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This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

At the time they occurred, the savings and loan insolvencies were considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Contrary to what was then believed, and in sharp contrast with 2007–2009, they in fact had little macroeconomic significance. Savings and Loan (S&L) remediation cost between 2 percent and 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), whereas the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the conservatorships of Fannie and Freddie actually made money for the US Treasury. But the direct cost of government remediation is largely irrelevant in judging macro significance. What matters is the cumulative output loss associated with and plausibly caused by failing financial institutions. I estimate output losses for 1981–1984, 1991–1998, and 2007–2026 (the latter utilizing forecasts and projections along with actual data through 2015) and, for a final comparison, 1929–1941. The losses associated with 2007–2009 have been truly disastrous – in the same order of magnitude as the Great Depression. The S&L failures were, in contrast, inconsequential. Macroeconomists and policy makers should reserve the word crisis for financial disturbances that threaten substantial damage to the real economy, and continue efforts to identify in advance financial institutions which are systemically important (SIFI), and those which are not.

Since the late 1970s, the study of the role, structure and functions of personnel management in the United Kingdom has been greatly facilitated by surveys emerging from a number of large‐scale surveys. A major interest in interpreting the data from these surveys has been to evaluate the impact of recession, and, latterly, recovery on the power, structure and roles of personnel departments and personnel specialists in recent years. The survey data are used comparatively to evaluate the empirical plausibility of the different scenarios which have arisen, and to account for the results that emerge.

Using a sample of 214 US metropolitan areas, we examine the connection between the Great Recession and bad jobs, taking into consideration the macro-level determinants of the troubled economy. Our measure of bad jobs is derived from Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson’s (2000) conceptualization as those that have low pay, lack health insurance, and lack pension plans. We find that the Great Recession increased the prevalence of bad jobs, consistently for men and selectively for women. Among the macro-level processes, the decline of the manufacturing base, union membership, and public sector employment are sources of increasing bad jobs, especially for men. Those macro-level processes which are growing in influence such as casualization, globalization and financialization show no signs of reversing the negative trends in bad jobs. Human capital variables in the labor market such as educational and age variability consistently suggest more adverse effects on bad jobs for men than women. Our findings contribute to the further understanding of the nature of precarious work in a troubled economy.

The contribution starts out from the question whether the political legitimacy of the Third Wave democracies has suffered in the wake of the Great Recession. The expectation of a damaging effect of an economic or political crisis on legitimacy is based on Lipset’s assumption that established democracies with a high degree of political legitimacy are better capable of coping with such crises than young democracies. The database includes two surveys of members of parliament conducted in 2007 and 2013 in Sweden, Germany and five Third Wave democracies located in different world regions (Chile, South Korea, Poland, South Africa and Turkey). Waves 5 and 6 of the World Values Survey that were conducted at about the same time were used for comparing the legitimacy beliefs among MPs and citizens. The data show that the scores for all indicators of political legitimacy are higher among MPs than among citizens and that the differences between the two groups of respondents are considerably larger in the five young democracies. Confidence in political parties is fairly low, especially among citizens, while the evaluation of the quality of democracy in the respondents’ country is much higher. Both evaluations have been rather stable over time. In the two established democracies, support for democracy among citizens is nearly as high as among MPs. In the five young democracies, the MP-citizen differential is larger and support for democracy in the population shows a steady increase only in Chile, while it has remained low in Poland and Turkey and even decreased in Korea and South Africa. This indicates that democracy has not taken deep roots in four of the five new democracies included in the study. In Korea and South Africa, the decline in support for democracy started already before the onset of the economic crisis and therefore cannot be attributed to the recession. This is confirmed by the lack of a statistical relationship between political legitimacy on one side and economic evaluations on the other side. A multiple regression analysis shows strong country-specific effects, while individual-level variables have only minor effects.

Work environments, which are widely acknowledged to exert strong influences on employee attitudes and behavior, have been studied since the initiation of formal work entities. Over this time, scholars have identified myriad impactful internal and external factors. Absent though are investigations examining economic downturns despite their acknowledged pervasiveness and destructive effects on worker performance and well-being. To address this theoretical gap, a multistage model acknowledging the impact of recessions on workplace responses, response effects, and environmental considerations is proposed. Inherent in this discussion is the role of economic decline on reactive change processes, the nature of work, and the structure and design of organizations. These significant changes affect employee attitudes and behaviors in ways that increase the political nature of these work environments. Organizational factors and employee responses to heightened recession-driven politics are discussed. Additionally, theoretically relevant intervening variables capable of influencing work outcomes are described. The chapter is concluded by discussing the implications of this theoretical framework as well as directions for future research.

