Weighing up the costs and benefits of economic interdependence in a finance-driven world from a development perspective, this book argues that globalization, understood and promoted as absolute freedom for all forms of capital, has been oversold to the Global South, and that the South should be as selective about globalization as the North, rebalance domestic and external sources of growth, and better manage integration into unstable international finance.

‘Liberalization, Financial Instability and Economic Development’ brings together a range of essays from Yılmaz Akyüz’s recent work, refuting the myth that emerging economies have now successfully decoupled from the North and have become new engines of growth. The book challenges the orthodoxy on the link between financial deepening and economic growth, as well as the relationship between the efficiency of financial markets and the benefits of liberalization. Rather, Akyüz’s work urges developing countries to use all possible tools to control capital flows and asset bubbles in order to prevent financial fragility and crises, and recommends regional policy options while recognizing the challenges posed by the institutional structures already in place.

Yılmaz Akyüz is chief economist at the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for developing countries based in Geneva, Switzerland. 

Introduction; PART I: LIBERALIZATION, STABILITY AND GROWTH; Chapter 1: Financial Liberalization: The Key Issues; Chapter 2: Managing Financial Instability in Emerging Markets: A Keynesian Perspective; Chapter 3: From Liberalization to Investment and Jobs: Lost in Translation; Chapter 4: Exchange Rate Management, Growth and Stability: National and Regional Policy Options in Asia; Chapter 5: Reforming the IMF: Back to the Drawing Board; PART II: THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; Chapter 6: The Current Global Financial Turmoil and Asian Developing Countries; Chapter 7: The Global Economic Crisis and Asian Developing Countries: Impact, Policy Response and Medium-Term Prospects; Chapter 8: The Staggering Rise of the South?

“Yılmaz Akyüz is one of the most innovative thinkers in development economics whose insights have contributed to a much richer understanding of the opportunities and challenges of globalization in developing countries. At a time of increasing global instability, if we fail to listen to his advice, we do so at our own peril.” —Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, University of Oxford