Books about Iceland

Why Iceland?: How One of the World’s Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown’s Biggest Casualty by Asgeir Jonsson

Frozen Assets: How I Lived Iceland’s Boom and Bust, by Armann Thorvaldsson,

Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island
-Roger Boyes

The Consolations of Economics and other Podcasts

Princeton’s Dixit Discusses Nobel for Ostrom, Williamson

Calvo Sees Difficulty Unwinding Stimulus Packages

Bill Clinton Cites Discipline, Growth to Cut Deficit

Rogoff, Reinhart on Their Book `This Time Is Different'

Skidelsky Says Stimulus Debates Today Same as 1930s

Zandi Sees Little Traction for U.S. Recovery in 2010

Plosser Says No Bank Should Be Too Big to Fail

Sustainable Wealth: Achieve Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption

The Consolations of Economics
Speaker: Tim Harford

The Strange Friendship of Pauli and Jung: when physics met psychology
Speaker: Professor Arthur I Miller

Keynes and the Crisis of Capitalism
Speaker: Professor Lord Skidelsky

The current state of the economy
Speaker: Professor Edward C. Prescott

Building windmills not walls – Hungary's approach in the economic storm
Speaker: Gordon Bajnai

Optimal Financial Structure and Economic Development
Speaker: Dr Justin Yifu Lin

Islam: what I believe
Speaker: Professor Tariq Ramadan

The Future of Banking and Financial Regulation
Speaker: Eric Chaney, Professor Charles Goodhart

Predictioneer: How to predict the future with game-theory
Speaker: Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

A Year after the Collapse of Lehmans: where does global capitalism go now?
Speaker: Professor Andrew Gamble, Will Hutton, Professor Danny Quah

Risk, Behaviour and Applications to Health Policy
Speaker: Dr Joan Costa-i-Font, Dr Caroline Rudisill

How to Control and Change Individual Behaviour: the world as installation
Speaker: Professor Saadi Lahlou

Human Rights in the 21st Century
Speaker: Professor Noam Chomsky

The Idea of Justice
Amartya Sen

Capitalism and Confusion
Amartya Sen

The Role of Political and Economic Ideas in Policymaking
Douglas Irwin, Professor of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College
David Colander, Professor of Economics, Middlebury College
Murray Dry, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College
James Morrison, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College

Capitalism 3.0
Dani Rodrik

Natural Resource Management -Collier

A Conversation with Lord Nicholas Stern

Developing Rural Areas - Esther Duflo

The Life and Impact of Ayn Rand

It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower

Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

The Return of Depression Economics

The Global Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences - Greenspan

Controlling corruption
Out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the National Integrity System was born, and is now used by governments and authorities in most countries around the world. The latest is Kurdistan. Corruption, like death and taxes, is inevitable. Ian Townsend explores ways in which it can be managed and minimised.

Addiction, free will and self control

Gandhi and philosophy - the centenary of Hind Swaraj

Beethoven and the modern

How T.H. Huxley helped me teach my students how to write

Assorted

From Poverty to Prosperity Watch

The Lord is my central banker, I shall not want…

Plastic fantastic

Global Development Finance 2009: Charting a Global Recovery


Selective extracting

The Impact of the Trilemma Configurations on Macroeconomic Performance

Why Pressure Cookers Are Big in the Netherlands

Fiscal Stimulus, Interest Rates and Crowding-Out

Combining findings at the Province and County Level from Iran's Election

Indian Capital Control Liberalization: Evidence from NDF Markets

Public libraries in India

For Father's Day: the IR guide to parenting

Roads to Success: Budget Consolidations in OECD Countries

Respinning the web

If the financial crisis has taught us anything,” says Michael Taylor, “it is that too much conventional wisdom can be dangerous.”

Laffer Curves Are Average Not Marginal Taxation

The Fragility of Economic Data

Was there Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant?

If you smell, here's a remedy

Bring Your Questions for White House Economist Austan Goolsbee

Books I am looking forward to reading

Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer

Podcasts Lectures- Paul Krugman

The Return of Depression Economics Part 3: The night they reread Minsky

The Return of Depression Economics Part 2: The eschatology of lost decades

The Return of Depression Economics Part 1: The sum of all fears

Assorted

Swine flu: why does it take so long to make a vaccine?

Cloud Computing

White House Launches ‘Open Government Initiative’

Sunday Function

How Pigs Replaced Economics


The IS curve

That Freshman Course Won’t Be Quite the Same

The problem with economists;

Incorporating the factors that created problems in the financial markets makes the theory complex. But to be effective in the real world, to be able to communicate economic ideas, you have to simplify. Sometimes, you start believing your simplifications as if they were the general theory.

