Books in the Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy and Development series

Why do climate and financial crises pose such extreme risks? And what does it take to respond effectively to those risks? Extreme weather events - storms and sea-level rise, heat waves, droughts and floods - seem ever more common and extreme, while scientists warn of even greater climate risks ahead. Financial failures on the scale of 2008 make a mockery of the supposed efficiency of the market economy. None of this would be possible in the world as imagined by conventional economics - an imaginary land of gradualism, equilibrium, well-informed rationality and the win-win solutions dealt by the invisible hand.The erratic rhythm of boom and bust in financial markets could be explained either by the patterns of crowd-following behaviour among investors, or by the unequal distribution of wealth (and the impact of the largest investors on the markets). Climate crises reflect the fact that natural systems can reach tipping points or critical transitions, where gradual change gives way to large-scale discontinuous changes. The economics of climate change has lagged behind the science, understating the severity of the problem and the likelihood of a crash.While the causes of climate and financial extremes are distinct, the implications for public policy have much in common. The frequency of extreme events, of varying sizes, means that there is no way to predict the likely size of future crises. The traditional approach to risk aversion cannot account for longstanding patterns in financial markets. Better theories of risk call for more precautionary approaches to both financial and climate policy. In the frequent cases in which potential outcomes have unknown probabilities, the best policy is based on the worst-case credible scenario. When a single catastrophic risk commands everyone's attention, a World War II-style, costs-be-damned mobilization is the right response. There is no formula for perfect responses to extreme risks, but there are important guideposts that point toward better answers.

Conditions of malnutrition, conflict, or a combination of both characterize many Arab countries, but this was not always so. As in much of the developing world, the immediate post-independence period was an age of hope and relative prosperity. But imperialism did not sleep while these countries developed, and it soon intervened to destroy these post-independence achievements. The two principal defeats and losses of territory to Israel in 1967 and 1973, as well as the others that followed, left in their wake more than the destruction of assets and the loss of human lives: the Arab world lost its ideology of resistance. The reversal in economic and social performance between then and now requires an even-handed and theoretically coherent explanation that steers clear of the hallucinatory constructs of individual freedom and choice. Considering such choices is utterly superfluous in a situation where the important choice is often a single one-that is, no choice at all-imposed by the power of history on the unfree majority.The Unmaking of Arab Socialism is an attempt to understand the perplexing reasons for the Arab world's developmental descent-its de-development-from the pinnacle of Arab socialism to its present desolate condition.Kadri focuses on the concept of Arab socialism in general and its application to Iraq, Syria and Egypt as he explores the deleterious effects of redundant labour expelled by dispossessions in the hinterland and the persistence of permanent war.

Military power has long been a serious obstacle to a sustained democracy in Pakistan. The authors investigate the Pakistani military's retrogressive agrarian interventions in the Punjab, and outlines a change, as recognised by society, in the military's rightful function within the economy.Set against the social resentment instigated by the military's agricultural land grabbing, and a burgeoning resistance to the military's overbearing and socially unjust role in Pakistan's economy, this book supplements a larger body of work detailing the military's hand in industrial, commercial, financial and real estate sectors. Any gain in economic autonomy wielded by the military makes it less answerable to civilian oversight, and makes it more likely to act to protect its economic interests.The survival of civilian rule in Pakistan, which is critically important for the foreseeable future, requires a fundamental reordering of the balance of power between state institutions, and between state and society. Pakistan, long encumbered by the military yoke, has witnessed its first peaceful transition from one political administration to another; and in a move congenial to the consolidation of this democratic process, 'The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab' exposes the nefarious nature of the military's predation, and signals a move for the military to be contained to its constitutionally mandated role - defence.

Ali Kadri examines how over the last three decades the Arab world has undergone a process of developmental descent, or de-development. He defines de-development as the purposeful deconstruction of developing entities. The Arab world has lost its wars and its society restructured to absorb the terms of defeat masquerading as development policies under neoliberalism. Foremost in this process of de-development are the policies of de-industrialisation that have laid to waste the production of knowledge, created a fully compradorial ruling class that relies on commerce and international finance for its reproduction, as opposed to nationally based production, and halted the primary engine of job creation. The Arab mode of accumulation has come to be based on commerce in a manner similar to that of the pre-capitalist age along with its cultural decay. Kadri attributes the Arab world's developmental failure not only to imperialist hegemony over oil, but also to the rising role of financialisation, which goes hand in hand with the wars of encroachment that were already stripping the Arab world of its resources. War for war's sake has become a tributary to the world economy, argues Kadri, and like oil, there is neither a shortage of war nor a shortage of the conditions to make new war in the Arab world.

Ambitious measures to reduce carbon emissions are all too rare in reality, impeded by economic and political concerns rather than technological advances. In this timely collection of essays, Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton show that the impact of inaction on climate change will be far worse than the cost of ambitious climate policies.

This book reflects on the innovations that central banks have introduced since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers to improve their modes of intervention, regulation and resolution of financial markets and financial institutions.

A prescient examination of the serious faults and pitfalls of neoclassical economics.

This volume examines different facets of international capital movements - the role of openness, the implications of large inflows of foreign capital and the impact of regulatory frameworks - from the point of view of the global South.

A radical and comprehensive review of the practices of governance within one of the world's most important and influential organizations.

This title represents the most forward thinking and comprehensive review of development economics currently available.