In the years that preceded the Great Recession of 2008-09, many financial institutions in the developed world engaged in practices that increased the risk of systemic failure in the markets. The economics profession itself, overly confident of its ability to engineer stability, encouraged...

Arguments are presented in the case of Eastern European transitioncountries for combining the restructuring of insolvent pay-as-you-goretirement systems with the introduction of mandatory, private,funded pensions. They involve the reduction of dead-weight loss,the return to formal activity of...