An Economist Tries to Defend His Profession--and Fails

Foreclosures and Modifications for Beginners

More roles for the World Bank in Africa

Economic policy in Africa in light of the crisis- I would recommend Ali Mansoor's ( Mauritius finance secretary) comments;

• Emphasis on O&M 
  
• Countercyclical social Safety nets
  
• Invest on environment
  
• Mauritius approach to restructuring firms during the crisis
  -IFC needs to be more proactive
  

Shanta has more.

Assorted

Is China souring on the dollar?

The Reeducation of Tim Geithner

The monetary-policy maze

Taleb on the Fourth Quadrant

Assorted Podcasts

Morgan Stanley's Roach Sees China's Economic Growth Slowing

Goolsbee Says Bank Stress Tests Are About `Clarity'

Stiglitz Says Corporate `Welfarism' Is Worst Possible System

Thoma Says Politics Limiting U.S. Efforts to Aid Banks

DeLong Hopes to See Bigger Stimulus Plan from Obama

Johnson Says Some European Banks `Too Big to Rescue'

Global Trade: Implications of the Current Crisis

What can the G20 do? The Case for Special Drawing Rights
-Soros

Democracy in Dangerous Places- Collier

The Politics of Resource Allocation
Neeraj Negi, evaluation officer for the World Bank, was a member of an evaluation team that studied macrodevelopment issues that contributed to the adoption of the new resource allocation framework by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

Prosperity or Peril? The Next Phase of Globalization

Assorted

Causes of the Oil Shock of 2007-08

Japan’s recovery

Government deficits through fiscal policy and inter-generational justice

Mongolian government takes action to support small businesses (or Inspections Gone Wild)

To regulate finance, try the market

Consumer confidence indices: further economic deterioration

Why the GST is a good idea

Taylor rule and liquidity trap

The GPT That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Fed Confronts Financial Crisis by Expanding Its Role as Lender of Last Resort

World Economic Prospects -World Bank

World Bank: Global Economic Update

View more presentations from worldbank.

South Asia (SAR) has been marked down to 3.7 percent growth for 2009 from 5.4 percent anticipated earlier—and down from 5.6 percent registered in 2008. Though terms of trade have moved in favor of the region with the falloff in oil prices, weakening demand in export markets (including burgeoning Indo-Sino trade) is being felt sharply, as is a tempering of services exports from India’s high-tech centers, as capital spending wanes globally. Remittances are anticipated to ease as conditions in host countries falter, albeit with some lag. Capital inflows have diminished, contributing to falloff in investment growth, notably in India. Fiscal support for slowing economies may face constraints in already quite high budget deficits.

External financing requirements for developing countries as a group are anticipated to increase to $1.3 trillion in 2009, comprised of current account deficits ($330 billion) and principal repayments on private debt coming due ($970 billion). With a decline in capital flows to developing countries underway, this would generate an estimated financing gap of between $270-$700 billion, depending on the size of roll-over risks and the magnitude of capital flight. Regions with the largest funding gaps are Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the current projections, 84 of 109 developing countries would face financing gaps, in most cases too large to cover by drawing down reserves alone. This suggests that in the absence of sufficient international support, countries could be forced into generating a sharp reversal in current account balance, implying further decline in domestic demand and imports.

Debates regarding the possible “shape” of recovery from the current downturn continue. But there is little question that the outlook for 2010 in particular, is surrounded by extreme uncertainty across a wide array of policy- and other variables that will eventually bring about a revival in economic activity. The pronounced cycle in worldwide investment could have sufficient dynamic to carry global growth back to positive territory by 2010, as the pace of decline in investment moderates, and postponed demand for durable consumer goods begins to catch up. Together with the effects of monetary and fiscal stimulus this results in the modest global recovery in the baseline forecast presented here.

However, continued banking problems or even new waves of tension in financial markets could lead to stagnation in global GDP or even to another year of decline in 2010. In all cases, the estimated output gap1 would increase in 2010 because (in the baseline as well), growth falls well short of potential (figure 1.e). This implies that unemployment and fiscal deficits will increase further into 2010, in high-income and developing countries alike, while disinflationary conditions could persist well into the year.

World Economic Prospects 2009

The Shortcomings of the Stimulus Plan

Assorted

Why did the U.S. Housing go bust in 2006-07?;

There are essentially five theoretical models or frameworks that are used by economists to explain credit booms and busts. These are (1) changes in fundamentals over time; (2) irrational myopia as reflected in euphoric greed followed by fear or depressive panic; (3) implicit or explicit government subsidies and guarantees; (4) multiple equilibria or knife-edge problem; and (5) agency problems in assets management. Each of these frameworks is used to analyze the current housing problems, which triggered a U.S. financial meltdown and impacted a global economic crisis.

