Challenging the standard narrative of Interwar International History, this account establishes the causal relationship between the global political and economic crises of the period, and offers a radically new look at the role of ideology, racism and the leading liberal powers in the events between the First and Second World Wars.

Globalisation is here. This text provides an historical perspective, exploring the circumstances in which the globally integrated world of an earlier era broke down under the pressure of unexpected events.

Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The crisis also contributed decisively to the rise of Hitler. Within little more than a year of its onset, the Nazis were Germany's largest political party at both the regional and national level, paving the way for Hitler's eventual seizure of power in January 1933. The origins of the collapse lay in Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold-backed currencies, which condemned the German government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As political resistance to this policy of austerity grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default. Hitler managed to profit from the crisis because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime responsible for the lion's share of German debts. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate. The ruling parties that were responsible for the situation lost their credibility and became defenceless in the face of his onslaught against an establishment allegedly selling the country out to her foreign creditors. Meanwhile, these creditors hesitated too long to take the wind out of Hitler's sails by offering debt relief. In this way, a financial crisis soon developed into a political catastrophe for both Europe and the world.

The Global Great Depression and the Coming of World War II demonstrates the ways in which the economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s helped to cause and shape the course of the Second World War. Historian John E. Moser points to the essential uniformity in the way in which the world s industrialized and industrializing nations responded to the challenge of the Depression. Among these nations, there was a move away from legislative deliberation and toward executive authority; away from free trade and toward the creation of regional trading blocs; away from the international gold standard and toward managed national currencies; away from chaotic individual liberty and toward rational regimentation; in other words, away from classical liberalism and toward some combination of corporatism, nationalism, and militarism.For all the similarities, however, there was still a great divide between two different general approaches to the economic crisis. Those countries that enjoyed easy, unchallenged access to resources and markets the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France tended to turn inward, erecting tariff walls and promoting domestic recovery at the expense of the international order. On the other hand, those nations that lacked such access Germany and Japan sought to take the necessary resources and markets by force. The interplay of these powers, then, constituted the dynamic of international relations of the 1930s: have-nots attempting to achieve self-sufficiency through aggressive means, challenging haves that were too distrustful of one another, and too preoccupied with their own domestic affairs, to work cooperatively in an effort to stop them.

For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them?Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given.The heart of Rodrik>'s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.

This book is about national economic policy responses to the Great Depression of the interwar period. Taking off from a generally liberal starting point in the 1920s, states diverged greatly in their responses. Some were daring while others remained conservative. The two groups further differed among themselves in both degree and kind. The book gives a certain shape to this messy reality by identifying broad policy patterns (paradigms), and offers an explanation of it which emphasizes the ideational disposition of policy actors while recognizing the context that limits what they can do. More specifically, it argues that the ideas held by rulers and the strategies they consequently developed regarding three major groups of interest – business, labour, and, most critically, agrarians – largely determined economic policy variation across nations.

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.