Six Crises of the World Economy

“This book masterfully analyzes the last six crises of the global economy. It evidences that the crises are the most important phenomenon in economic life, and it highlights how crucial it is for economists to understand their causes and development. The book coherently combines a thoughtful theoretical analysis of crisis theory with a profound empirical analysis of their stubborn occurrence. Readers will be convinced of the relevance of the global economy as the righteous unit of economic analysis despite the dominance of the national economies.” —Sergio Cámara Izquierdo, Professor of Political Economy and Head of the Department of Economics, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco This book is about the crises of the world economy that have occurred from the 1970s to the present day. It makes the specific case that the global economy has experienced six crises during this 50-year period. Crises of the global economy are periods of substantial slowdown in world economic activity—as measured by investment, industrial production, trade, or unemployment—in which many national economies are technically in recession. To pose the existence of crises of the global economy implies that the world economy is a real entity with its own dynamics; it implies also that the usual approach that views national economies as the appropriate units of economic analysis has major limitations. The author provides data illustrating the global and regional manifestations of these crises of the world economy, elaborates on the concepts of world economy and economic crisis, and discusses the theories that have been used to explain them. The book shows how these recurrent global crises are discrete, countable phenomena, distinct states of an entity that can be appropriately referred to as the world or global economy, or world capitalism. José A. Tapia Granados is Professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, USA. He teaches courses on international political economy, political economy of climate change, and social development. Trained in medicine, public health, and economics, his work and research experiences include positions at the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan and the World Health Organization. His papers have appeared in PNAS, Journal of Health Economics, Demography, Research in Political Economy, and other journals.