After the Great Recession
The Struggle for Economic Recovery and Growth

A collection of essays about the US Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and the subsequent stagnation from prominent scholars.

Barry Z. Cynamon (Edited by), Steven Fazzari (Edited by), Mark Setterfield (Edited by), Robert Kuttner (Foreword by)

9781107015890, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 November 2012

354 pages, 19 b/w illus. 15 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.6 kg

'This is the definitive statement from the fragile financial sector wing of post-Keynesian economists as to why we should be deeply pessimistic about where the economy is and where it is likely to remain.' Eugene Smolensky, University of California, Berkeley

The severity of the Great Recession and the subsequent stagnation caught many economists by surprise. But a group of Keynesian scholars warned for some years that strong forces were leading the US toward a deep, persistent downturn. This book collects essays about these events from prominent macroeconomists who developed a perspective that predicted the broad outline and many specific aspects of the crisis. From this point of view, the recovery of employment and revival of strong growth requires more than short-term monetary easing and temporary fiscal stimulus. Economists and policy makers need to explore how the process of demand formation failed after 2007 and where demand will come from going forward. Successive chapters address the sources and dynamics of demand, the distribution and growth of wages, the structure of finance and challenges from globalization, and inform recommendations for monetary and fiscal policies to achieve a more efficient and equitable society.

Part I. Introduction and Overview: 1. Understanding the great recession Barry Z. Cynamon, Steven M. Fazzari and Mark Setterfield
2. America's exhausted paradigm: macroeconomic causes of the financial crisis and great recession Thomas I. Palley
Part II. Emergence of Financial Instability: 3. Minsky's money manager capitalism: assessment and reform L. Randall Wray
4. Trying to serve two masters: the dilemma of financial regulation Jan Kregel
5. How bonus-driven 'rainmaker' financial firms enrich top employees, destroy shareholder value, and create systemic financial instability James Crotty
Part III. Household Spending and Debt: Source of Past Growth-Seeds of Recent Collapse: 6. The end of the consumer age Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari
7. Wages, demand and US macroeconomic travails: diagnosis and prognosis Mark Setterfield
Part IV. Global Dimensions of US Crisis: 8. Global imbalances and US trade in the great recession and its aftermath Robert Blecker
Part V. Economic Policy after the Great Recession: 9. Confronting the Kindleberger moment: credit, fiscal, and regulatory policy to avoid economic disaster Gerald Epstein
10. Fiscal policy: the recent record and lessons for the future Dean Baker
11. No need to panic about US government deficits Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari
12. Fiscal policy for the great recession and beyond Pavlina Tcherneva
Part VI. The Way Forward: 13. Demand, finance, and uncertainty beyond the great recession Barry Z. Cynamon, Steven M. Fazzari and Mark Setterfield.

Subject Areas: International business [KJK], Political economy [KCP], Macroeconomics [KCB]