emerging market economy that fell into a financial crisis twice in the recent decade. South Korea provides us with an interesting case of emerging market financial crises that came as 'surprises': it faced a financial crisis in 1997/98 after it had been acclaimed as one of 'East Asian miracle economies' and it was again befallen to a crisis during the global financial crisis in 2008/2009 after it was widely regarded as a country that had recovered from the crisis with one of the most successful implementations of the IMF-sponsored reforms. The book attempts to provide the readers with a realistic understanding of emerging market financial crises by interpreting the recent global financial crisis and the Korean crises with some general concepts manifested in 'the five financial theorems'. It also tries to draw more general implications for policy management of emerging market economies.

An incisive overview of the macroeconomics of financial crises—essential reading for students and policy experts alike With alarming frequency, modern economies go through macro-financial crashes that arise from the financial sector and spread to the broader economy, inflicting deep and prolonged recessions. A Crash Course on Crises brings together the latest cutting-edge economic research to identify the seeds of these crashes, reveal their triggers and consequences, and explain what policymakers can do about them. Each of the book’s ten self-contained chapters introduces readers to a key economic force and provides case studies that illustrate how that force was dominant. Markus Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis show how the run-up phase of a crisis often occurs in ways that are preventable but that may go unnoticed and discuss how debt contracts, banks, and a search for safety can act as triggers and amplifiers that drive the economy to crash. Brunnermeier and Reis then explain how monetary, fiscal, and exchange-rate policies can respond to crises and prevent them from becoming persistent. With case studies ranging from Chile in the 1970s to the COVID-19 pandemic, A Crash Course on Crises synthesizes a vast literature into ten simple, accessible ideas and illuminates these concepts using novel diagrams and a clear analytical framework.

What effects will the current economic crisis have on the long-term development of our societies? What does the future hold in store when we emerge from the crisis? These two questions lie at the heart of this important new book by the leading French sociologist Alain Touraine. In an era dominated by the global economy and the triumph of individualism, our society has broken away from the old model of integration in place since the industrial revolution. We no longer see ourselves as players in an economic system around which every aspect of society is ordered but rather as individuals with our own rights, capable of creating our own lives in a world in which cultural values prevail. The financial crisis and the growing autonomy of speculative and financial imperatives have exacerbated the rift between the economy and society and could push this long-term tendency in either of two directions. On the one hand, individuals who find themselves unemployed, impoverished and stripped of their savings may feel increasingly excluded and incapable of reacting politically, which would explain the silence of many victims of the crisis. On the other hand, individuals could also find themselves transformed into social actors who are defined increasingly in moral and universal terms, in which case the crisis could help to precipitate a long-term cultural evolution. We are facing a future as yet undecided, a future hovering between catastrophe and radical reform. This book explores the factors that could tip the balance.

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.

This new book by two distinguished Italian economists is a highly original contribution to our understanding of the origins and aftermath of the financial crisis. The authors show that the recent financial crisis cannot be understood simply as a malfunctioning in the subprime mortgage market: rather, it is rooted in a much more fundamental transformation, taking place over an extended time period, in the very nature of finance.The 'end' or purpose of finance is to be found in the social institutions by which the making and acceptance of promises of payment are made possible - that is, the creation and cancellation of debt contracts within a specified time frame. Amato and Fantacci argue that developments in the modern financial system by which debts are securitized has endangered this fundamental credit/debt structure. The illusion has been created that debts are universally liquid in the sense that they need not be redeemed but can be continually sold on in increasingly extensive global markets. What appears to have reduced the riskiness of default for individual agents has in fact increased the fragility of the system as a whole.The authors trace the origins of this profound transformation backwards in time, not just to the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 90s but to the birth of capitalist finance in the mercantile networks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This long historical perspective and deep analysis of the nature of finance enables the authors to tackle the challenges we face today in a fresh way - not simply by tinkering with existing mechanisms, but rather by asking the more profound question of how institutions might be devised in which finance could fulfil its essential functions.

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.

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.

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.

Translated by Ciaran Cronin.

The world is a state of turmoil. From the financial crisis to the chaos in the eurozone, from the Arab uprisings to protests in Athens, Barcelona, New York and elsewhere, many of the familiar frameworks are collapsing and we have to find new ways to orient ourselves in a world undergoing rapid change. Of course, it is necessary for political leaders to address local issues and react to people's specific demands, but without a cosmopolitan outlook, such a reaction is likely to be inadequate. Ulrich Beck's "Twenty-one Observations on a World in Turmoil" is a demonstration of cosmopolitan politics in practice. It is more than a mirror: it is a magnifying glass that brings into focus the processes that are transforming our world and highlights the great challenges we face today.'Global domestic politics', the concept introduced and developed by Beck, is much more than a political theory, a philosophical utopia (or dystopia), a governance programme or a mental state: it is the reality of our times. Beck turns the argument that 'global domestic politics' is an unrealistic ideology on its head, arguing that it is the proponents of the national who are the idealists. They view reality through the obsolete lenses of the nation-state and thus cannot see the profound global changes that are transforming our reality. Global domestic politics is therefore a perspective, a political reality and a normative idea. And it is the critical theory of our times since it challenges the most profound truths which we hold dear: the truths of the nation.

Organised civil society in Greece is generally regarded as weak with rankings for associational density, volunteerism and levels of social capital traditionally among the lowest in Europe. Austerity and the Third Sector in Greece explores the context behind the statistics and general perceptions of a society of takers, not givers. Stereotypes of a country living beyond its means have been exacerbated by the Eurozone crisis but, since 2008, there has in fact been a great proliferation of organised civil society initiatives in the country. Has the financial crisis seen a belated awakening of Greek civil society? Offering a broad overview of contemporary civil society in Greece this book explores how various characteristics of the country's socio-political context have affected the development of the third sector and examines the effect of the economic crisis on it. Expert contributors combine macro-level analyses with local case studies to form a fascinating new study on the influences of national and regional context on civil society development. Their findings provide not only for a better understanding of similar movements, but also contribute to wider academic debates on societal responses to economic crises.