The financial crisis in South Asia: From jobless growth to jobless slump?
textabstractThis chapter explores the impact of the global financial crisis on South Asia in terms of qualitative and quantitative aspects of employment. South Asia hosts a quarter of the world’s population and a fifth of the global workforce – as well as 40 percent of the global poor (World Bank 2010). This paper therefore contributes to an assessment of the current crisis on the livelihoods of inhabitants of one of the poorest regions in the world. It also provides more general insights about how volatilities in globally increasingly integrated markets translate into opportunities for decent work – or the lack thereof.
The costs of ‘coupling’: the global crisis and the Indian economy
The view that the Indian economy would be less adversely affected by the global economic crisis because of limited integration and other inherent strengths has proved to be wrong. The economic boom in India that preceded the current downturn was dependent upon greater global integration in three ways: greater reliance on exports particularly of services; increased dependence on capital inflows, especially of the short-term variety; and the role these played in underpinning a domestic credit-fuelled consumption and investment boom. These in turn made the growth process more vulnerable to internally and externally generated crises, as is now becoming clear. Copyright The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.
Using Minsky's Cushions of Safety to Analyze the Crisis in the U. S. Subprime Mortgage Market
Hyman P. Minsky’s financial fragility hypothesis appears highly relevant in understanding the current crisis in the financial systems of developed countries. His most important contribution to our understanding of the logic of repeated financial crises under capitalism is that of endogenous instability, expressed in terms of a declining ‘margin’ or ‘cushion’ of safety in financial transactions and an increase in financial leverage that he called ‘layering.’ However, the paper also argues that the current crisis differs in important respects from the traditional analysis of a Minsky crisis. These differences have had a significant impact on the way the crisis has evolved.