This paper first briefly outlines the background to the 2007-08 international financial crisis. It then goes on to examine five of the main approaches that have been put forward to explain the crisis: the widespread presence of perverse incentives; the over-expansionary monetary policy of the US...

Most mainstream neoclassical economists completely failed to anticipate the crisis which broke in 2007 and 2008. There is however a long tradition of economic analysis which emphasises how growth in a capitalist economy leads to an accumulation of tensions and results in periodic crises. This...