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This paper aims to expose the economic and political relations of power disguised in the concept of financial risk as institutionalized in post-crisis economic policies and practices. We do so by examining, from a historical materialist approach, the actors and social struggles implicated in the aftermath of crisis in Mexico and Turkey. We argue that Mexican and Turkish state authorities have targeted workers so that they may disproportionately bear the costs of financial uncertainty and recurrent crises as workers, taxpayers, and debtors in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crisis. We emphasize, though, that there are important institutional mediations and case study specificities. Mexico’s reforms that target labor as one of the main bearers of financial risk have been locked into legislation and constitutional changes. Turkey’s policies have been implemented in a more ad-hoc manner. In both cases under contemporary capitalism, we see risk as not confined to national borders but as also flowing through the world market. We further argue that the World Bank Report 2014 Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development emerges out of and reflects such real world responses to crisis that have been predominantly shaped by advocates of neoliberalism, to the benefit of capital. As an expression internal to global capitalism, the World Bank Report functions to legitimize the exploitative content of contemporary financial risk management policy prescriptions. In response, democratized financial alternatives that privilege the needs of workers and the poor are required.

Post-crisis policy measures in Asia have focussed on banking sector and market reform. The paper argues that in order to propel growth, banking and market reform in Asia must be undertaken with the view that they are not mutually exclusive competitive tradeoffs. Rather banks and markets must be viewed as complementary supportive pillars in a financial system. Additionally, legal and functional reform must be undertaken simultaneously. The paper proposes that a likely consequence of doing so will enable creating a four-pillared multi-dimensional growth paradigm in the region to help restore and promote growth.

Emerging markets are said to have sustained relatively well in the recent global crisis. There are several factors that help explain this popular view, such as, for example, perceived separation from key international financial centres. Still a lot is to be digested in the crisis aftermath with immediate implications for financial markets and real economy. This chapter offers a unique insight into dynamics within transition economies via an extended blended fiscal–monetary policy rules model with possibility of foreign reserves targeting and foreign currency-denominated debt dynamics. Calibration is based on actual data and is done under various targets and financial risk conditions. Prudent monetary policy and fiscal policy initiatives within current context drive the choice of targets. That may help dampen negative impacts of the crisis and thwart potential currency run. This chapter advances three possible post-crisis scenarios, each with unique solution for reserves, exchange rate, sustainable debt and output levels. Categorizing between net exporters and net importers based on countries' external positions, group-specific results are derived. While both groups are susceptible to exchange-rate risk affected by a multitude of shocks due to their fragile financial system, net importers risk high inflation, but net exporters over-borrowing. This chapter contributes to the literature on global financial crisis, macroeconomic policy, and role of nominal targets and foreign reserves in emerging markets.

Radical feminist theory and practice has actively questioned power relationships between men, women and people of color as a cornerstone of capitalist development since the 1970s while demonstrating the differential impact of such inequality generating structures and relationships on lives and bodies. Their argument about the process of social reproduction and, especially, the reproduction of labor-power both achieved through the dispossession of the female and (colonial) body and the expropriation of their work (Federici, 2004) is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Yet, the crisis can be a motivating force for changing the established power relations. Using three different case studies of female initiatives aiming to counteract the imposition of neoliberal attack on their livelihoods in crisis-stricken Greece, the chapter examines how the existing experience of feminist thinking and activism from within and outside of academia, can contribute to the cultivation of affective embodied relations, and building upon the idea of “feminist solidarity” (Mohanty, 2003), in addressing the challenges of the crisis and post-crisis policies.

The contribution of the Greek transport industry to the country's GDP has been well over the EU average. The industry is of vital importance to the efficient operation of local, national, and international economic transactions and is responsible for almost half of the value added to the Greek economy by its tourism industry. Despite its significant contribution to Greek economy, the industry is facing challenges and has not achieved its full potential. This chapter provides an overview of the transportation and storage industry and examines its general institutional framework and its overall performance, before focusing on specific policy issues for each transport mode, namely air, rail, road, and maritime transport.

We study up to 27 years of weekly data on nine currencies to examine the importance of the Japanese yen in exchange rate determination in North and Southeast Asia. We combine a time-varying methodology alongside a focus on long-run equilibrium. Our findings suggest that the Japanese yen had virtually no influence on Asian exchange rates in the 10-year period prior to the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. Since the crisis, the yen and the German mark in particular have exerted a significant influence over the region's exchange rates except for the Chinese yuan, the Hong Kong dollar and the Malaysian ringgit, which continue to be closely related to the US dollar.

The chapter contains a methodology for formalized evaluation of the public fiscal policy from the view point of its impact on the financial stability of a national economy using the example of the Russian Federation and taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ effects. The significance of this problem is predetermined by recent trends in Russia’s development, when the national economy legs twice behind the world indicators. Taking into account the importance of the Russian budget system as a mechanism for the redistribution of gross domestic product (GDP), the financial stability safeguarding has been connected with the public finance sustainability and with the federal budget revenues and expenditures equilibrium. There are used the methodology of analysis of economic systems’ dynamic factors of financial stability as well as fiscal multipliers’ effects, aiming at managing national economy’s long-term development with the ultimate purpose to maintain the GDP growth rates. Taking into account the fiscal multipliers’ values, the model comparisons of the macroeconomics and budget parameters’ dynamics prove the necessity of the budget consolidation policy in 2018–2020 provided that the budget expenditures efficiency increases. The latter has been proved by modeling dependences represented by the fiscal multipliers’ effects in terms of national financial stability.

The Asia Pacific region is a geographical appellation that many still feel with justification will be the dynamic economic arena for this century. Accepting this premise and acknowledging the importance of the role of finance in that development brings with it the imperative to gain a greater understanding of the unique financial characteristics of the region. This chapter has two major pursuits. The first goal is to provide some background on the various markets of the region. An understanding of institutional detail (size and scope) of the relevant markets affords a view that lends or detracts from the credibility of intermarket comparisons. An exposure to institutional detail also supplies information that may bear on the statistical results of the empirical analysis. The vital roles played by stock markets of pricing capital, issuing new shares, providing a liquidity-creating secondary feature, serving as a vehicle for asset transfer and providing a linkage to international capital markets are as important to emerging markets as to developed countries. However, fixed income markets are still not as well developed in emerging markets and therefore an even heavier capital sourcing burden is placed on emerging stock markets. The Asia Pacific region derivatives markets (futures and options) play their risk-transfer role in equity and fixed income areas and are integral to the scene. The second pursuit in this chapter is to provide a thumbnail sketch of each of the contributions. The summary will include the nature of the empirical work, the type of methodology or statistical technique applied, and the results. In addition the results will be viewed in light of any reinforcement or digression from a priori expectations drawn from other markets. This volume contains 19 original research papers from 36 authors who represent major academic and financial institutions around the globe.