What Is the Truth About the Great Recession and Increasing Inequality?

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Prologue

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 1-4

3. Increasing Inequality

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 5-28

4. The Failure to Predict the Great Recession

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 29-46

5. Why Fiscal Austerity?

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 47-63

6. Rolling Back the Welfare State

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 65-75

7. The State and the Market

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 77-103

8. The Gigantic German Trade Surplus and the Euro

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 105-141

9. Crisis Policy

   • Mario Morroni

   Pages 143-164

10. Environmental Degradation

    • Mario Morroni

    Pages 165-181

11. Industrial Policies

    • Mario Morroni

    Pages 183-190

12. Back Matter

    Pages 191-204

    PDF

Have you ever puzzled over the causes of the 2007–8 financial crisis and wondered how it will affect all our futures? If so, this book is for you. Using imagined dialogue between three economists with contrasting theoretical perspectives and a student who knows little about economics, different interpretations are compared in straightforward, jargon-free language. The book explores both the consequences of neoliberal economic policies based on the belief in efficient, self-regulating markets and the implications of alternative economic visions formulated in response to the Great Recession. In all, nine dialogues are presented, each of which focuses on a key theme: increasing inequality, the failure of economists to predict the crash, the reasons for fiscal austerity, the rolling back of the welfare state, the roles of the state and the market, the repercussions of the German trade surplus and the Eurozone crisis, policies to confront the crisis, environmental degradation, and theneed for an industrial policy appropriate to the present day. The book will be ideal for both general readers and those embarking on the study of economics.

• Great Recession
• Fiscal austerity
• Inequality
• Welfare state
• Environmental degradation
• Financial crash of 2007–2008
• State and market
• German trade surplus
• Crisis policy
• Euro crisis
• Neoliberalism
• Neoliberal ideologies
• Neoliberal economic policies
• Keynesian economics
• Keynesian theories
• Keynesianism
• Neo-Keynesian paradigm
• Eurozone crisis
• financial crises

• Department of Political Sciences, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

  Mario Morroni

Mario Morroni is Professor of Economics at the University of Pisa and a Life Member of Clare Hall, College for Advanced Study, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). He has previously authored a book on technical change and production processes (Cambridge University Press, 1992) that received the Myrdal Prize and also a book on the theory of the firm (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He is the author of a number of further works in the areas of microeconomics, macroeconomics, labor economics, and industrial economics.

Policies and ethics