This fascinating and ambitious book proposes a new strategy ("the Ramo Plan") to tackle the current global socioeconomic crisis. Issuing a direct challenge to the status quo, the author lays out a bold set of policies to overcome the West-East divide and lead us to a more successful and secure future. Alongside the presentation of a new economic approach, this book provides a thorough survey of the major forces behind the decline in economic growth rates. It examines the state of the major world economies, explores the impact of the global debt crisis, identifies the income and wealth gaps in the United States and other countries, and explains the relationship between these issues and the spread of alienation, radicalism and terrorism. Imaginative and refreshing, this is valuable and original reading for students and academics interested in international political economy, economic development, sustainable development, and social economics, as well as global policy, area studies, globalization studies, and international relations.

The papers presented here were first given at the International Conference of Economists at the University of Zagreb in Yugoslavia. The book contains a rare selection of divergent theoretical and practical views on the acute problem of international debt and its repercussions on world economic growth at large and the developing countries in particular.

During 2008-2009, the world experienced its worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The crisis followed the effects of the food and fuel price hikes in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, global output contracted by 2 per cent. This 2011 Report on the World Social Situation reviews the ongoing adverse social consequences of these crises after an overview of its causes and transmission.

Tackle the Third Worlds' debt problems.

During the past four years, the countries of the European periphery – the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – have been experiencing an economic-financial crisis that can only be compared to the Great Depression. To solve the crisis, the EU and the IMF instituted bailout programs for the debit countries on conditions of austerity and structural reforms. In this volume 20 social scientists, using both theoretical and empirical tools, delve into the causes and the social impacts of this crisis. The volume also provides an excellent background for a better comprehension of the dynamics of structural and political changes now taking place within the European Union. The social impacts cover a range of consequences, including poverty, unemployment, anti-migrant attitudes, a decline of welfare and health indicators, post-traumatic stress disorders, national humiliation, political alienation and social protest. The authors analyse the “international” and the “domestic” causes of the crisis, while some of them underline the importance of both factors. In the concluding chapter, the editors undertake a synthesis of the previous chapters, and extract a number of policy recommendations that – if adopted – could transform the current financial crisis into a growth-opportunity for the European Union and its member states.

This paper explores the impact of high public debt on long-run economic growth. The analysis, based on a panel of advanced and emerging economies over almost four decades, takes into account a broad range of determinants of growth as well as various estimation issues including reverse causality and endogeneity. In addition, threshold effects, nonlinearities, and differences between advanced and emerging market economies are examined. The empirical results suggest an inverse relationship between initial debt and subsequent growth, controlling for other determinants of growth: on average, a 10 percentage point increase in the initial debt-to-GDP ratio is associated with a slowdown in annual real per capita GDP growth of around 0.2 percentage points per year, with the impact being somewhat smaller in advanced economies. There is some evidence of nonlinearity with higher levels of initial debt having a proportionately larger negative effect on subsequent growth. Analysis of the components of growth suggests that the adverse effect largely reflects a slowdown in labor productivity growth mainly due to reduced investment and slower growth of capital stock.

This book collects selected articles addressing several currently debated issues in the field of international macroeconomics. They focus on the role of the central banks in the debate on how to come to terms with the long-term decline in productivity growth, insufficient aggregate demand, high economic uncertainty and growing inequalities following the global financial crisis. Central banks are of considerable importance in this debate since understanding the sluggishness of the recovery process as well as its implications for the natural interest rate are key to assessing output gaps and the monetary policy stance. The authors argue that a more dynamic domestic and external aggregate demand helps to raise the inflation rate, easing the constraint deriving from the zero lower bound and allowing monetary policy to depart from its current ultra-accommodative position. Beyond macroeconomic factors, the book also discusses a supportive financial environment as a precondition for the rebound of global economic activity, stressing that understanding capital flows is a prerequisite for economic-policy decisions.