This edited collection uses a history of economic thought perspective to explore the evolving role of Latin America within the context of globalization. In particular, it examines the region’s resilience in the face of the global financial crisis. Economic Development and Global Crisis explains that Latin America is a region with distinct characteristics and peculiarities which have been shaped from the colonial era up to the present day. The contributions suggest that several features which were perceived as economic backwardness have turned out to be advantageous, and this may explain why Latin America is withstanding the crisis much better than Europe, Japan and the USA. This book will be of interest to scholars working in the areas of economic development, economic history, the history of economic thought and Latin American studies.

The global credit crisis of 2008 2009 was the most serious shock to the world economy in fully 80 years. It was for the world as a whole what the Asian crisis of 1997 1998 was for emerging markets: a profoundly alarming wake-up call. By laying bare the fragility of global markets, it raised troubling questions about the operation of our deeply integrated world economy. It cast doubt on the efficacy of the dominant mode of light-touch financial regulation and more generally on the efficacy of the prevailing commitment to economic and financial liberalization. It challenged the managerial capacity of inherited institutions of global governance. And it augured a changing of the guard, pointing to the possibility that the economies that had been the leaders in the "global growth stakes" in the past might no longer be the leaders in the future. What the crisis means for reform, however, is still unclear. This book brings together leading scholars and policy analysts to describe and weigh the options. Successive chapters assess options for the global financial system, the global trading system, the international monetary system, and the Group of 20 and global governance. A final set of chapters contemplates the policy challenges for emerging markets and the advanced economies in the wake of the financial crisis.

This book offers a collaborative investigation of the policies and practices which have redeveloped local and national economies in the aftermath of the global economic crisis which erupted in 2008. It explores 'localised' models of economic development, including problems of diversity and balance and the role of firms, industries and clusters, alongside comparative studies of policy responses to the crisis at local, regional and national levels Global Economic Crisis and Local Economic Development seeks routes for economic development in a post-crisis world. The roles of innovation, entrepreneurship, knowledge infrastructures, public policies, business strategies and responses, as well as global contexts and positioning are explored as investigative themes which run throughout the collection as a whole. This text brings together a range of international disciplinary experts from economics, geography, history, business and management, politics and sociology. Its coverage is comparative and global, with contributions focusing on the U.S., Japan, China, and India, as well as European contexts and cases. This book is of value both for the intrinsic quality of its individual studies and for the contrasts and comparisons enabled by the collection when viewed as a whole. It has an accessible but rigorous style, making it ideal for a range of users including academics, researchers and students who study economic development and regional development.

DEMOCRACY UNDER STRESS focuses on the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its implications for democracy. Why and how did the crisis come about? Are there any instructive lessons to be drawn from comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s? What are the democratic response mechanisms to cope with serious crises? Do they work? Is China a new trend setter? Do values matter? Are global democratic rules a possibility? These are some of the key questions addressed in the volume.

Leading governments undertook extraordinary measures to offset the 2008 economic crisis, shoring up financial institutions, stimulating demand to reverse recession, and rebalancing budgets to alleviate sovereign debt. While productive in and of themselves, these solutions were effective because they were coordinated internationally and were matched with sweeping global financial reforms. Unfortunately, coordination has weakened after these initial steps, indicating one of the crisis's adverse effects will be a significant reduction in development cooperation. Urging advanced nations to improve their support for development, the contributors to this volume revisit the causes of the 2008 collapse and the ongoing effects of recession on global and developing economies. They reevaluate the international response to crisis and suggest more effective approaches to development cooperation. Experts on international aid join together to redesign the cooperation system and its governance, so it can accept new actors and better achieve the Millennial Development Goals of 2015 within the context of severe global crisis. In their introduction, José Antonio Alonso and José Antonio Ocampo summarize different chapters and the implications of their analyses, concluding with a frank assessment of global economic imbalance and the ability of increased cooperation to rectify these inequalities.

The world economy is currently in the throes of a global economic crisis reminiscent of the great depressions of the 1930s and the 1870s. As back then, the crisis has exposed the major structural imbalances in financial and credit markets in addition to global trade forcing many governments, developed and developing, to impose debilitating austerity measures that are exacerbating the structural weaknesses that caused the crisis in the first place. This volume offers historical insights into the origins of the contemporary crisis as well as detailed analyses of the financial and trade dimensions, an assessment of the technological and innovation context along with perspectives on the implications for unemployment and gender imbalances.