Finance

Five years after the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the world has still not addressed the fundamental cause of the subsequent financial crisis – an excess of debt. And that is why economic recovery has progressed much more slowly than anyone expected (in some countries, it has not come at all).

What have we learned about the American political economy from the crisis and its aftermath?

What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?

Let Them Eat Credit: Has Financial Capitalism Failed the World?

Can China lead the way on innovation?

Every nation faces the challenge of imagining what a good life means. Sound nutrition, shelter, health care, personal safety, social stability, security of savings, clean air and water, and the development of children are among the elements of what many envision as vital to a happy and healthy society.

The global financial cycle has transformed the well-known trilemma into a ‘dilemma’. Independent monetary policies are possible if and only if the capital account is managed directly or indirectly. This column argues the right policies to deal with the ‘dilemma’ should aim at curbing excessive leverage and credit growth. A combination of macroprudential policies guided by aggressive stress‐testing and tougher leverage ratios are needed. Some capital controls may also be useful.

We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the Lehman crash in September 2008. How bad was it? Have we fixed the problems?

economists still conceive of law too narrowly, mainly as a means to reduce transaction costs and protect investors.

What does the bankruptcy of Detroit say about the US social contract?

The shortage of liquidity in the interbank market in China has sparked off a fear of “monetary famine.” This seems rather odd when the national savings rate is 50 per cent of GDP

Recent austerity policies have been guided by ideology rather than research. This column discusses research that reconciles disparate estimates of fiscal multipliers in the literature. It finds that common identification assumptions are problematic. Matching methods based on propensity scores show how contractionary austerity really is, especially in economies operating below potential.

Did the global economic collapse in 2008 stem from structural failures in the capitalist system?

“How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of$283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?

Is China is “too big to fail.”?