This book brings together an important body of new essays on key economic problems and challenges of the 1990s. The essays provide new perspectives on key issues including economic development, East Europe, 1992, the US trade deficit, protectionism, the unification of Germany, privatization and many other topical issues. The papers included in the volume were presented at a conference organized by Paul Davidson and Jan Kregel and organized around three basic problems of economic development, debt and the international payments system; integration and reconstruction of Western and Eastern Europe; and problems facing the US economy. The contributors represent an international group of distinguished economists. Economic Problems of the 1990s is an essential reference point for all economists concerned with economic problems and prospects in the late 20th century. It provides readers with an understanding of the problems facing the international economy and with innovative suggestions for solutions.
Davidson did not originally choose economics as a profession. His primary training was in chemistry, for which he got a BSc from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1951 he worked in that same university as an instructor in physiology and chemistry. He soon switched to economics, receiving his MBA from the City University of New York in 1955, and completing his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959.
He has taught economics at University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, Bristol University, University of Cambridge, and the University of Tennessee. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Schwartz Center For Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research and is currently an Emeritus Holly Professor of Excellence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is especially known for promoting a Post Keynesian school of macroeconomics. He and Sidney Weintraub founded the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics in 1978. He is the Editor of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics.