Ilene Grabel
Biographic Data
| ID | 456411 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilene Grabel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilene |
| FAMILY NAME | Grabel |
| SIGNATURE | GRABEL I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Denver |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7828-8089 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 69 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Ethical Imperative of Possibilism in an Era of Despair
The ethics of engaged scholarship in a complex world
Social scientists must grapple with how to pursue knowledge about an uncertain and complex world. This challenge is accentuated when scholars wish to engage responsibly with policy-makers and the public in the interests of social betterment. In this article, we use the scholarly literature on uncertainty and complexity to examine how these issues complicate the practice of engaged scholarship. We ground our analysis in interviews with publicly en…
The War in Ukraine and the End of the American Financial Order
The crises of 1997–98, 2008, and the pandemic accelerated contradictory changes in global financial governance. Taken together, the change and stasis propelled by these crises is coalescing around a fragmented “post-American financial order.” The war in Ukraine represents another inflection point. The war has facilitated the reassertion of American financial power and cooperation among rich nations. However, like previous crises, the war is creat…
A World on Fire: Observations and Speculations in a Crottyian Vein
I offer this article as a small way of honoring my friend, mentor, and role model Jim Crotty, whose intellectual legacy, commitment to engaged scholarship, lived experience, and warmth and generosity continue to influence me profoundly. Here, I offer several observations and speculations on the state of play in the global and US financial systems in a Crottyian vein. These include several 1980s throwbacks—bank failures in the United States; renti…
Economics for an uncertain world
Uncertainty, where we do not know the likelihood of future events, dominates our world. This article examines how economics as a profession and discipline can address uncertainty. From Frank Knight to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich von Hayek to George Shackle, economics has highlighted the importance of uncertain knowledge and distinguished this from calculable risk. In this article we show how such insights were lost through the rise of narrow…
Global Financial Governance and Progressive Feminist Agendas
Feminists and other progressives have long argued that global macroeconomic governance is deeply deficient. The deficiencies have been revealed and amplified by the COVID-19 crisis. The need to radically reconstruct the global economic governance architecture is therefore pressing. Albert Hirschman’s conception of “possibilism” is particularly relevant for navigating these challenges. In the spirit of Hirschmanian possibilism, I make a case for w…
Albert O. Hirschman: An intellectual biography
It could be said that Albert O. Hirschman produced some of the most innovative and challenging work in the social sciences in the twentieth century. Though formally trained as an economist, Hirschman's writings and legacy extend across many disciplines and subfields. The title of one of his best-known essay collections, Essays in trespassing: economics to politics and beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), perhaps best captures his…
Irreparable ignorance, protean power, and economics
The ongoing crisis in mainstream economics has opened the door to recognition of true uncertainty. Economists are increasingly embracing uncertainty and tracing its implications for responsible economic practice and policy design that foregrounds rather than dismisses the limits to knowledge. Protean Power (PP) promotes a similar shift in international relations. PP advances a key distinction between operational and radical uncertainty. We argue …
The BRICS and collective financial statecraft
The BRICS, as the group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is known, represent an international relations Rorschach test. For some observers, the group is emblematic of unfolding tectonic shifts in global economic and financial governance that herald the end of a unipolar US- (and western-)led liberal world order. BRICS sceptics disagree, of course. The group plays by a rulebook not so different from that of the incumbent po…
Continuity, Discontinuity and Incoherence in the Bretton Woods Order: A Hirschmanian Reading
This article examines the effects of the Asian crisis and especially the global financial crisis on developmental finance (that is, long-term project finance and counter-cyclical liquidity support) and the global financial architecture. In this connection three claims are advanced. The first is positive: that the crises occasioned meaningful although ad hoc, uneven discontinuities. The conjunction of discontinuities and continuities is imparting …
The Upside of a Messier Global Financial Architecture
At least one good thing may have emerged from the crisis: new international lending institutions led by developing nations are challenging and complementing the old US-dominated regime
Reflections on the Economics Profession, the Neoliberal Conjuncture, and the Emerging Democratic Crisis: An Analysis in the Spirit of Albert O. Hirschman
How might Albert O. Hirschman have us theorize the culpability of the economics profession in the profound anti-democratic impulses that have taken root in so many parts of the world? In my reading, Hirschman would want to hold the profession accountable for having produced the unfolding democratic crisis. He was a profound critic of the pursuit of institutional and policy coherence, such as embodied in the utopian neoliberal project, and the ass…
Post-Crisis Experiments in Development Finance Architectures: A Hirschmanian Perspective On ‘Productive Incoherence’
The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing world’s financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of “productive incoherence” which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctr…
