Costas Lapavitsas is Professor in Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and specialised in the theory of banking and finance.* The crisis of 2007-2009 arose after the burst of an enormous bubble in real estate in the USA and the UK. But the underlying trends that led to it are characteristic of financialisation in developed countries. The crisis also drew in a range of developing countries via the mechanisms of global trade and finance. It be...   read more >>

Sanoussi Bilal is head of Economic and Trade Cooperation Programme, at the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Maastricht and Brussels The financial crisis, though having its origin in developed countries, has generated a global recession that has severe consequences for developing countries, including in Africa, in terms of their prospects for economic growth and development, notably through a decline of trade and investment flows, lower remittances, some lower co...   read more >>

Astha Kapoor is studying for her Master of Arts degree in Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, the Netherlands. Previously, she worked as a journalist for the Mail Today newspaper in New Delhi, India, and was a researcher for the Centre for Policy Alternatives in New Delhi. There are very few people who know about India's involvement in the global diamond trade. South Africa, Antwerp and New York are usually the names that first come to mind, even though Ind...   read more >>

Rolph van der Hoeven is Professor on Employment and Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague and member of the Committee on Development Cooperation of the Dutch Government. He has been Director of ILO’s Policy Coherence Group and Manager of the Technical Secretariat of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization in Geneva. ‘Social and political dimensions of the global crisis: Implications for developing countries’. Under this title,...   read more >>

Evert-jan Quak is a freelance journalist, author of ‘The invisible label’ (Het onzichtbare label, KIT Publishers, 2009) and coordinates this weblog ‘Redeveloping finance’ for The Broker. Some interesting discussions about global imbalances took place at the conference ‘Recovery towards what? Finance, Justice, Sustainability’, organised by the Bretton Woods Project in London, on the 6th November 2009. Huge global imbalances emerged in the 2000s, caused by US current-account deficits and C...   read more >>

Peter van Bergeijk is Professor of International Economics & Macroeconomics at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands. Is the process of globalization over the top? The period since the Second World War has been characterised by an exceptional strong rate of growth of world trade. The last sixty years of almost continued growth constitute an exceptional chapter in the history of world trade indeed. Equally exceptional are both the speed and the depth of the downt...   read more >>

Arjan de Haan is Senior Lecturer Social Policy at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands. The ISS conference ‘Crisis of Capitalism? Crisis of Development’ highlighted the great and probably increasing diversity in perspectives on this ‘global’ crisis. One the one hand there is the perception of and focus on the nucleus of the crisis, the financial system in the Anglo-Saxon world that had created its own bubble following the promises of liberalization. The impac...   read more >>

Dirk Willem te Velde is the programme leader of the Investment and Growth Programme at the International Economic Development Group of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, United Kingdom. A year on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and talk in developed countries has moved from recession to recovery. Financial conditions in developed countries have improved, there has been a boost in business confidence, export orders are growing, industrial production is increasing an...   read more >>

Evert-jan Quak is a freelance journalist, author of ’The Invisible Label’ (‘Het onzichtbare label’, KIT Publishers, 2009) and will coordinate this weblog ‘Redeveloping Finance’ for The Broker. Two years ago the global financial sector imploded. Economists, as well as finance experts, have suffered a crisis of their own. Many had predicted a new era of stability but now they have to explain how the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in 1929 happened despite their optimism....   read more >>