This book provides a sweeping, up-to-date, and boldly critical account of the financial crises that rocked East Asia and other parts of the world beginning with the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997. Retracing the story of Asia's "Crisis Five"--Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand--Padma Desai argues that the region's imprudently fast-paced opening to the free flow of capital was pushed by determined advocates, official and private, in the global economy's U.S.-led developed center. Turmoil ensued in these peripheral economies, the Russian ruble faltered, and Brazil was eventually hit. The inequitable center-periphery relationship also extended to the policy measures that the crisis-swept economies implemented under International Monetary Fund bailouts, which intensified the downturns induced by the panic-driven outflows of short-term capital. Financial Crisis, Contagion, and Containment examines crisis origin and resolution in a comparative perspective by combing empirical evidence from the most robust economies to the least. Why is the U.S. relatively successful at weathering economic ups and downs? Why is Japan stuck in policy paralysis? Why is the European Central Bank unable to achieve both inflation control and stable growth? How can emerging markets avoid turbulence amid free-flowing speculative capital from private lenders of the developed center? Engaging and nontechnical yet deeply insightful, this book appears at a time when the continuing turmoil in Argentina has revived policy debates for avoiding and addressing financial crises in emerging market economies.

This book examines the factors leading to America's recent recession, describing the monetary policy, tax practices, subprime mortgages and lack of regulation that contributed to the crisis. The book also considers the the prospects for economic recovery in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America as well as the extent of U.S. and EU regulatory proposals.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Contents: (1) Recent Developments and Analysis; (2) The Global Financial Crisis and U.S. Interests: Policy; Four Phases of the Global Financial Crisis; (3) New Challenges and Policy in Managing Financial Risk; (4) Origins, Contagion, and Risk; (5) Effects on Emerging Markets: Latin America; Russia and the Financial Crisis; (6) Effects on Europe and The European Response: The ¿European Framework for Action¿; The British Rescue Plan; Collapse of Iceland¿s Banking Sector; (7) Impact on Asia and the Asian Response: Asian Reserves and Their Impact; National Responses; (8) International Policy Issues: Bretton Woods II; G-20 Meetings; The International Monetary Fund; Changes in U.S. Reg¿s. and Regulatory Structure; (9) Legislation.

A week before the outbreak of the First World War, an acute financial crisis surged over London: the Stock Exchange closed; money markets worldwide were paralysed. Drawing on diaries, letters, memoirs, press reports, and official archives, this book tells the extraordinary, and largely unknown, story of the first true global financial crisis.

This book on financial crises is written at a time when the whole world is facing another crisis, a different one this time; one that is related to our health, as well as the economy in a painful manner. The first chapter of this book focuses on the economic effects of this crisis with particular emphasis on the financial sector. The remainder of the book presents a selection of readings related to the GFC. These touch upon issues such as corporate governance; the effect of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers on the net-worth of financial and non-financial firms; securitization and why the alchemy “did not work”; and finally, a case-study on Turkey and in particular the Turkish short-term interest rates and exchange rates and their relationship to political developments.

Nowadays remembered mostly through Adam Smith’s references to the short-lived Ayr Bank in the Wealth of Nations, the 1772-3 financial crisis was an important historical episode in its own right, taking place during a pivotal period in the development of financial capitalism and coinciding with the start of the traditional industrialisation narrative. It was also one of the earliest purely financial crises occurring in peacetime, and its progress showed an impressive geographical reach, involving England, Scotland, the Netherlands and the North American colonies. This book uses a variety of previously unpublished archival sources to question the bubble narrative usually associated with this crisis, and to identify the mechanisms of financial contagion that allowed the failure of a small private bank in London to cause rapid and severe distress throughout the 18th century financial system. It re-examines the short and turbulent career of the Ayr Bank, and concludes that its failure was the result of cavalier liability management akin to that of Northern Rock in 2007, rather than the poor asset quality alleged in existing literature. It furthermore argues that the Bank of England’s prompt efforts to contain the crisis are evidence of a Lender of Last Resort in action, some thirty years before the classical formulation of the concept by Henry Thornton.

An incisive guide that helps up-and-coming economists become successful scholars The Economist's Craft introduces graduate students and rising scholars to the essentials of research, writing, and other critical skills for a successful career in economics. Michael Weisbach enables you to become more effective at communicating your ideas, emphasizing the importance of choosing topics that will have a lasting impact. He explains how to write clearly and compellingly, present and publish your findings, navigate the job market, and more. Walking readers through each stage of a research project, Weisbach demonstrates how to develop research around a theme so that the value from a body of work is more than the sum of its individual papers. He discusses how to structure each section of an academic article and describes the steps that follow the completion of an initial draft, from presenting and revising to circulating and eventually publishing. Weisbach reveals how to get the most out of graduate school, how the journal review process works, how universities decide promotions and tenure, and how to manage your career and continue to seek out rewarding new opportunities. A how-to guide for the aspiring economist, The Economist's Craft covers a host of important issues rarely taught in the graduate classroom, providing readers with the tools and insights they need to succeed as professional scholars.

Containment measures are crucial to halt the spread of the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic but entail large short-term economic costs. This paper tries to quantify these effects using daily global data on real-time containment measures and indicators of economic activity such as Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) emissions, flights, energy consumption, maritime trade, and mobility indices. Results suggest that containment measures have had, on average, a very large impact on economic activity--equivalent to a loss of about 15 percent in industrial production over a 30-day period following their implementation. Using novel data on fiscal and monetary policy measures used in response to the crisis, we find that these policy measures were effective in mitigating some of these economic costs. We also find that while workplace closures and stay-at-home orders are more effective in curbing infections, they are associated with the largest economic costs. Finally, while easing of containment measures has led to a pickup in economic activity, the effect has been lower (in absolute value) than that from the tightening of measures.

From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, bold new ideas for creating environments that promise a brighter future Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. It reveals how our environments encourage smoking, bullying, tax cheating, sexual predation, problem drinking, and wasteful energy use. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet—mainly because that's what friends and neighbors do. In the wake of the hottest years on record, only robust measures to curb greenhouse gases promise relief from more frequent and intense storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. Robert Frank describes how the strongest predictor of our willingness to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. In the face of stakes that could not be higher, the book explains how we could redirect trillions of dollars annually in support of carbon-free energy sources, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. Most of us would agree that we need to take responsibility for our own choices, but with more supportive social environments, each of us is more likely to make choices that benefit everyone. Under the Influence shows how.