The rebranding of capital controls in an era of productive incoherence
The rebranding of capital controls during the global crisis has widened the policy space in the financial arena to a greater, more consistent degree than following the Asian crisis. How are we to account for this extraordinary ideational and policy evolution? The paper highlights five factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls. These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states, largely as a conse…
Capital controls and the global financial crisis: An introduction’
The global financial crisis of 2008 opened a new chapter in the debate over the consequences and management of international private capital flows. During the neo-liberal era, one had to look to th
Handbook of Global Economic Governance: Players, Powers and Paradigms, by Manuela Moschella and Catherine Weaver (eds)
The global financial crisis has raised many questions for scholars of international political economy (IPE). Chief among them are the following: did the institutions, networks, and arrangements tha
Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual
Child Migration in Africa explores the mobility of children without their parents within West Africa. Drawing on the experiences of children from rural Burkina Faso and Ghana, the book provides rich material on the circumstances of children’s voluntary migration and their experiences of it. Their accounts challenge the normative ideals of what a ‘good’ childhood is, which often underlie public debates about children's migration, education and wor…
Financialization and Government Borrowing Capacity in Emerging Markets, by Iain Hardie: London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
In his compelling new book, Iain Hardie asks why some emerging economy governments are more able than others to raise new funds or refinance existing debt through private markets without evidence o
Global Financial Governance and Development Finance in the Wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis
This study examines three related questions. How has the global financial crisis of 2008 affected the influence that developing countries have within the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? What new policy space is available to developing countries? What alternative financial architectures will emerge as competitors or complements to the IMF? The study finds that IMF practice on capital controls has changed partly as a consequence of the crisis; t…
The future of international political economy: Introduction to the 20th anniversary issue of Ripe
An anniversary issue provides an inescapably inviting opportunity to reflect on the past, evaluate the present, and contemplate the future. Eschewing the self-congratulatory rhetoric of traditional anniversary celebrations, we have devoted this 20th anniversary issue of RIPE to contributions that critically examine the academic discipline of international political economy, focusing on our collective challenges and limitations as much as on our a…
Not your grandfather's IMF: Global crisis, 'productive incoherence' and developmental policy space
The response by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (and developing country national governments) to the current global financial crisis represents a moment of what I term ‘productive incoherence’, which has displaced the constraining ‘neoliberal coherence’ of the past several decades. Productive incoherence refers to the proliferation of inconsistent and even contradictory strategies and statements by the IMF that to date have not congealed in…
Remittances: Political Economy and Developmental Implications
Private remittances are becoming an increasingly important part of the financial landscape of many developing countries. Indeed, for some such countries, these flows are the single most important type of international capital inflow—public or private--and they have become an important source of purchasing power and foreign exchange. The growing importance of remittances has stimulated a great deal of discussion among scholars and policymakers. Ho…
Neoliberal Finance and Crisis in the Developing World
The Mexican financial implosion of 1994-1995 marked the beginning of a parade of financial crises throughout the developing world that today shows no signs of abating. From the Asian crises of 1997-1998, to Russia and Brazil shortly thereafter, to Turkey in early 2001, and Argentina today, financial instability has swept through those developing countries that have embraced neoliberal financial reform. Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Man…
The political economy of 'policy credibility': The new-classical macroeconomics and the remaking of emerging economies
The criterion of 'policy credibility' is invoked with increasing frequency today by new-classical development economists in debates over economic and institutional reform in developing and transitional countries. The paper argues that the credibility criterion is used to privilege neoliberal economic policies and associated institutions. The paper demonstrates that the credibility criterion is theoretically anti-pluralist and politically anti-dem…
Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy
The authors of this book challenge mainstream thinking about the nature of globalization. While not hostile to markets per se, they believe that capitalist market processes, left to operate freely, tend to generate injustice, insecurity, instability, and inefficiency. Taking account of the new realities of globalization, this volume explores an unusually wide range of subjects, including trade integration, multinational corporations, labor market…
The rebranding of capital controls in an era of productive incoherence
The rebranding of capital controls during the global crisis has widened the policy space in the financial arena to a greater, more consistent degree than following the Asian crisis. How are we to account for this extraordinary ideational and policy evolution? The paper highlights five factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls. These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states, largely as a conse…
