Life After Debt ─ The Origins and Resolutions of Debt Crisis

In the last 30 years economic crises have become more frequent and expensive than ever before. This volume provides a pluralistic discussion from world-renowned scholars on the international aspects of the debt crisis and prospects for resolution. It argues that current economic policies exacerbate the problem of inefficient and unstable markets as they are based on standard economic theory which focuses on equilibrium models rather than equilibrium behaviour. It provides a comprehensive evaluation of how the debt crisis has affected Western Europe, the emerging markets and Latin America, and puts forward different suggestions for recovery.

The volume is divided into three parts. The first part looks at how the debt crisis has affected different regions around the world and examines lessons for Europe from the Latin American experience. The second section reviews the theory and empirical evidence of the costs of default, and analyses the restructuring process. The final section examines policies, instruments and mechanism for crisis resolution.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, USA, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and a lead author of the 1995 IPCC report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank for 1997-2000. Stiglitz received the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded annually to the American economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the subject. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, UK, held the Drummond Professorship at All Souls College, Oxford, UK, and has also taught at M.I.T, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton.

Daniel Heymann is Professor of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the University of San Andres, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy of Buenos Aires (IIEP-BAIRES), created jointly by UBA and the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET). He studied Economics and Physics at UBA, and received his PhD in Economics from UCLA. He is member of the Argentine Academy of Economic Sciences, and was President of the Argentine Economic Association (AAEP) for the term 2008- 2010. His areas of interest are macroeconomics, development, and complex system models in Economics.