This book is about the crises of the world economy that have occurred from the 1970s to the present day. It makes the specific case that the global economy has experienced six crises during this 50-year period. Crises of the global economy are periods of substantial slowdown in world economic activity—as measured by investment, industrial production, trade, or unemployment—in which many national economies are technically in recession. To pose the existence of crises of the global economy implies that the world economy is a real entity with its own dynamics; it implies also that...