Marketing the third world: The contradictions of portfolio investment in the global economy
Global Financial Governance and Development Finance in the Wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis
This study examines three related questions. How has the global financial crisis of 2008 affected the influence that developing countries have within the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? What new policy space is available to developing countries? What alternative financial architectures will emerge as competitors or complements to the IMF? The study finds that IMF practice on capital controls has changed partly as a consequence of the crisis; t…
The BRICS and collective financial statecraft
The BRICS, as the group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is known, represent an international relations Rorschach test. For some observers, the group is emblematic of unfolding tectonic shifts in global economic and financial governance that herald the end of a unipolar US- (and western-)led liberal world order. BRICS sceptics disagree, of course. The group plays by a rulebook not so different from that of the incumbent po…
Capital controls and the global financial crisis: An introduction’
The global financial crisis of 2008 opened a new chapter in the debate over the consequences and management of international private capital flows. During the neo-liberal era, one had to look to th
Reflections on the Economics Profession, the Neoliberal Conjuncture, and the Emerging Democratic Crisis: An Analysis in the Spirit of Albert O. Hirschman
How might Albert O. Hirschman have us theorize the culpability of the economics profession in the profound anti-democratic impulses that have taken root in so many parts of the world? In my reading, Hirschman would want to hold the profession accountable for having produced the unfolding democratic crisis. He was a profound critic of the pursuit of institutional and policy coherence, such as embodied in the utopian neoliberal project, and the ass…
The future of international political economy: Introduction to the 20th anniversary issue of Ripe
An anniversary issue provides an inescapably inviting opportunity to reflect on the past, evaluate the present, and contemplate the future. Eschewing the self-congratulatory rhetoric of traditional anniversary celebrations, we have devoted this 20th anniversary issue of RIPE to contributions that critically examine the academic discipline of international political economy, focusing on our collective challenges and limitations as much as on our a…
Remittances: Political Economy and Developmental Implications
Private remittances are becoming an increasingly important part of the financial landscape of many developing countries. Indeed, for some such countries, these flows are the single most important type of international capital inflow—public or private--and they have become an important source of purchasing power and foreign exchange. The growing importance of remittances has stimulated a great deal of discussion among scholars and policymakers. Ho…
Economics for an uncertain world
Uncertainty, where we do not know the likelihood of future events, dominates our world. This article examines how economics as a profession and discipline can address uncertainty. From Frank Knight to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich von Hayek to George Shackle, economics has highlighted the importance of uncertain knowledge and distinguished this from calculable risk. In this article we show how such insights were lost through the rise of narrow…
Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual
Child Migration in Africa explores the mobility of children without their parents within West Africa. Drawing on the experiences of children from rural Burkina Faso and Ghana, the book provides rich material on the circumstances of children’s voluntary migration and their experiences of it. Their accounts challenge the normative ideals of what a ‘good’ childhood is, which often underlie public debates about children's migration, education and wor…
The ethics of engaged scholarship in a complex world
Social scientists must grapple with how to pursue knowledge about an uncertain and complex world. This challenge is accentuated when scholars wish to engage responsibly with policy-makers and the public in the interests of social betterment. In this article, we use the scholarly literature on uncertainty and complexity to examine how these issues complicate the practice of engaged scholarship. We ground our analysis in interviews with publicly en…
Irreparable ignorance, protean power, and economics
The ongoing crisis in mainstream economics has opened the door to recognition of true uncertainty. Economists are increasingly embracing uncertainty and tracing its implications for responsible economic practice and policy design that foregrounds rather than dismisses the limits to knowledge. Protean Power (PP) promotes a similar shift in international relations. PP advances a key distinction between operational and radical uncertainty. We argue …
Post-Crisis Experiments in Development Finance Architectures: A Hirschmanian Perspective On ‘Productive Incoherence’
The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing world’s financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of “productive incoherence” which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctr…
Continuity, Discontinuity and Incoherence in the Bretton Woods Order: A Hirschmanian Reading
This article examines the effects of the Asian crisis and especially the global financial crisis on developmental finance (that is, long-term project finance and counter-cyclical liquidity support) and the global financial architecture. In this connection three claims are advanced. The first is positive: that the crises occasioned meaningful although ad hoc, uneven discontinuities. The conjunction of discontinuities and continuities is imparting …
Neoliberal Finance and Crisis in the Developing World
