Financial Crises and Recession in the Global Economy

This new edition of Financial Crises and Recession in the Global Economy explores the major financial instabilities and evolutionary trends in the global economy since the 1970s. Financial globalization has produced an expanded money-credit pyramid, increased the risk of crisis, and created and transferred wealth from periphery to core regions. This book presents some new thinking, which explains the continuing occurrence of large-scale financial crises. Roy E. Allen examines how key financial variables are driven more by psychological and social constructs than is commonly understood and that money and wealth can be created, transferred and destroyed across the global economy independently of the rest of the 'real' economy. This new structural relationship between money and the real economy is associated with financial globalization-including, especially, new technologies and governmental deregulation in the 'explosive 1980s'. A new political economy of financial crisis and a human ecology economics framework are advanced to guide research and policymaking in the future. This learned but accessible book is meant for a broad audience of academics and practitioners, and has been used as a supplementary textbook for courses in international economics, international finance, money and banking, and macroeconomics.