Global Debt Dynamics: Crises, Lessons, Governance

This comprehensive volume explores debt dynamics and the intensification of debt crises across the globe, bringing together several recent but underexplored debt crises from different regional and socioeconomic contexts. Using detailed case studies, the authors recast the perils of debt-based growth in the context of regional/global imbalances; not to advocate ‘one-size-fits-all’ reforms, but to point to the need for accommodating diversity. They examine how current economic developments put developing and developed countries under new strain. They also interrogate the opportunities and challenges generated for developing countries by the new development finance landscape and newly (re)emerged geopolitical tensions. The book also explores the inability of existing dominant structures and thinking to effectively manage the multiple facets of the ongoing global debt crisis, pointing to responses that exacerbate rather than address unsustainable debt dynamics. The authors illustrate the adverse effects of ad hoc crisis management mechanisms which are not fit for purpose, and indicate the negative consequences that existing policies may have for democracy. They then put forward a framework for alternative thinking as well as concrete ideas on what needs to be done, in response.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and professionals in the field of global debt studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the online journal Third World Thematics.

Andreas Antoniades is Senior Lecturer in Global Political Economy in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK. He is also the convenor of the Global Debt Dynamics Initiative, and the Principal Investigator in the SSRP project ‘Debt and Environmental Sustainability’.

Ugo Panizza is Professor of International Economics and Pictet Chair in Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland. He is also the director of the Institute’s Centre for Finance and Development, Director of the Centre for International and Monetary Banking Studies, and Editor in Chief of International Development Policy.