Cycles, Growth and the Great Recession Routledge Critical Studies in Finance and Stability Series

Cycles, Growth and the Great Recession is a collection of papers that assess the nature and role of the business cycle in contemporary economies. These assessments are made in the context of the financial market instability that distinguishes the Great Recession from previous post-war slowdowns. Theorists and applied scholars in the fields of economics and mathematical economics discuss various approaches to understanding cycles and growth, and present mathematical and applied macro models to show how uncertainty shapes cycles by affecting the economic agent choice. Also included is an empirical section that investigates how the Great Recession affected households? housing wealth, labour productivity and migration decisions.

This book aims to:

1. Propose a novel understanding of the business cycle by comparing the approaches of various scholars, starting from Hyman Minsky and Piero Ferri.
2. Show that uncertainty is a main feature of the business cycle that affects decision-making and economic behaviour in general.
3. Explain with mathematical models how the behaviour of economic agents can lead to cyclical paths for modern developed economies.
4. Augment theory with empirical analysis of some central issues related to the Great Recession.

This book comprises an original view of such widely discussed subjects as business cycles, uncertainty, economic growth and the Great Recession, constructed around theory, models and applications.

Introduction I. Understanding Cycles and Growth1. Minsky as a Critic of Keynesianism 2. Can We Say "Minsky Moment" when Households Matter? 3. Are Macroeconomic Models with Ceilings and Floors Useful in Understanding the Great Recession? 4. The Theory of Business Cycles from a Methodological Perspective II. Uncertainty and Information in Business Cycle Models 5. The Business Cycle as a Method of Analysis 6. The Asymmetric-Information Approach and the Great Recession: a Critical Appraisal III. Formal Models of the Business Cycle 7. A Kaleckian Macromodel with Memory 8. The Dynamics of the Labour Market in an Agent-Based Model with Financial Constraints 9. Periodic Cycles in a Behavioural Model IV. Empirical and Institutional Factors in Cycles and Growth 10. The Time Dimension of Credit Risk: Modelling Issues and Regulatory Implications 11. The Great Recession, Housing Wealth and Consumption in the European Countries 12. Growth and Migration in Italy (1861-1913) Interpreted with a Dual Model of an Underdeveloped Economy 13. Organizational and Technological Paradigms: Asynchronized Structural Breaks, Uneven Evolution of Paradigms and Firm Growth Between Complementarities and Substitutabilities