Events

The “Great Recession” in Historical Perspective

This roundtable will be the second in the series A New (dis)Order? and will explore the similarities of the "Great Recession" to past crises.

Some of the central themes to be explored are:

• Considering past crises, to what degree did economic theory shape regulatory policy both before and after the financial collapse?
• Has the most recent crisis fundamentally altered the battle of ideas regarding the proper role of states and markets?
• Will current regulatory proposals be as far reaching as the New Deal and other depression era legislation?
• Is the current relationship between the real economy and financial markets different from what it was in the Great Depression and other crises?
• How has the interconnected nature of the modern world shaped the impact of the current downturn?
• What tenets of economic theory, if any, are challenged by the current economic downturn?

Participant Bios:

Alan Brinkley is Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University. He was Provost of Columbia University from 2003-2009 and has previously taught at MIT, Harvard and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of many books on American history and the Great Depression, including Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (Knopf, 1982), which won the 1983 National Book Award. He has two forthcoming books, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Oxford, 2009); and The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (Knopf, 2010).

Patrick Bolton is the David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia University.  His research and areas of interest are in contract theory and contracting issues in corporate finance and industrial organization. His recent publications include his co-authored book with Mathais Dewatripont, Contract Theory, and his co-edited book with Howard Rosenthal, Credit Markets for the Poor.

Harold James is joint Professor of History at Princeton University and of International Affairs in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. He studies economic and financial history and modern German history, and his recent published works include The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle (Harvard, 2009), Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model (Harvard, 2006), and The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Harvard, 2002).

Perry Mehrling is Professor of Economics at Barnard College.  His research interests include the economics of money and banking, monetary theory and policy, and the history and foundations of monetary economics.  His book, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance was named the Best Book of 2007, by the European Society for the History of Economic Thought and his forthcoming book, The New Lombard Street, deals with the financial crisis.

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of an acclaimed three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (Hopes Betrayed, Penguin, 1983; The Economist as Saviour, 1992; and Fighting for Britain, 2000). He currently writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, “Against the Current.” His most recent book, Keynes: The Return of the Master (PublicAffairs, 2009) is an account of the current economic crisis.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a University Professor of Economics and Chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and a Nobel Prize recipient. His book Globalization and Its Discontents (Norton, 2003) has sold more than one million copies worldwide. His most recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (Norton), with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, was published in 2008.