Rubrics » Bridging News
Romania, Second Among EU Members Regarding Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 In 2024, 93.3 million people in the EU (21.0% of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, which means they lived in households experiencing at least 1 of 3 poverty and social exclusion risks: risk of poverty, severe material and social deprivation, and living in a household with very low work intensity. Compared with 2023, there was a slight decrease of 0.3 percentage points (21.3% of the population, 94.6 million people). More
Trade War: Between Populism and 5D Chess
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 As President of the United States and leader of the free world, Donald Trump has pursued a radical agenda of institutional reform, reevaluating and recalibrating America’s relationships with both the international community and its formal allies. Although he faces pressing global security concerns—such as the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the looming prospect of a confrontation between Israel and Iran, and even rising tensions between India and Pakistan—Trump’s focus has remained firmly on his populist agenda: illegal (and legal) immigration, foreign trade, and the internal culture war. More
The Modern Complex Economy: Symphony or Cacophony? Cosmos or Chaos?
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 The overarching question concerning complex modern economies is the following: are they symphonic systems, harmoniously coordinated for the smooth functioning of the human economy and society and the fulfilment of human needs? Are they, also, compatible with virtue, beauty, honesty, character and, in general, with the life well lived and human flourishing? Or, are they rather huge arenas of vice, profiteering, greed, impersonal cold human interrelations, instability and recurring economic crises and cycles etc.? More
Mathe…magicians’ Superpower…lessness
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 I don’t know if Bertrand Russell, the famous and fabulous logician and philosopher, writer and civic activist (arrested, at 89, at an anti-nuclear protest, foreshadowing the roughing up, some 13 years ago, of a Romanian mathematician at an anti-real estate developer protest), would have liked the play on words in the subtitle. No more, no less, the Briton sought to rebuild mathematics entirely, emptying it of the rubble of overly specific notions, such as “number” or “square root”, in favour of pure concepts, such as “proposition” or “class”. The Russellian, logical reordering of mathematics follows the Newtonian, mathematical reordering of the natural sciences, but the logic of the physicist-mathematization of the social sciences is much shakier ground, despite its spread. From the arithmetic of the modest merchants to the econometrics of the modern mandarins, something makes it so that neither derivatives nor integrals automatically produce economic growth nor balanced budgets. Mathematical sciences are still exhibiting a quite majestic incapacitation. More
Rethinking Tariffs: A Critique Through the Lens of Strategic Trade Theory
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 In recent years, particularly during the Trump administration, we’ve seen a revival of protectionist policies that have sparked lively discussions about the role of tariffs in a nation’s development strategy. While people often support these policies as a way to boost domestic industries, protect jobs, or address unfair trade practices, classical economic theory—especially David Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage—provides a thoughtful critique of this approach. Yet modern trade dynamics captured in New Trade Theory, Global Value Chain analyses, and theories of Weaponized Interdependence suggest that today’s policymakers face a far more complex environment than Ricardo ever envisioned. To unpack the modern logic behind these tariff strategies, we must bridge historical trade theory, modern strategic trade models, and insights drawn from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. More
Hala Fatigue! Real’s Crown in Crisis
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 Wait—what? Bigger than politics? Yes. Because this isn’t about some passing political scandal. This is about the club. The biggest, boldest, most-decorated institution in the most beautiful game of all: football. It’s about Real Madrid. The Real Madrid. More
Romania, Largest Increase in Labour Cost Last Year
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 In 2024, compared with 2023, hourly labour costs at whole economy level expressed in euro rose by 5.0% in the EU and by 4.5% in the euro area. Within the euro area, hourly labour costs increased in all countries. The largest increases were recorded in Croatia (+14.2%), Latvia (+12.1%) and Lithuania (+10.8%) and the lowest in Czechia (+1.3%), followed by Finland (+1.8%) and Luxembourg (+2.1%). More
Nuclear Energy’s Economic Impact: A Balance Between Long-Term Gains and Accident Risks
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 More than before, people have become aware in an in-depth manner regarding global issues which not only define the present, but have also impacted recent decades, such as political instability, wars, pandemics, climate change, and, on top of these, a growing energy crisis, which is fueled by the rising demand of consumers and producers (with large corporations serving as both). The world has seemingly accepted the need for a less polluting, low-carbon intensive source of energy, as the fossil fuel usage declined by 2-3%, a modest percentage considering that the global energy demand has surged by 15% in the same period. Roughly 40% of this growth consisted of the so-called “clean” or “green” energy, which included sources like hydropower, wind, solar and also nuclear energy, which will be our main topic for this article. More
Offshore Wind Energy – a Solution for the Revival of the Black Sea Region?
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 The need for a transition to a green economy is a debate that should have been settled long ago so that the world’s countries could focus on making clean production technologies not only environmentally friendly but also cost-effective. Today, in an age when truth feels more subjective and interpretable than ever, this debate has become increasingly ambiguous and has taken on political connotations that are far too strong for a field as technical as this one. More
Bridges Are Built Not Only with Steel, Concrete, and Asphalt, but with Trust, Vision, and Economic Freedom
No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 In the age of “infrastructure diplomacy”—and we may place under such label the Three Seas Initiative (3SI)—, it is tempting to think that connectivity is just a matter of tracks, pipelines, and wires. But the true lifeblood of regional cooperation does not flow through stone, steel or silicon—it pulses through institutions, as, inter alia, last year’s laureates of the the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson—convincingly demonstrated. “Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better” —this is how the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences justified the award. It is common sense, before anything else, yet “command and control” does persist in governments’ fantasies. In the “Trimarium”—as 3SI is sometimes nicknamed, a reminder of Józef Piłsudski’s interwar geopolitical plan, Intermarium/Międzymorze—, where strategic geography meets political ambition, economic freedom emerges as “the” indispensable condition for durable connectivity. More
Protectionism: Solution or Problem? (III)
No. 52, Mar.-Apr. 2025 One might think that any market imperfection is a good reason to adopt protectionist measures. Indeed, a number of economists have fallen into this trap for almost two centuries: from the beginning of the modern history of international trade, in the first decades of the 19th century, to the 1950s, the solution of protectionism was repeatedly tried. Today, most economists argue, on the contrary, that protectionism is an inadequate and ineffective way of correcting internal market deficiencies. For example, if wages do not adjust quickly enough to the decline in demand for the products of a particular branch, a reduction determined by foreign competition, some contemporary economists argue that the appropriate government policy is to intervene – or, possibly, to cease intervention – in the labor market, where remedial measures can indeed be adopted that directly target the causes of the problem. More
The Tariff Man Strikes Again
No. 52, Mar.-Apr. 2025 Ideas have consequences. Wrong ideas have disastrous, deadly consequences. Adam Smith got the theory of value wrong. Starting from the mistaken premise that prices are causally explained by costs and identifying labor as the homogeneous element that is present at different stages in the production chain of a good, he developed the labor theory of value. A flawed theory that had very serious consequences in the real world. More
