The global financial crisis in 2008 brought central banking to the centre stage, prompting questions about the role of national central banks and - in Europe - of the multi-country European Central Bank. What can central banks do, and what are their limitations? How have they performed? Currency, Credit and Crisis seeks to provide a coherent perspective on the functions of a central bank in a small country by assessing the way in which Ireland's financial crisis from 2010 to 2013 was handl...

The world’s central banks have confronted crisis after crisis in recent years—both before and since the global financial crisis. Yet many of these events seem to take central banks by surprise, obliging them to improvise. In this important study, Patrick Honohan, former governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, calls on central banks to make preparation for crisis management a core activity. They should be ready to deal with the unexpected. Departing from the rather sedate mode of operation...

Faced with a systemic financial sector crisis, policymakers need to make difficult choices under pressure. Based on the experience of many countries in recent years, few have been able to achieve a speedy, lasting and low-cost resolution. This volume considers the strengths and weaknesses of the various policy options, covering both microeconomic (including recapitalization of banks, bank closures, subsidies for distressed borrowers, capital adequacy rules and corporate governance and bank...

Having stagnated for decades in the shadow of the UK, the Irish economy's performance improved after it joined the European Union (EEC) in 1973. This Element shows how the challenge of EU membership gave focus and direction to Irish economic policy. No longer dependent on low value-added agricultural exports to Britain, within the EU Ireland became a hub for multinational corporations in IT and pharmaceutical products. This export success required and facilitated a strengthening of educati...

21st Century Monetary Policy takes readers inside the Federal Reserve, explaining what it does and why.In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased trillions of dollars of government securities, pumped dollars into the international fina...

We all want to help. Over the past fifty years $1 trillion of aid has flowed from Western governments to Africa, with rock stars and actors campaigning for more. But this has not helped Africa. It has ruined it.Dambisa Moyo's excoriating and controversial book reveals why millions are actually poorer because of aid, unable to escape corruption and reduced, in the West's eyes, to a childlike state of beggary.Dead Aid shows us another way. Using hard...

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.Rajan shows how the individual choi...

Politicians, financiers and bureaucrats claim to believe in free competitive markets, yet they have built the most unfree market system ever created. In this Gilded Age, income is funnelled to the owners of property – financial, physical and intellectual – at the expense of society. Wages stagnate as labour markets are transformed by outsourcing, automation and the on-demand economy, generating more rental income while broadening the precariat.Now fully updated with an introduction...

In this myth-busting book Nouriel Roubini shows that everything we think about economics is wrong. Financial crises are not unpredictable 'black swans', but an inherent part of capitalism. Only by remaking our financial systems to acknowledge this, can we get out of the mess we're in.Will there be another recession, and if so what shape? When will the next bubble occur? What can we do about it? Here Roubini gives the answers, and lists his commandments for the future.

According to leading economist Ann Pettifor, one of the few people to predict the 2008 financial crisis, money is not a commodity but a promise. This radical reconsideration of the power of money means that we can reimagine the way the economy works.The Production of Money also examines popular alternative debates on, and innovations in, money, such as "green QE" and "helicopter money." She sets out the possibility of linking the money in our pockets (or on our smartphones...

In a time of rapid change in the world economy, this fascinating, concise, and user-friendly primer is the most reliable tool for keeping track of what's happening.What is the new economy? What is globalization? Is the euro the final seal on European Union? How is e-commerce transforming our world beyond economics? What is virtual money, and does it have real value? How do social concerns and societal ills (drugs, poverty, AIDS, endangered natural resources) play a...

From how the current crisis happened to the role of banks to how money works, this book addresses complex ideas in an easy to understand Q&A format with lively prose. With examples throughout from personal finance issues such as how to negotiate the best price for a car, and should you buy a warranty for a new computer, to big picture questions that affect our national and global economy such as: What is deflation and inflation? How does monetary policy really work? How does a corporation ...