Rubrics » Bridging News
On Conspiracy Theories and Theorizing
We are inundated with both conspiracy theories and warnings to recognize them as such and ignore them. These instructions come from legitimate elites employing legitimate media sources that feel they are being crowded out by “alternative facts” and other phenomena which have gained new (visible) breadth and scope through the rise of social media. Accompanying it is the individual who is not only a consumer but also a producer of media, if only through his ability to retweet or repackage messages for delivery to his own network. More
Why Nations Move Their Capitals
When asked about the capital city of a country, the obvious answer may not be the correct one and there are plenty of examples for this. Usually, we tend to think of cities like Istanbul, Sydney, Lagos or Rio de Janeiro as being capitals, but in fact, they are not. Sometimes the biggest city is not the seat of government and the list might grow as both Egypt and Indonesia announced they plan to build new ones from scratch. More
Adaptive Preferences in the Labour Market
We are currently witnessing a reconfiguration of labour market requirements both in terms of employment and in terms of significant changes in skills and knowledge required by digital technologies, with an effect on contractual work arrangements. Under the influence of technology, especially digital technology, some jobs change, others disappear, others are created, thus we are witnessing a phenomenon of polarization of employment with implications, including on wages, leading to increasing inequalities in society. More
The Place of Football in the Political Culture of the Twentieth-Century British Working Class
Today, football is one of the world’s most popular cultural phenomena. But in order to understand how this ball game has managed to transcend virtually all physical and cultural boundaries, we must take a quick look at its origins – namely, the emergence of a recognised national sport of British workingmen, reflecting their aspirations for social inclusion, political empowerment, and fairness. More
Pleas for Trade Remain Trendy in the Midst of Globalization
As an economist, I share the belief that, when it comes to realistic alternative systems of social organization, we always choose between the state and the market, between coercion and private property, bureaucratism and entrepreneurship. Thus, depending on the criterion of property rights – the most important, after all –, economic systems can only be either the free market (or the system of private ownership of the means of production), or socialism (or the system of public, state, “non-private” ownership of the means of production), or interventionism (the system in which certain sectors – or certain options for the use/allocation of scarce resources – are managed in the private sector, while others in the public one)[1] More
The Great Reset: Rethinking the Future of Work
In retrospect, the year 2020 will certainly be seen as the Great Reset. This theme is one that have been echoed repeatedly from different quarters. It is almost certain that post-Covid, the world of work will no longer be geographically bound. More
Transatlantic Exchange: Introducing Francis Lieber
It is remarkable how quickly America was transformed from an isolated agrarian republic in 1800 into a hegemonic industrial power by 1900. Intellectual and cultural changes that began taking root in the early half of the century yielded a cornucopia of new fruits in the latter half, including tax-supported public libraries, the rise of the scientific professions, and German-style graduate education. The impact of democracy, nationalism, industrialization, the reform crusades, sectionalism, urbanization, commerce, and immigration together gave new urgency to Crevecoeur’s old question: “What is this new man, the American?” More
Tackling Climate Change and the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis
The issue of climate change has been a global concern in recent years. Based on the theory that global warming is caused by human activity, in the context of industrialization in the last century, governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, international actors, have actively engaged in an unprecedented effort to mitigate the negative effects of greenhouse gases and to reduce emissions. More
How Spare Time Legislation Impacts the Workforce in the West
With today’s modern world being as complex and susceptible to constant change as it is, it is safe to assume that few people, if any, would be able to envision a lifestyle without some basic form of balance. Said balance is sure to include a set of principles, values and rules within which our existence is not only shaped, but also sustained and enabled, while maintaining predictability, order and continuity in our social and economic lives. More
Piketty-Saez v. Lakner-Milanovic: Visions on Income Inequality
The issue of labor in contemporary Economics and society is a very interesting one. First of all, the rapid changes such as the accelerated evolution of technology and the emergence of new economic paradigms have radically influenced the vision on labor. Secondly, with all of these changes, some positive, labor still faces many issues, some of which are very old, such as forced labor or even slavery – even now, with its contemporary forms – and some which are a direct result of modernization, such as low job matching efficiency or welfare systems. These are related to another set of problems, which go hand in hand with those of labor, namely inequality issues, especially those of an economic nature. More
Five “Good” Reasons to Hate Economics
We live in a world where hating something is trendy. Some hate Hawaiian Pizza, some others hate the rich, some hate immigrants, some people hate rap music, etc. Some people hate economics. What is economics about? I would refer to it as a social science that studies the economy from a well-defined perspective – that resources are scarce, that choices must be made in using them, that most of the time people use some thinking in making these choices, and that the market mechanism helps carry out this resource allocation. Thus, economics is first and foremost about the functioning of the market economy, and about the role of prices in allocating resources. If one wants to get an idea on what economists do study, he/she might look to the table of contents top-5 journals of the field, including the American Economic Review and Econometrica; the collection of Schools Brief in the Economist is also representative of the “hot topics” in today economics. One might be surprised by the methodological homogeneity of the field. Econ-haters will probably disagree with my definition, since when you really hate something, you sometimes end up by denying its existence. I agree, this can raise some logical problem (should I hate something that does not exist?), yet hate is about emotions, not about logical thinking. More
Deciphering Timelessness through Ephemeral Numbers
I first made the acquaintance of Professor Cezar Mereuță in the most natural way a young novice economist can meet a master of the profession: as a name on a textbook. In the Professor’s case, his exposure to “the market for ideas” has always been deliberately bimodal: both in the realm of academia and in economic mass-media. I, too, have chosen to heed this tenet of dualism, for although scientific truth is sublime, its social value is only apparent once it is communicated: the “economy” of (the economic) science is inevitably a “mixed” one, its nature being both “public” (in the sense of its popularisation, not politicisation) and “private” (in the sense of being responsible for the appropriateness of one’s terminology and the adequacy of one’s methodology). Among economists, discussions can veer into opaqueness, yet it is clear that disseminating the fruits of economic research via mass-media has always been a goal of Professor Mereuță, for the sake of civility and the civil population at large. I worked alongside him for roughly twelve years, first as a reader, then as editor, foreword author and, lastly, co-author. More
