Books by Larry (University of Illinois Neal

Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, doubts have been raised about the future of capitalism. In this broad-ranging survey of financial capitalism from antiquity to the present, Larry Neal reveals the ways in which the financial innovations throughout history have increased trade and prosperity as well as improving standards of living. These innovations have, however, all too often led to financial crises as a result of the failure of effective coordination among banks, capital markets and governments. The book examines this key interrelationship between financial innovation, government regulation and financial crises across three thousand years, showing through past successes and failures the key factors that underpin any successful recovery and sustain economic growth. The result is both an essential introduction to financial capitalism and also a series of workable solutions that will help both to preserve the gains we have already achieved and to mitigate the dangers of future crises.

This distinctive textbook combines comprehensive coverage of the key policy areas of the European Union with analysis of individual countries, including the recent accession countries and Turkey. Part I analyzes the economic bases for the rise of the European Union from its origins in the post-World War II recovery to its historic enlargement in 2004. Part II takes up the different nation-state perspectives on the EU's economic policies by looking in turn at all European countries, whether members of the EU or not. The book is unique in providing both an EU perspective and European nation-state perspective on the major policy issues which have arisen since the end of World War II, as well as putting the economic analysis into an historical narrative which emphasizes the responses of policy-makers to external shocks such as the Cold War, the oil shocks, German reunification, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Based on computer analysis of price quotes from the eighteenth-century financial press, this work establishes the existence of a sophisticated and smoothly functioning system of financial markets in the mercantile states of northwestern Europe throughout the 1700s.