Various and sometimes contradictory lessons have been drawn from the 1997-1998 East Asian crisis experiences. The ideological implications and political differences involved have complicated the possibility of drawing shared lessons from the crises. The seeming calm and increased growth in most developing countries in the period since 2001 have also undermined the possibility of far-reaching developmental reforms following the experience. Perhaps most importantly, the vested interests supporting existing international financial governance arrangements continue to impede the possibility of implementing lessons drawn from the experience. Such interests are generally supported by conventional wisdom and reinforced by the financial media.

This paper seeks to explain the causes and consequences of the U.S. subprime mortgage
crisis, and how this crisis has led to a generalized credit crunch in other financial sectors that ultimately affects the real economy. It postulates that, financial strategies based on market innovations that have heightened, not reduced, systemic risks and financial instability led to the crisis. In addition, the underlying structural causes of the crisis are located in the loose monetary policies of central banks, deregulation, and excess liquidity in financial markets that is a consequence of the kind of economic growth that produces various imbalances.

Empirical evidence suggests that the good economic performance of Latin America in the last 6 years (including 2007-8) is increasingly and strongly correlated either with a positive terms-of-trade shock, mostly in South America, or with the increase in the flow of remittances, particularly in Central and North America. In other words, Latin America now exports commodities and people. The paper shows the possible limitations of this development strategy.

This paper attempts to examine the factors responsible for the recent revival and surge in capital flows into developing countries and the qualitative changes in financial integration that are accompanying this surge. The paper also looks at the impact that this surge is having on financial volatility and vulnerability, macroeconomic management and growth, in countries that have been “successful” in attracting such flows. It argues that post financial liberalisation, supply side factors have primarily caused the surge while the resultant changes in the financial structure has implications for the accumulation of risk and vulnerability to financial crisis in markets where agents tend to herd.

The resilience of emerging markets to direct and indirect shocks from the current financial crisis in the US will play an important role in determining global growth and stability in the near future, since much of it has been due to expansion in these economies, notably in Asia. This paper explores the extent to which growth and stability in Asian emerging markets can be decoupled and this the paper argues crucially depends on prevailing domestic economic conditions as well as the policy response to possible shocks from the crisis.

This paper discusses the limitations of the theory of the consumer, and of demand, which lies at the heart of mainstream economics. This paper seeks to explain why consumer theory evolved like this and, despite its narrowness and deficiencies, has expanded its scope of application both within economics and across other social sciences. The paper finally offers a broad sketch of an alternative approach to consumer theory, one that draws upon political economy that is necessarily interdisciplinary. The final section discusses some of the wider implications of developments in and around consumer theory for the nature and prospects of economics as a discipline.

This paper examines the potential impact of oil revenues on the economy of Sudan and the challenges facing the Government in policy making; particularly trade policy, allocation of oil revenues for long-run development, and diversification of the production and export structure of the economy. Developing a conceptual framework of analysis, the author argues that while export of petroleum provides financial resources for the acceleration of investment and growth, prospects for sustained growth and diversification will be still limited by some physical and institutional bottlenecks, not easily overcome by just oil revenues. Export of oil may also have other negative effects on Sudan’s economy.

The sub prime crisis in the US has little to do with the mortgage market, or subprime mortgages per se, but rather with the basic structure of the financial system that produces overestimates of creditworthiness and underpricing of risk. The bottom line is that the system has been structured to make credit too cheap, leading to excessive risk in order to provide higher returns. The financial fragility that was identified in Minsky's work cannot be eliminated, only damped by systemic policies. However, it is possible to eliminate fragility that emerges from the structure and regulation of the financial system.

This paper examines the extent to which Keynesian thinking could help understand the causes and dynamics of crises in emerging markets and provide suitable policy prescriptions. It concludes that at the analytical level the endogenous unstable dynamics analyzed by post Keynesians, notably Hyman Minsky, goes a long way in providing a powerful framework for explaining the boom-bust cycles driven by international capital flows in emerging markets. The paper also points out  the need to develop new instruments for stabilization, placing greater emphasis on countercyclical financial regulations and control than has hitherto been the case.

This paper argues that liberating themselves from the dictates of the international financial institutions seems to be the optimal policy response for the Asian economies, because the ''reforms'' demanded by IFIs not only left untreated the problem triggering the Asian crisis of the nineties, but instead tried to enforce an unfeasible set of neoliberal policies. In addition, the IFIs actually took economic advantage of the crisis.

The impact of climate change on the world of today and the future is undeniable. Stipulated emission reduction targets for developed countries are still too modest under the Kyoto Protocol and the US, the world's largest polluter remains outside the agreement. The scientific community warns that a global coordinated response with participation of the major emitters and rapidly growing economies of China and India is the only way forward to avoid the worse predicted effects of global warming. This paper reviews the debates and attempts to trace the path to the future.

This paper deals with an important form of discrimination in the countryside, the lack of access of Dalit (Scheduled Caste) and Adivasi (Scheduled Tribe) households to ownership and operational holdings of land in rural India. It includes a case study of the impact of land reforms in one State of India, West Bengal, on land holding among Dalit and Adivasi households. The aim of this paper is to determine Dalit households' access to land for production, and compare this access with that of other social groups. The findings suggest that the land redistribution programme followed in the state has increased land access for such marginalised groups.