Different frameworks of analysis lead to different conceptions of financial instability and financial fragility. On one side, the static approach conceptualizes financial instability as an unfortunate by-product of capitalism that results from unpredictable random forces that no one can do...

This paper looks at the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), where economies have been most dramatically hit by the global crisis and its impact is likely to be most long-lasting, especially among poor and vulnerable groups. Using...

The process of constructing impulse-response functions (IRFs) and forecast-error variance decompositions (FEVDs) for a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) usually involves a factorization of an estimate of the error-term variance-covariance matrix V. Examining residuals from a monetary VAR,...

The recycling problem is general, and is not confined to a multicurrency setting: whenever there are surplus and deficit units — that is, everywhere — adjustment in real terms can be either upward or downward. The question is, Which? An attempt is made to formulate the problem in terms of...

The 2008 global financial crisis was the consequence of the process (1) of financialization, or the creation of massive fictitious financial wealth, that began in the 1980s; and (2) the hegemony of a reactionary ideology — namely, neoliberalism — based on self-regulated and efficient...

The current financial crisis has been characterized as a “Minsky” moment, and as such provides the conditions required for a reregulation of the financial system similar to that of the New Deal banking reforms of the 1930s. However, Minsky's theory was not one that dealt in moments but...

While most economists agree that the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, there is little agreement as to what caused it. Some have argued that the financial instability we are witnessing is due to irrational exuberance of market participants, fraud, greed, too...

The extension of the subprime mortgage crisis to a global financial meltdown led to calls for fundamental reregulation of the U.S. financial system. However, that reregulation has been slow in implementation and the proposals under discussion are far from fundamental. One explanation for this...

This paper extends the famous Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973) discrimination in several directions. First, the wage difference breakdown is not limited to two groups.Second, a decomposition technique is proposed that allows analysis of the determinants of the overall wage dispersion. The...