Six Crises of the World Economy : Globalization and Economic Turbulence From the 1970s to the COVID-19 Pandemic

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. Contents Preface Abbreviations List of Figures List of Tables 1 Introduction 2 Evidence of Six Crises Capital Formation and Output of the Global Economy Consumption Unemployment Monetary Aggregates Economic Activity as Measured by a Chemical Index Profitability Stylized Facts How Many Crisis years and How Many Crises? 3 Globalization, National Economies, and Global Crises From World War II to the “First Oil Crisis” of the Mid-1970s The “Second Oil Crisis” of the Early 1980s The Crisis of the Early 1990s and the Demise of the Soviet Bloc and the USSR The Crisis of the Turn of the Century The Great Recession and the 2010s The International Synchronization of Business Cycles The Demographic Globalization 4 Conceptual Issues—Depressions, Recessions, Crisis Cycles, Business Cycles Marx and Engels The Marxists and the NBER Mainstream Economics—Keynesians and Monetarists 5 A World Economy The World Economy as a Historical Notion The Management of the World Economy in the Twenty-First Century 6 Why Do Crises Occur? Causal Theories Say’s Law and the General Glut Controversy Karl Marx on Crises of Overproduction From Crises Commerciales to Astronomical and Biological Cycles Wesley Mitchell Economic Orthodoxy Before and During the Great Depression From the Great Depression to Keynesian Economics and Monetarism Economic Data and Macroeconomic Theories Business Cycles Persist Income Distribution as Cause of Recession Macroeconomics in the Dark Age Marxists and Radicals The Revival of Keynesianism Economics on Recessions Since the 1990s An Outline of a Causal Model Cycles and Tendencies Concluding Remarks 7 Nature, Oil, Crises Climate Change, the Global Economy, and the Oikeios of Jason Moore Peak Oil 8 Long Waves and Social Structures of Accumulation Mainstream Economists, Marxists, and K-waves Social Structures of Accumulation Long Waves and the Modern World Economy 9 From the COVID-19 Depression to the War in Ukraine 10 Conclusion Appendices APPENDIX A—MONEY LEADS APPENDIX B—ON MEASURES OF MONETARY AGGREGATES AND DEBT APPENDIX C—ECONOMIC GROWTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE APPENDIX D—A NOTE ON THE RATE OF PROFIT APPENDIX E—DATA References Index Acknowledgments About the Author