The acclaimed New York Times bestselling history of financial crises

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing, and recovering their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, this time is different--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong.

Covering sixty-six countries across five continents and eight centuries, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises--including government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to the subprime mortgage catastrophe. Reinhart and Rogoff provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations.

A remarkable history of financial folly, This Time Is Different will influence financial and economic thinking and policy for decades to come.

Essays by prominent scholars and policymakers honor one of the most influential macroeconomists of the last thirty years, discussing the themes behind his work.

Guillermo Calvo, one of the most influential macroeconomists of the last thirty years, has made pathbreaking contributions in such areas as time-inconsistency, lack of credibility, stabilization, transition economies, debt maturity, capital flows, and financial crises. His work on macroeconomic issues relevant for developing countries has set the tone for much of the research in this area and greatly influenced practitioners' thinking in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. InMoney, Crises, and Transition, leading specialists in Calvo's main areas of expertise explore the themes behind this impressive body of work.

The essays take on the issues that have fascinated Calvo most as an academic, a senior advisor at the International Monetary Fund, and as the chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank: monetary and exchange rate policy (both in theory and practice); financial crises; debt, taxation, and reform; and transition and growth. A final section provides a behind-the-scenes look at Calvo's career and intellectual journey and includes an interview with Calvo himself.

Contributors
Leonardo Auernheimer, Fabrizio Coricelli, Padma Desai, Allan Drazen, Sebastian Edwards, Roque B. Fern ndez, Stanley Fischer, Ricardo Hausmann, Bostjan Jazbec, Peter Isard, Graciela L. Kaminsky, Michael Kumhof, Amartya Lahiri, Igal Magendzo, Enrique G. Mendoza, Frederic S. Mishkin, Igor Masten, Pritha Mitra, Alejandro Neut, Maurice Obstfeld, Edmund S. Phelps, Assaf Razin, Carmen M. Reinhart, Francisco Rodriguez, Efraim Sadka, Ratna Sahay, Rajesh Singh, Evan Tanner, Carlos A. V gh, Andr s Velasco, Rodrigo Wagner