Although the causes of the crisis are multifaceted, including a lack of financial market regulation, rising income inequality and global current account imbalances, the current policy debates are dominated by a narrow focus on the so-called public debt crisis in many countries. Judging by the quality of these debates, it would even seem that many politicians see the high public debt levels as the main cause of the crisis, when in fact they are largely a consequence of it. By contrast, the deeper origins of the crisis are still not being properly addressed. The contributions collected in the present book are united by the objective to analyse the issue of public debt in the larger context of macroeconomic and social imbalances.
Hansjörg Herr, Torsten Niechoj, Claus Thomasberger, Achim Truger & Till van Treeck
Introduction
I. From crisis to growth?
Amitava Krishna Dutt
Growth, distribution and crises
Mark Setterfield
Real sector imbalances and the Great Recession
Sebastian Dullien, Hansjörg Herr and Christian Kellermann
Towards a social and sustainable growth model
Philip Arestis & Elias Karakitsos
Economic policy implications of the 'Great Recession'
II. How to cope with economic imbalances
Randall Wray
Imbalances? What imbalances? A dissenting view
Claus Thomasberger
Economic imbalances, capitalism and democracy
Thomas Palley
Explaining global financial imbalances: A critique of the saving glut and reserve currency hypotheses
Paul Davidson
The Keynes solution for preventing global imbalances
III. Emerging economies and global imbalances
Xinhua Liu
FDI in China: A sovereign money perspective
André Moreira Cunha, Fernando Ferrari-Filho & Daniela Magalhäes Prates
Can the Brazilian countercyclical policies adopted in 2008-09 be considered Keynesian?
Sunanda Sen
Managing global financial flows at cost of national autonomy: China and India
IV. How to deal with public debt
Malcolm Sawyer
The contradictions of balanced structural government budgets
Catherine Mathieu & Henri Sterdyniak
Do we need fiscal rules?
Pedro Leäo
How to make discretionary fiscal policy counter-cyclical: A note
V. Macroeconomic imbalances and public debt in Europe
Jan Priewe
European imbalances and the crisis of the European Monetary Union
Gregor Semieniuk, Achim Truger & Till van Treeck
Towards reducing economic imbalances in the euro area? Some remarks on the Stability Programmes 2011-2014
Torsten Niechoj
Germany - best practice for the euro area? The Janus-faced character of current account surpluses
Jesus Ferreiro & Felipe Serrano
When the solution is part of the problem: The fiscal policy in Spain
Yannis Monogios
The 'Tax-gap' perspective of fiscal sustainability in the post-2008 crisis period in Greece
Julio Mota, Luis Lopes & Margarida Antunes
The Portuguese economy at the crossroads of the euro and globalization