Although three years have passed since the onset of the deepest recession from 1929, the most world economies are still fragile, the slipping into another recession being imminent for many of them. “It is a sin to waste a crisis” without learning something of the causes that generated it, said Nouriel Roubini, but this time the problems facing the economic science are related even to the own co...

This paper investigates whether leaving school in a bad economy deteriorates health in the long run. It focuses on low-educated individuals in England and Wales who entered the labour market immediately after the 1973 oil crisis. Our identification strategy relies on the comparison of individuals who left school at the compulsory age, were born in the same year and had a similar quantity of edu...

This article examines the strategies, successes and failures of economic development in Latin America since 1870. We divide the analysis into four key development phases: primary export-led growth (1870–1929), import substitution industrialisation (1945–82), debt crisis (1980s) and the Washington Consensus (1990s). We demonstrate progress on many fronts, but underscore two key challenges for th...

The current financial and economic crisis is the worst since the stock-market crash of 1929. As with every complex phenomenon, a mixture of causes have been put forward: the housing-market bubble, risky mortgage loans, ‘toxic’ financial products, high personal and corporate debts, inaccurate credit ratings, and much more. The shockwaves have spread so rapidly and hit so hard that entire banking...

or insolvent. Such crises have recurred throughout the history of capitalism. A collapse in investor confidence, usually after a period of market euphoria, marks such crises—examples include the Dutch tulip mania crisis of 1637–38, the Indian cotton futures market crash of 1866, and the Great Depression of 1929. When foreign lenders are involved, cross-border payments problems arise as well. Th...