In much of the literature written in Sustainability and Environmental Justice, the focus is on the effects of government mismanagement or corporate social irresponsibility, or CSR ignored for the goal of greater profits. Certainly we have seen natural resources ripped from communities and nations for the benefit of corporate profits (Sarkar, 2013). The idea that a participatory government will lead to greater efforts for sustainability must be viewed in the light of its times and economy (Gonzalez-Perez, 2013). What happens when the man-made disaster precedes or clashes with natural disaster? The Great Recession of 2008 was stunning in the rapidity with which it spread around the globe. The recession illustrated a global acceptance of financial wisdom that had been presented as fact and yet could easily be undermined by people who understood the barriers, boundaries, and restrictions in place as well as where the financial assumptions could be deceived by introduction of new terms and definitions as in the case of credit default swaps.

In this chapter, we focus on the influence of the recession on one of the most powerful financial capitals of the world, New York City. We discuss the general effect of the recession on New York City as a whole and then take a narrower look at each of the five boroughs, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. We examine the disparate economic states of each borough and how the recession has impacted each of them. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of the general perception of Manhattan’s resilience to the recession and how is has impacted the other boroughs, such as the housing crisis in Staten Island and Queens following Hurricane Sandy, unemployment rates in the Bronx, and the rebuilding of a sustainable job market in Brooklyn.

We reviewed relevant literature, including academic research, reports issued by the State of New York, census data, articles printed in popular press outlets, and business resources to provide a thorough look at the influence of the Great Recession on New York City and each of its five boroughs. We found extensive support for the disparity amongst the five boroughs, despite the perception that New York City is thriving in the wake of the Great Recession and Hurricane Sandy. We detail the unique economic and environmental factors of each borough and explain how it influenced the impact of the Great Recession and subsequent natural disaster.

Manhattan was well insulated from the initial impact of the Great Recession, with tourism in the city remaining high through 2008 and financial firms on Wall Street experiencing record high profits well into 2009. Despite the downfall of Lehmann Brothers and Merrill Lynch, the financial bailouts and Federal Reserve credit available to Wall Street firms prevented Manhattan’s financial sector from experiencing the dramatic unemployment rates that the rest of New York and the United States were facing (DeFreitas, 2009).

The Great Recession hit disadvantaged areas, like the Bronx, harder than other areas of New York, while Hurricane Sandy halted the economic recovery in areas like Queens and Staten Island. While unemployment remains low in New York City as a whole, the recovery from the Great Recession has been uneven, further widening the gap between New York City’s boroughs, with the lower income areas at a greater disadvantage and the higher income areas souring. While Manhattan has recovered significantly, with Wall Street profits reaching record levels in 2009, other boroughs haven’t experienced the same economic upturn and are still facing significant challenges (Parrott, 2010). While the city has gained nearly 375,000 jobs, nearly twice the number of jobs that were lost during the Great Recession (Crain’s New York Business, 2013), the significant variance in wages and high costs of living has not greatly reduced the number of working poor across New York City and has not resulted in an evenly spread boost in wealth.

At the end of our chapter, we discuss “lessons learned” and, in particular, the importance of preparation for both fiscal and natural disasters. Local policy makers must ensure that the needs of its constituents are being met and will be met in the future if such hardship were to strike. Government leaders need to have a forward-looking plan, rather than simply handling immediate needs.

The originality of our content stems from a deeper look into the nuances of the economy of New York City. Statistics paint a picture of a thriving City, despite the Great Recession. However, understanding the distinct differences amongst the five boroughs illustrates that these citywide averages do not paint an accurate picture of life for New Yorkers off of Wall Street. The extent to which the high-income areas in Manhattan have recovered suggests that the economy of New York City as a whole is thriving, whereas the reality is that the middle-class has not recovered and the previously disadvantaged are now even more so. It is important to look at each of the five boroughs of New York City individually when creating policy to both recover from and prevent events such as the Great Recession and the destruction of Hurricane Sandy. Our chapter illustrates stark differences within New York City in the face of both financial and natural crises.

Despite recent advances, neither organizational studies nor the scholarship on economic resilience has systematically addressed how the ecologies of organizations that populate local economies can serve as infrastructures for responding proactively to economic shocks. Using county-level data, this study analyzes relationships between the prevalence of organizational alternatives to shareholder value-oriented (SVO) corporations within a particular locality and its unemployment levels during and after the Great Recession. The results support the hypothesis that the presence of such alternative organizations can enhance the capacities of local economies to resist and recover from recession shocks. Cooperative, municipal, and community-based enterprises, research universities, and nonprofits more generally were associated with greater resistance to the recession shock and stronger recoveries – specifically, lower surges in unemployment rates from 2007 to 2010 and greater reductions in unemployment rates from 2010 to 2016. By contrast, SVO corporations were associated with greater surges in unemployment and perhaps weaker recoveries. Providing a proof of concept, this study opens up new lines of inquiry for organizational studies by linking organizational ecologies to the promotion of collective efficacy and a more broadly shared prosperity in economic life.