The Mexican financial implosion of 1994-1995 marked the beginning of a parade of financial crises throughout the developing world that today shows no signs of abating. From the Asian crises of 1997-1998, to Russia and Brazil shortly thereafter, to Turkey in early 2001, and Argentina today, financial instability has swept through those developing countries that have embraced neoliberal financial reform. Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Man…
Assessing the impact of financial liberalisation on stock market volatility in selected developing countries
This article argues for the importance of measuring stock market volatility following financial liberalisation in developing countries. Three alternative indices for measuring volatility are developed; these are used to examine the view that financial liberalisation induces increased asset price volatility. Based on the limited data available, this view is corroborated in the majority of countries investigated
Marketing the third world: The contradictions of portfolio investment in the global economy
Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy
The authors of this book challenge mainstream thinking about the nature of globalization. While not hostile to markets per se, they believe that capitalist market processes, left to operate freely, tend to generate injustice, insecurity, instability, and inefficiency. Taking account of the new realities of globalization, this volume explores an unusually wide range of subjects, including trade integration, multinational corporations, labor market…
The political economy of 'policy credibility': The new-classical macroeconomics and the remaking of emerging economies
The criterion of 'policy credibility' is invoked with increasing frequency today by new-classical development economists in debates over economic and institutional reform in developing and transitional countries. The paper argues that the credibility criterion is used to privilege neoliberal economic policies and associated institutions. The paper demonstrates that the credibility criterion is theoretically anti-pluralist and politically anti-dem…
Neoliberal Finance and Crisis in the Developing World
The Mexican financial implosion of 1994-1995 marked the beginning of a parade of financial crises throughout the developing world that today shows no signs of abating. From the Asian crises of 1997-1998, to Russia and Brazil shortly thereafter, to Turkey in early 2001, and Argentina today, financial instability has swept through those developing countries that have embraced neoliberal financial reform. Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Man…
Remittances: Political Economy and Developmental Implications
Private remittances are becoming an increasingly important part of the financial landscape of many developing countries. Indeed, for some such countries, these flows are the single most important type of international capital inflow—public or private--and they have become an important source of purchasing power and foreign exchange. The growing importance of remittances has stimulated a great deal of discussion among scholars and policymakers. Ho…
Not your grandfather's IMF: Global crisis, 'productive incoherence' and developmental policy space
The response by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (and developing country national governments) to the current global financial crisis represents a moment of what I term ‘productive incoherence’, which has displaced the constraining ‘neoliberal coherence’ of the past several decades. Productive incoherence refers to the proliferation of inconsistent and even contradictory strategies and statements by the IMF that to date have not congealed in…
Financialization and Government Borrowing Capacity in Emerging Markets, by Iain Hardie: London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
In his compelling new book, Iain Hardie asks why some emerging economy governments are more able than others to raise new funds or refinance existing debt through private markets without evidence o
Global Financial Governance and Development Finance in the Wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis
This study examines three related questions. How has the global financial crisis of 2008 affected the influence that developing countries have within the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? What new policy space is available to developing countries? What alternative financial architectures will emerge as competitors or complements to the IMF? The study finds that IMF practice on capital controls has changed partly as a consequence of the crisis; t…
The future of international political economy: Introduction to the 20th anniversary issue of Ripe
An anniversary issue provides an inescapably inviting opportunity to reflect on the past, evaluate the present, and contemplate the future. Eschewing the self-congratulatory rhetoric of traditional anniversary celebrations, we have devoted this 20th anniversary issue of RIPE to contributions that critically examine the academic discipline of international political economy, focusing on our collective challenges and limitations as much as on our a…
The rebranding of capital controls in an era of productive incoherence
The rebranding of capital controls during the global crisis has widened the policy space in the financial arena to a greater, more consistent degree than following the Asian crisis. How are we to account for this extraordinary ideational and policy evolution? The paper highlights five factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls. These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states, largely as a conse…
Capital controls and the global financial crisis: An introduction’
The global financial crisis of 2008 opened a new chapter in the debate over the consequences and management of international private capital flows. During the neo-liberal era, one had to look to th
Handbook of Global Economic Governance: Players, Powers and Paradigms, by Manuela Moschella and Catherine Weaver (eds)
