Why has Argentina suffered so much political and economic instability? How could Argentina, once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, failed to meet its potential over decades? What lessons can we take from Argentina's successes and failures? Argentina’s economy is - irresistibly - fascinating. Argentina's economic history - its crises and its triumphs cannot be explained in purely economic terms. Argentina's economic history can only be explained in the context of conflicts of interest, of politics, war and peace, boom and bust. Argentina's economic history is also intertwined with ideological struggles over the ideal society and the on-going struggle of ideas. The book comprises two distinct components: an economic history of Argentina from the Spanish colonial period to 1990, followed by a narrative by Domingo Cavallo on the last 25 years of reform and counter reform. Domingo Cavallo has been at the centre of Argentina's economic and political debates for 40 years. He was one of the longest serving cabinet members since the return of democracy in 1983. He is uniquely qualified to help the reader make the connection between historical and current events through all these prisms. His daughter, Sonia Cavallo Runde, is an economist specialized on public policy that currently teaches the politics of development policy. The two Cavallos offer academics and students of economics and finance a long form case study. This book also seeks to offer researchers and policymakers around the world with relevant lessons and insights to similar problems from the Argentine experience.

Why do some states thrive, grow their economies and uplift their people, while others, facing similar challenges, slide into low growth, social dysfunction and failure? After decades of work on the ground in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, bestselling author Greg Mills seeks to provide answers in Rich State, Poor State. After decades of work on the ground in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, bestselling author Greg Mills seeks to provide answers in Rich State, Poor State. On each continent he traverses, Mills interrogates the how and why. How did Botswana go from being one of the least-developed and poorest nations at independence to enjoying the highest rate of per capita growth of any country in the world? Why has South Africa failed to attain similar heights? How did the Baltic states achieve reforms that have positioned them among the best-performing economies in Europe? How did Vietnam overcome a traumatic past in favour of a rapid and positive development transformation? Why is Mexico the only large developing economy that competes with China in manufacturing? Drawing from interviews with current and former presidents, prime ministers and key government officials across the globe, as well as research from leading institutions to enrich his fieldwork, Mills contrasts the successes and the failures, and in so doing, seeks to determine a path for the next generation of leaders.Insightful and inspiring, Rich State, Poor State shows that with better choices, the right policies and the will to implement them, it is entirely possible to travel the road from poverty to prosperity.

The Governance of Financialization in Latin America and East Asia analyses how states in these areas have adopted different monetary, financial, and foreign exchange policies to govern financialization, which have induced varying levels of state control over financial markets. The book analyzes the puzzling observation of policy divergence by investigating how countries have reacted differently to major financial crises since the 1970s. It shows how Argentina and Japan selected a governance approach to financialization that followed Western prescriptions by propelling unregulated financialization; but also how Chile and South Korea, by contrast, crafted policies to reduce the negative effects of financialization on economic development and financial stability. The book identifies variegated expertise in central banks, ministries of finance, expert commissions, and research institutions that has informed policymaking across Argentina, Chile, Japan, and South Korea since the 1970s. It then demonstrates how governments have used experts to achieve diverse political objectives and explains how governments can use experts to enhance state agency to counter globalization pressures. This book will appeal to scholars of International Political Economy, comparative politics, economics, sociology, development studies, and Latin American and East Asian history. It will also be of interest to economists and policymakers who want to safeguard financial stability and promote economic growth.

Shaken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and staggering after the COVID-19 pandemic, the global political order is entering a new era of volatile uncertainty that may roll back the gains of the last century. Open democracies, where opponents respect one another even as they contest for power, are under threat from the rising tide of populism. In this stark new world, political opponents are enemies to be destroyed by fake news, and independent institutions are being used as tools to perpetuate power. In societies as diverse as Argentina, the Philippines, Tanzania and Hungary, populists have taken power, promising to restore accountability to the people. But, once in office, they have sought to hollow out democracy and to demonise the opposition as they hold onto power and oversee the economic decline of their countries. In the Name of the People examines populism from its Latin American roots to liberation movements in Africa and the rise of a new European nationalism. At its most virulent, populism has destroyed democracies from the inside out, causing social instability, economic catastrophe and, in some cases, authoritarian repression. In other cases, such as in South Africa, populism is a rising threat as strong constitutional guarantees of democratic accountability come under fire. The authors analyse 13 countries across the globe to understand how populism is evolving into a threat to free and open societies, addressing questions such as: Where is populism taking us? Is there hope of a return to rational policy-making? Is the world doomed to descend into ever-greater conflict?

As countries recover from the coronavirus pandemic, they are confronted with an even more challenging debt crisis. Xavier Debrun argues in the foreword that in deciding where we go from here that there is no longer a consensus regarding the optimum design and enforcement of fiscal rules. Rather we must address a series of questions and challenges to the conventional wisdom. This book provides an opportunity for scholars to explore these questions from an international perspective, with reference to European countries, and emerging nations as well as the United States.

This book aims to define comparative economics and to illustrate the breadth and depth of its contribution. It starts with an historiography of the field, arguing for a continued legacy of comparative economic systems, which compared socialism and capitalism, a field which some argued should have been replaced by institutional economics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The process of transition to market capitalism is reviewed, and itself exemplifies a new combination of comparative analysis with a focus on institutional development. Going beyond, chapters broadening the application of comparative analysis and applying it to new issues and approaches, including the role and definition of institutions, subjective wellbeing, inequality, populism, demography, and novel methodologies. Overall, comparative economics has evolved in the past 30 years, and remains a powerful approach for analyzing important issues.

This volume provides a comprehensive study of Turkey’s financial transformation into one of the most dynamic, if not trouble-free, emerging capitalisms. While this financial evolution has underwritten Turkey’s dramatic economic growth, it has done so without ameliorating the persistently exploitative and unequal social structures that characterize neoliberalism today. This edited volume, written by an interdisciplinary range of political economists, critically examines Turkey’s financial transformation, contributing to debates on the nature of peripheral financialization. Eschewing economistic interpretations, The Political Economy of Financial Transformation in Turkey underscores both the quantitative significance of exponential growth in financial flows and investments, and the qualitative importance of the state’s institutional restructuring around financial imperatives. The book presents today’s reality as historically rooted. By understanding the choices made under the new Republic (from 1923 onwards), one can better locate the changes launched as a newly liberalizing society (since 1980). Likewise, the decisions made in response to Turkey’s 2001 financial crisis spurred a tectonic break in state–market–society financial relations. The waves of change have reached far and wide: from corporate strategies of accumulation and growth to small- and medium-sized enterprises’ strategies of financial survival; from how finance has penetrated the provisioning of housing to how households have become financialized. Put together, one grasps the complexity and historicity of the power of contemporary finance. One also sees that the changes made have not been class-neutral, but have entailed elevating the interests of major capital groups, particularly financial capital, above the interests of the poor and workers in Turkey. Nor are these changes constrained to its national borders, as what transpires domestically contributes to the making of a financialized world market. Through this ‘Made in Turkey’ approach the contributions in this volume thus challenge dominant understandings of financialization, which are derived from the advanced capitalisms, by sharing the specificity of emerging capitalisms such as Turkey.