Banking and the Leverage Ratio

NIPFP-DEA Program on Capital Flows

India Financial Sector Self Assessment

FinancialStability.gov

Please torch my car

Structured Finance for Beginners

Credit Default Swaps, Herald of Doom (for Beginners)

Something to think about

"the IMF estimates that the balance of payments needs of low-income countries will be about $25 billion this year."

See
Appendix VI. Balance of Payments Financing Needs, The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Low-Income Countries.

Assorted

What is up with the balance of payments?

The Fed's new balance sheet

A reporter’s budget mistake at the press conference

Now the Long Run Looks Riskier, Too as

Animal Spirits

In October 1989, I attended a conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research organized by Martin Feldstein, the Harvard economist, on “The Risk of Economic Crisis.” The conference still sticks in my mind because of a paper delivered there by Lawrence H. Summers, now the head of the president’s National Economic Council and the dominant economic intellectual at the White House. During the Clinton administration, Mr. Summers was Treasury secretary and backed legislation that helped deregulate financial markets; many analysts say the policies helped lay the foundation of the subsequent financial crisis. But back in 1989, because of his imaginative work, I came away with a recognition that a severe contraction, even a depression, could indeed come again....

Mr. Summers told a fictional but vivid story of a big financial crisis, complete with examples of specific events and how people might react to them. Seeing it concretized as an imaginary history, and placed in the near future — in just two years, in 1991 — made it seem more real and familiar.

He said that this crisis would be preceded by an enormous stock market boom, bringing the Dow to the unimagined high of 5,400 by October 1991. (The Dow was at 2,600 on the day of the conference; 5,400 would be 13,000 today if scaled up in proportion to gross domestic product.)

Euphoria gripped the investors of his fictional universe. “The notion that recessions were a thing of the past took hold,” Mr. Summers said. He added that over a 15-year period through 1990 — a time that included the 1987 crash — investors earned an average real return of 11 percent. The popular view was that “with a reduced cyclical element, the future would be even brighter.”

Furthermore, he said, “lawyers and dentists explained to one another that investing without margin was a mistake, since using margin enabled one to double one’s return, and the risks were small given that one could always sell out if it looked like the market would decline.”

Today, this sounds like a description of thinking that led to the 2000s boom, although the leveraging of investments tended to take a form other than that of traditional margin credit on stock purchases.

His fictional account went on to describe the early signs of the crisis, “In October 1991, problems began to surface,” he said, adding that a “major Wall Street firm was forced to merge with another after a poorly supervised trader lost $500 million by failing to properly hedge a complex position in the newly developed foreign-mortgage-backed-securities market.” He went on to describe how this provocation led to a change in psychology and a market crash and problems in banks and credit markets.

His fiction concluded, “The result was the worst recession since the Depression.”...

Ultimately, the record bubbles in the stock market after 1994 and the housing market after 2000 were responsible for the crisis we are in now. And these bubbles were in turn driven by a view of the world born of complacency about crises, driven by views about the real source of economic wealth, the efficiency of markets and the importance of speculation in our lives. It was these mental processes that pushed the economy beyond its limits, and that had to be understood to see the reasons for the crisis.

-It Pays to Understand the Mind-Set, Robert Schiller

A Conversation with George Akerlof and Robert Shiller

Animals Spirits discussion at Zocalo.

A review of the book from The Economist;

NO TWO economic crises are identical. But the same questions recur. How did we get into this mess? How can we get out of it? How do we avoid another? Some answers repeat themselves too. You can be pretty sure that sooner or later someone, quite possibly an anguished economist, will declare that economics itself has gone astray. The wisdom of some past master, whether celebrated (John Maynard Keynes, for example) or neglected (Hyman Minsky, perhaps), has been forgotten, and the economy is paying the price.

A new book*, “Animal Spirits”, by George Akerlof of the University of California, Berkeley, and Robert Shiller of Yale, follows this rule to the letter. The authors seek to answer the first of those three old questions and thus to provide some pointers about the other two. They do indeed believe that economics has lost its way. And their chosen economist is Keynes.

The Committee to Save the World

Inside Obama’s Economic Brain Trust

Special Announcement

I will be posting Financial Crisis stuff from now on the Tracking the Economy blog.

Five Goats who contributed to the Crisis - Mundell

The Fed Screwed Up’: Five Goats who contributed to the Crisis (Ranieri, Clinton, Greenberg, Bernanke, and Paulson)

Development Blog of the Day

Caribbean Political Economy