The economy of any nation is an intricate web of relationships among the factors determining supply and demand--and everything that affects them, from inflation to taxes to the stock market. The study of business cycles attempts to explain why economies grow and contract, experiencing periods of prosperity and pain. Consistent with the popular conception of economics as the dismal science, economists secretly long for recessions (periods of negative growth) and depressions (severe contractions), not because they enjoy their devastating impact on human welfare, but because these downturns serve as excellent laboratories for observing what happens when markets break down. Despite over two centuries of debate, no one has yet definitively unlocked the secrets of economic downturns and how they might be prevented. In Recessions and Depressions Todd Knoop traces the evolution of business cycle theory, from the classical model, which preceded the Great Depression, through the ground-breaking ideas of John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and their followers. He examines the strengths and limitations of each approach, in terms of explaining the impact of such factors as government policy, money supply, labor productivity, and wages. In the process, he presents an accessible introduction to what makes the economy tick, and offers new insights into understanding such historic events as the Great Depression, as well as more recent ones, such as the Asian meltdown in the 1990s, the financial crises in Latin America, and the U.S. recession of 2001, from which the United States is still recovering. Knoop reminds us that economists' track record in forecasting business cycles leaves much to be desired, and the quest to fully understand what causes economic downturns--and their effects on individuals and families--continues.

This book examines the array of financial crises, slumps, depressions and recessions that happened around the globe during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It covers events including World War I, hyperinflation and market crashes in the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, stagflation of the 1970s, the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, the post-socialist transitions in Central Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, and the great financial crisis of 2008-09. In addition to providing wide geographic and historical coverage of episodes of crisis in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia, the book clarifies basic concepts in the area of recession economics, analysis of high inflation, debt crises, political cycles and international political economy. An understanding of these concepts is needed to comprehend big recessions and slumps that often lead to both political change and the reassessment of prevailing economic paradigms.

Presents the empirical data of business cycles and the theories that economists have developed to explain and prevent them, and considers case studies of recessions and depressions in the United States and internationally. Despite more than two centuries of debate, a definitive explanation of the causes of economic cycles still does not exist. Economists, politicians, and policymakers have argued many well-known theories as to why these peaks and slumps occur, and cyclical recessions and depressions continue in spite of the enormous intellectual reserves working to prevent them. This timely analysis presents a comprehensive overview of global economics, assessing older theories alongside of new ways of thinking to reveal the empirical methods needed to evaluate, forecast, and prevent future crises. Educator and economist Todd Knoop provides explanations of influential macroeconomic theories that have shaped modern economics, such as Keynesian economics, Neoclassical economics, Austrian economics, and New Keynesian economics. In addition, he considers case studies of specific recessions and depressions, beginning with the Great Depression through the East Asian crisis and Great Recession in Japan and culminating with a detailed examination of the European debt crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. The work concludes with a look at the insights gained from these fiscal events as well as the major questions that still remain unanswered as a result of these crises.

The author of "The Age of Diminished Expectations" returns with a sobering tour of the global economic crises of the last two years.

Experts define, review, and evaluate economic fluctuations Economic and business uncertainty dominate today's economic analyses. This new Encyclopedia illuminates the subject by offering 323 original articles on every major aspect of business cycles, fluctuations, financial crises, recessions, and depressions. The work of more than 200 experts, including many of the leading researchers in the field, the articles cover a broad range of subjects, including capsule biographies of leading economists born before 1920. Individual entries explore banking panics, the cobweb cycle, consumer durables, the depression of 1937-1938, Otto Eckstein, Friedrich Engels, experimental price bubbles, forced savings, lass-Steagall Act, Friedrich hagen, qualitative indicators, use of macro-econometric models, monetary neutrality, Phillips Curve, Paul Samuelson, Say's law, supply-side recessions, James Tokin, trend and random wages, Thorstein Veblen, worker-job turnover, and more.

"By the publisher of the prestigious Grant's Interest Rate Observer, an account of the deep economic slump of 1920-21 that proposes, with respect to federal intervention, "less is more." This is a free-market rejoinder to the Keynesian stimulus applied by Bush and Obama to the 2007-09 recession, in whose aftereffects, Grant asserts, the nation still toils. James Grant tells the story of America's last governmentally-untreated depression; relatively brief and self-correcting, it gave way to the Roaring Twenties. His book appears in the fifth year of a lackluster recovery from the overmedicated downturn of 2007-2009. In 1920-21, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most twenty-first century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No "stimulus" was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late in 1921. In 1929, the economy once again slumped--and kept right on slumping as the Hoover administration adopted the very policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place. Grant argues that well-intended federal intervention, notably the White House-led campaign to prop up industrial wages, helped to turn a bad recession into America's worst depression. He offers the experience of the earlier depression for lessons for today and the future. This is a powerful response to the prevailing notion of how to fight recession. The enterprise system is more resilient than even its friends give it credit for being, Grant demonstrates"--