Fifteen years after the Global Financial Crisis: Recessions and Business Cycles in the History of Economic Thought

The Great Recession: Four paradigmatic views

Ardalan Kavous, Marist College

Any explanation of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis is based on a worldview. The premise of this paper is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper takes the case of the 2008 financial crisis and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a much broader, deeper, and balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration.

Area: Eshet Conference

Keywords: Great Recession, Financial Crisis, Paradigms, Multi-Paradigmatic Approach

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