The best known and most highly regarded book on financial crises Financial crises and speculative excess can be traced back to the very beginning of trade and commerce. Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed this volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a nature-like rhythm: they peak and purge, swell and storm. Now this newly revised and expanded Fourth Edition probes the most recent "natural disasters" of the markets--from the difficulties in East Asia and the repercussions of the Mexican crisis to the 1992 Sterling crisis. His sharply drawn history confronts a host of key questions. Charles P. Kindleberger (Boston, MA) was the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT for thirty-three years. He is a financial historian and prolific writer who has published over twenty-four books.

Revised and updated throughout, this brilliant survey of European financial history from the earliest times to the present by internationally renowned scholar and author Charles P. Kindleberger offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of money in Western Europe, bimetallism and theemergence of the gold standard, the banking systems of the Continent and the British Isles, and overviews of foreign investment, regional and global financial integration, and private and public finance in Western Europe. The new edition features expanded coverage of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies and important new material on recent developments in European monetary integration.

“The World in Depression is the best book on the subject, and the subject, in turn, is the economically decisive decade of the century so far.”—John Kenneth Galbraith "[Kindleberger] has written perhaps the finest analytical account of the run-up to the Great Depression and the ensuing run-down from it into mild recovery and eventual world war. [This] brilliant book remains a carefully documented admonition to our leading spirits to 'look to the ends' of what they are currently about."—Times Literary Supplement "Charles Kindleberger's The World in Depression opened American eyes to the failures of interdependence behind the First Great Depression. DeLong and Eichengreen render great service by bringing this history to today's readers, with a preface that notes grim parallels and rephrases urgent questions for the Eurozone and for the wider world. You can't go wrong by reading Kindleberger—and better late than never."—James K. Galbraith, author of Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis.

Charles Kindleberger's World Economic Primacy: 1500-1990 is a work of rare ambition and scope from one of our most respected economic historians. Extending over broad ranges of both history and geography, the work considers what it is that enables countries to achieve, at some period in their history, economic superiority over other countries, and what it is that makes them decline. Kindleberger begins with the Italian city-states in the fourteenth century, and traces the changing evolution of world economic primacy as it moves to Portugal and Spain, to the Low countries, to Great Britain, and to the United States, addressing the question of alleged U.S. decline. Additional chapters treat France as a perennial challenger, Germany which has twice aggressively sought superiority, and Japan, which may or may not become a candidate for the role of "number one." Kindleberger suggests that the economic vitality of a given country goes through a trajectory that can usefully (thought not precisely) be compared to a human life cycle. Like human beings, the growth of a state can be cut off by accident or catastrophe short of old age; unlike human beings, however, economies can have a second birth. In World Economic Primacy, Kindleberger takes into account the influence of complex historical, social, and cultural factors that determine economic leadership. A brilliant overview of the position of nations in the world economy, World Economic Primacy conveys profound insights into the causes of the rise and decline of the world's economic powers, past and present.

The essays collected here reflect the author's shift in interests from foreign exchange to international trade, economic growth, and economic history, especially financial history. Charles P. Kindleberger's rich and distinguised career has spanned nearly six decades. The essays collected here reflect the author's shift in interests from foreign exchange to international trade, economic growth, and economic history, especially financial history. They also contain dollops of sociology and political science. Kindleberger views himself as a historical economist who tests economic propositions against the historical record in more than one setting. The collection contains many of the jewels of Kindleberger's work. Most of the papers are strong on comparison (within Western Europe and between Europe and the United States), on economic or financial history, and on social science beyond the confines of economics.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes The best known and most highly regarded book on market crisis, Manias, Panics, and Crashes is entertaining, exhaustive, and thoroughly engaging. Since its introduction in 1978, it has charted a new landscape in the volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a nature-like rhythm: they peak and purge, swell and storm. Now in a newly revised and expanded third edition, Manias, Panics, and Crashes probes the most recent "natural disasters" of the markets-from Black Monday to the Japanese boom and bust, from the Sterling crisis and Peso devaluation to the potential "bubble" of today's technology stocks. Kindleberger's writing is both captivating and colorful, leading the reader through a myriad of financial free falls. From the currency devaluation in the Holy Roman Empire in 1618, through the California gold rush of the 1840s and '50s, all the way up to the crash of 1987 and last year's Peso devaluation, his sharply drawn history confronts a host of key questions: In the ups and downs of market behavior, where is the line between rational and irrational? Are the markets a fool's paradise in an explosive world? When the storm expands to dangerous proportions, who will calm the panic amid the thundering squall? Should a "lender of last resort" intervene to repair the wreckage and bury the carnage? Along with scores of casualties and criminals, a revealing common thread emerges from this rich history of manias, panics, and crashes: market crises are associated with greed and avarice. Just as money evolved from coins to include bank notes, bills of exchange, bank deposits, and checks, greed likewise took on many different forms. Lightning will strike an economic environment in strife, and Kindleberger explores what happens to the markets when conflicting interests arise. Manias, Panics, and Crashes can be regarded as a warning or a proposition, reminding readers, in many ways, that what goes around comes around. Like all true classics, Kindleberger's book remains timely-for better or for worse. "One never picks up a work by Charles Kindleberger without anticipating a feast of entertainment. But underneath the hilarious anecdotes, the elegant epigrams, and the graceful turns of phrase, Kindleberger is deadly serious." -from the Foreword by Peter L. Bernstein, author of Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street Originally written in 1978, Manias, Panics, and Crashes is still the best known and most highly regarded book on financial crises. From the currency devaluation in the Holy Roman Empire in 1618, through the California gold rush of the 1840s and '50s, all the way up to the crash of 1987 and last year's Peso devaluation, Manias, Panics, and Crashes reminds us that with regard to excess, greed, crisis, and money-what goes around still comes around. Acclaim for Manias, Panics, and Crashes "[Manias, Panics, and Crashes] is a scholarly account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries." -Richard Lambert, Financial Times "Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a durable guide to meditation: wise, witty, and practical. It is a template against which to measure the latest financial crisis-whatever and whenever that happens to be." -David Warsh, The Boston Globe "Manias, Panics, and Crashes glistens among the classic books on economics and finance." -S. Jay Levy, Chairman, The Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College "This book sparkles with the best of Kindleberger's wit, insight, and passion for financial history. A real delight." -Robert Z. Aliber, Professor of International Economics and Finance, University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business

This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system.

Charles P. Kindleberger is widely regarded as among the most accessible and intelligent practitioners of the economist's craft. This collection of his papers and lectures, articles and reviews, prepared over the past decade, focuses on the role of multinational corporations in the international economy, their relationships with home and host countries (both developed and less developed), the determinants of their size, the impetus to their investment behavior, their history, the literature about them, and their regulation.Chapters relate the phenomenon of the multinational corporation to the body of economic theory. They discuss multinational corporations in world affairs, size of firm and size of nation, the clash of economics and sociology and politics in the internationalization of business, restrictions on direct investment in host countries, direct investment in less developed countries and in militant developing nations, ownership and contract in international business, and multinationals and the small open economy.The origins of United States direct investment in France, and international banks and international business are taken up, followed by Kindleberger's reviews of major books on the multinational corporation and including his criticisms of such popular writing as Barnet and Moller's Global Reach, and Magdoff's Age of Imperialism.Kindleberger's policy statements before various national and international governments, in which he proposes the creation of a loose framework among national authorities to harmonize policies toward the multinational corporation are also included.Charles P. Kindleberger is Ford International Professor of Economics Emeritus, MIT and Visiting Professor, Brandeis University.