At the end of World War II, experts on both sides of the Atlantic believed that France was doomed to economic stagnation. French culture and institutions, they argued, inhibited the changes in economic structure that sustained growth would require. But in spite of these predictions and the occasional volatility of the world economy, the French economy grew rapidly. Only the Japanese, of the major economies, has grown faster, and by 1975 the French standard of living matched that of West Germany. Restructuring the French Economy looks at the four decades of the structural changes that fostered growth and explores explanations of why such changes occurred. Drawing on many and diverse primary materials, including government statistics, judicial decisions, and professional memoirs, Adams examines three different explanations of France's postwar economic success. The first downplays the extent of structural change during the surge of growth. The second emphasizes the importance of government policies to compensate for inadequate private initiative. The third suggests that European economic integration and French decolonization created enough market competition to push the private sector into its own restructuring. Adams stresses that if government initiatives worked well, they did so in an environment of strong market competition; if competition seemed to work wonders, it occurred only as a result of government actions. He also devotes considerable attention to the implications of his findings for U.S. policy concerning European protectionism and the health and growth of American industries.

Actions taken by the United States and other countries during the Great Recession focused on restoring the viability of major financial institutions while guaranteeing debt and stimulating growth. Once the markets stabilized, the United States enacted regulatory reforms that ultimately left basic economic structures unchanged. At the same time, the political class pursued austerity measures to curb the growing national debt. Drawing on the economic theories of Keynes and Minsky and applying them to the modern evolution of American banking and finance, William K. Tabb offers a chilling prediction about future crises and the structural factors inhibiting true reform. Tabb follows the rise of banking practices and financial motives in America over the past thirty years and the simultaneous growth of a shadow industry of hedge funds, private equity firms, and financial innovations such as derivatives. He marks the shift from an American economy based primarily on the production of goods and nonfinancial services to one characterized by financialization, then shows how these developments, perspectives, and approaches not only contributed to the recent financial crisis but also prevented the enactment of effective regulatory reform. He incisively analyzes the damage that increasing unsustainable debt and excessive risk-taking has done to our financial system and expands his critique to a discussion of world systems and globalization. Revealing the willful blind spots of mainstream finance theory, Tabb moves beyond an economic model reliant on debt expansion and dangerous levels of leverage, proposing instead a social structure of accumulation that places economic justice over profit and, more practically, institutes an inclusive, sustainable model for growth.

State re-scaling is the central concept mobilized in this book to interpret the political processes that are producing new economic spaces in India. In the quarter century since economic reforms were introduced, the Indian economy has experienced strong growth accompanied by extensive sectoral and spatial restructuring. This book argues that in this reformed institutional context, where both state spaces and economic geographies are being rescaled, subnational states play an increasingly critical role in coordinating socioeconomic activities. The core thesis that the book defends is that the reform process has profoundly reconfigured the Indian state’s rapport with its territory at all spatial scales, and these processes of state spatial rescaling are crucial for comprehending emerging patterns of economic governance and growth. It demonstrates that the outcomes of India’s new policy regime are not only the product of impersonal market forces, but that they are also the result of endogenous political strategies, acting in conjunction with the territorial reorganisation of economic activities at various scales, ranging from local to global. Extensive empirical case material, primarily from field-based research, is used to support these theoretical assertions. Scholars of political economy, political and economic geography, industrial development, development studies and Asian Studies will find this a stimulating and innovative contribution to the study of the political economy in the developing countries.

In August 1999 a forty-six-year-old sheep farmer name José Bové was arrested for dismantling the construction site of a new McDonald's restaurant in the south of France. A few months later Bové built on his fame by smuggling huge chunks of Roquefort cheese into Seattle, where he was among the leaders of the antiglobalization protests against the World Trade Organization summit. Bové's crusade against globalization helped provoke a debate both within France and beyond about the pros and cons of a world in which financial, commercial, human, cultural, and technology flows move faster and more extensively than ever before. As the French struggle to preserve the country's identity, heritage, and distinctiveness, they are nonetheless adapting to a new economy and an interdependent world. This book deals with France's effort to adapt to globalization and its consequences for France's economy, cultural identity, domestic politics, and foreign relations. The authors begin by analyzing the structural transformation of the French economy, driven first by liberalization within the European Union and more recently by globalization. By examining a wide variety of possible measures of globalization and liberalization, the authors conclude that the French economy's adaptation has been far reaching and largely successful, even if French leaders prefer to downplay the extent of these changes in response to political pressures and public opinion. They call this adaptation "globalization by stealth." The authors also examine the relationship between trade, culture, and identity and explain why globalization has rendered the three inseparable. They show how globalization is contributing to the restructuring of the traditional French political spectrum and blurring the traditional differences between left and right. Finally, they explore France's effort to tame globalization—maîtriser la mondialisation—and the possible consequences and lessons of the French s

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.

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