The global financial crisis has raised many questions for scholars of international political economy (IPE). Chief among them are the following: did the institutions, networks, and arrangements tha
Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual
Child Migration in Africa explores the mobility of children without their parents within West Africa. Drawing on the experiences of children from rural Burkina Faso and Ghana, the book provides rich material on the circumstances of children’s voluntary migration and their experiences of it. Their accounts challenge the normative ideals of what a ‘good’ childhood is, which often underlie public debates about children's migration, education and wor…
Post-Crisis Experiments in Development Finance Architectures: A Hirschmanian Perspective On ‘Productive Incoherence’
The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing world’s financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of “productive incoherence” which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctr…
The Upside of a Messier Global Financial Architecture
At least one good thing may have emerged from the crisis: new international lending institutions led by developing nations are challenging and complementing the old US-dominated regime
Reflections on the Economics Profession, the Neoliberal Conjuncture, and the Emerging Democratic Crisis: An Analysis in the Spirit of Albert O. Hirschman
How might Albert O. Hirschman have us theorize the culpability of the economics profession in the profound anti-democratic impulses that have taken root in so many parts of the world? In my reading, Hirschman would want to hold the profession accountable for having produced the unfolding democratic crisis. He was a profound critic of the pursuit of institutional and policy coherence, such as embodied in the utopian neoliberal project, and the ass…
The BRICS and collective financial statecraft
The BRICS, as the group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is known, represent an international relations Rorschach test. For some observers, the group is emblematic of unfolding tectonic shifts in global economic and financial governance that herald the end of a unipolar US- (and western-)led liberal world order. BRICS sceptics disagree, of course. The group plays by a rulebook not so different from that of the incumbent po…
Continuity, Discontinuity and Incoherence in the Bretton Woods Order: A Hirschmanian Reading
This article examines the effects of the Asian crisis and especially the global financial crisis on developmental finance (that is, long-term project finance and counter-cyclical liquidity support) and the global financial architecture. In this connection three claims are advanced. The first is positive: that the crises occasioned meaningful although ad hoc, uneven discontinuities. The conjunction of discontinuities and continuities is imparting …
Irreparable ignorance, protean power, and economics
The ongoing crisis in mainstream economics has opened the door to recognition of true uncertainty. Economists are increasingly embracing uncertainty and tracing its implications for responsible economic practice and policy design that foregrounds rather than dismisses the limits to knowledge. Protean Power (PP) promotes a similar shift in international relations. PP advances a key distinction between operational and radical uncertainty. We argue …
Global Financial Governance and Progressive Feminist Agendas
Feminists and other progressives have long argued that global macroeconomic governance is deeply deficient. The deficiencies have been revealed and amplified by the COVID-19 crisis. The need to radically reconstruct the global economic governance architecture is therefore pressing. Albert Hirschman’s conception of “possibilism” is particularly relevant for navigating these challenges. In the spirit of Hirschmanian possibilism, I make a case for w…
Albert O. Hirschman: An intellectual biography
It could be said that Albert O. Hirschman produced some of the most innovative and challenging work in the social sciences in the twentieth century. Though formally trained as an economist, Hirschman's writings and legacy extend across many disciplines and subfields. The title of one of his best-known essay collections, Essays in trespassing: economics to politics and beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), perhaps best captures his…
The War in Ukraine and the End of the American Financial Order
The crises of 1997–98, 2008, and the pandemic accelerated contradictory changes in global financial governance. Taken together, the change and stasis propelled by these crises is coalescing around a fragmented “post-American financial order.” The war in Ukraine represents another inflection point. The war has facilitated the reassertion of American financial power and cooperation among rich nations. However, like previous crises, the war is creat…
A World on Fire: Observations and Speculations in a Crottyian Vein
I offer this article as a small way of honoring my friend, mentor, and role model Jim Crotty, whose intellectual legacy, commitment to engaged scholarship, lived experience, and warmth and generosity continue to influence me profoundly. Here, I offer several observations and speculations on the state of play in the global and US financial systems in a Crottyian vein. These include several 1980s throwbacks—bank failures in the United States; renti…
Economics for an uncertain world
Uncertainty, where we do not know the likelihood of future events, dominates our world. This article examines how economics as a profession and discipline can address uncertainty. From Frank Knight to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich von Hayek to George Shackle, economics has highlighted the importance of uncertain knowledge and distinguished this from calculable risk. In this article we show how such insights were lost through the rise of narrow…
Economics (22 works) · Political science (21 works) · Law (15 works) · Global Financial Crisis and Policies (14 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Finance (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · State Capitalism and Financial Governance (9 works) · Financial crisis (8 works)