Surviving Large Losses: Financial Crises, the Middle Class, and the Development of Capital Markets

Introduction 1. The Political Economy of Financial Crises 2. Information and Crises 3. Crises and the Middle Class 4. What Happens after Crises 5. Financial Intermediaries and the Demand for Change 6. Governments and the Demand for Reform Conclusion: The Lessons of History Notes References Index

Philip T. Hoffman is Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and Professor of History, California Institute of Technology. Gilles Postel-Vinay is Director of studies at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal is the Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics at the California Institute of Technology.

The excitement of Surviving Large Losses is not easy to convey. It is a different kind of thinking cap, that's all. On every page it reflects the substantial changes wrought by political economists during the past thirty years or so in the way we understand the sources of the wealth and poverty of nations. It delivers a profoundly optimistic message, however--that eventually we get wise to ourselves; that gradually financial knavery is reduced; that by learning from our mistakes we are creating a more stable financial order, and perhaps even a more just world. -- David Warsh Economicprincipals.com 20070701 The authors of this book, academics in the fields of history, social sciences, and economics, have done more than write a history of financial crises; rather, they explain the nature of these crises by putting economic theory into plain English. -- R. J. Phillips Choice 20070801 This is a timely book. It is also provocative in trying to do something no one has done before, namely provide a comprehensive political economy analysis of several centuries of financial crises and their effects on the development of financial systems. It aims to bridge the gap between the modern economics literature on finance and growth, and more traditional historical studies...Surviving Large Losses is a step forward in the social-scientific analysis of financial crises and historical financial development. -- Richard Sylla Journal of Economic History 20080301