Collectively, mankind has never had it so good despite periodic economic crises of which the current sub-prime crisis is merely the latest example. Much of this success is attributable to the increasing efficiency of the world's financial institutions as finance has proved to be one of the most important causal factors in economic performance. In a series of insightful essays, financial and economic historians examine how financial innovations from the seventeenth century to the present have continually challenged established institutional arrangements, forcing change and adaptation by governments, financial intermediaries, and financial markets. Where these have been successful, wealth creation and growth have followed. When they failed, growth slowed and sometimes economic decline has followed. These essays illustrate the difficulties of co-ordinating financial innovations in order to sustain their benefits for the wider economy, a theme that will be of interest to policy makers as well as economic historians.

This book, Platinum Essays In The Philosophy Of Applied Economics Of Development, is a collection of interrelated and interconnected essays on applied economics of development with underlying philosophy contents. The topic and areas of coverage were carefully chosen to comprehensively reflect a mandatory range of issues, germane to the understanding, teaching, research, publication and practice of applied economics of development, particularly in medium-to low income emerging markets. There are twenty one chapters each with a topic of major developmental significance in applied economics. Based on the clear and lucid underlying philosophical statements, the broad scope of the applied definitions, analytical and descriptive review of relevant modern and dated literatures, germane to the discourse, observations, recommendations, conclusions and range of ease or otherwise of policy implementations, the key objectives of the book have been achieved.