The Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises

The Great Financial Crisis that began in 2007-2008 reminds us with devastating force that financial instability and crises are endemic to capitalist economies that lack powerful and dynamically changing financial regulations that can keep the powerful forces of leverage and credit within sustainable bounds. Economists from Marx to Keynes, and Minsky to Kindleberger have understood this profoundly important fact, yet the dominant mainstream economics of “rational expectations,” “efficient markets,” and “laissez-faire” that rationalized widespread financial liberalization and still dominates the economics profession has gotten it wrong. The Handbook of The Political Economy of Financial Crises describes the theoretical, institutional, and historical factors that can help us understand the forces that create financial crises

Order the book from Oxford University Press here.

_____________________________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Gerald A. Epstein and Martin H. Wolfson

PART I: THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS: U.S. DYNAMICS AND EFFECTS

2. The Origins of the U.S. Financial Crisis of 2007: How a House Price Bubble, a Credit Bubble, and Regulatory Failure Caused the Greatest Economic Disaster Since the Great Depression.
Marc Jarsulic

3. Speculation and Asset Bubbles
Dean Baker

4. The Great Recession’s Impact on Jobs, Wages, and Incomes
Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz

5. Distribution and Crisis: Reviewing Some of the Linkages
Arjun Jayadev

6. Housing Markets and Foreclosures
Rachel Drew and Christian Weller

PART II: THEORETICAL APPROACHES FOR UNDERSTANDING FINANCIAL CRISES

7. The Realism of Assumptions Does Matter: Why Keynes-Minsky Theory Must Replace Efficient Market Theory as the Guide to Financial Regulation Policy
James Crotty

8. Political Economy Approaches to Financial Crisis: Hyman Minsky’s Financial Fragility Hypothesis
Jan Kregel

9. An Institutional Theory of Financial Crises
Martin H. Wolfson

10. The Anatomy of Financial and Economic Crisis
Duncan K. Foley

PART III: THE GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF FINANCIAL CRISES

11. The Economic and Financial Crisis of 2008-2010: The International Dimension
Ajit Singh

12. Global Imbalances and the International Monetary System: Problems and Proposals
Jane D’Arista and Korkut Erturk

13. How the Full Opening of the Capital Account to Highly Liquid and Unstable Financial Markets Led Latin America to Two and a Half Cycles of ‘Mania, Panic and Crash’
Jose Gabriel Palma

14. Financial and Currency Crises in Latin America
Mario Damill, Roberto Frenkel and Martin Rapetti

15. The Asian Financial Crisis, Financial Restructuring and the Problem of Contagion
C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

16. Speculation and Sovereign Debt – An Insidious Interaction
Gerald Epstein and Pierre Habbard

17. Whither the Euro? History and Crisis of Europe’s Single-Currency Project
Robert Guttmann and Dominique Plihon

18. The Eurozone Crisis through the Prism of World Money
Costas Lapavitsas

PART IV: THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FINANCIAL CRISES

19. Changes in the Postwar Global Economy and the Roots of the Financial Crisis
David M. Kotz

20. Bank Lending and the Subprime Crisis
Gary Dymski

21. Deregulation and the New Financial Architecture
Damon Silvers

22. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Banking
Jennifer S. Taub

23. Derivatives in the Crisis and Financial Reform
Michael Greenberger

24. From Innovation to Financialization: How Shareholder Value Ideology is Destroying the US Economy
William Lazonick

25. Financialization and the Global Economy
Engelbert Stockhammer

26. The International Spread of Financialization
William K. Tabb

PART V: POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE TO LIMIT FINANCIAL CRISES

27. International and Regional Cooperation for Dealing with Financial Crises
Jose Antonio Ocampo

28. Productive Incoherence in a Time of Crisis: The IMF and the Resurrection of Capital Controls
Ilene Grabel

29. The Japanese Boom and Bust: “Lean” and “Clean” Lessons
Robert McCauley

30. The Role of the Federal Reserve: Lender of Last Resort
Chris Rude

31. Monetary Policy and Central Banking after the Crisis: The Implications of Rethinking Macroeconomic Theory
Thomas I. Palley

32. The Bailout of the “Too Big to Fail” Banks: Never Again
Fred Moseley

33. The Savings and Loan Crisis and Bailout: Lessons for Policy
Dorene Isenberg

34. Pension Policies to Minimize Future Economic Crises
Teresa Ghilarducci

35. A Minskian Road to Financial Reform
Randall Wray

36. The Global Financial Crisis and Africa: The Effects and Policy Responses
Zuzana Brixiova and Leonce Ndikumana

37. Beyond Capitalism?
Minqi Li