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Innovation in the Eye of the Beholder: Optical Breakthroughs
The commonplace objects that we surround ourselves with are just as indispensable for our everyday businesses as they are, individually and collectively, piecemeal retellings of different parts of our civilization and the progressive attempts by mankind to better answer its ever-growing needs. As Jose Luis Borges once put it, many of our inventions are extensions of ourselves: “the microscope, the telescope, are extensions of [man’s] sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; (...) the book is an extension of memory and imagination”. These extensions have enabled us to better master our environment and enrich our lives. More
The World’s 19 Most Powerful Countries Account for 71% of the World’s New Coronavirus Cases
On August 31st this year, 6 months have passed since the current pandemic forcefully started, on March 1st. It is an important opportunity to examine how the world’s great powers have developed effective government programs to reduce the number of cases. The power structure of the world is defined by nodal analysis as the number of hierarchically descending countries that account for 80% of the world nominal GDP. According to the latest definitive data available in the UN database in 2018, the power structure of the world consists of 19 countries presented in Table 1, each country being characterized by the share of total GDP and the share of total cases. More
Rebuilding Economics
In the last decades, the economic discipline in its hypostasis of Economics (i.e. positive economic theory) was, and also currently is, subject to radical and massive criticism not only from the non-economists (including physicists!), but also from notorious economists, including Nobel Prize winners.The perspectives of such criticisms are very different, starting from the conceptual bases, focusing on the methodological framework, and ending with the predictive potential. Of course, although the initial criticisms were focused on the mechanical ways of economic thinking (by taking over the Newtonian paradigm in physics), other points came to the forefront in recent years: the required interdisciplinary character of Economics, the issue of truth in the economic field (in a wider sense: in the social field), the required evolutionary nature of Economics, because of the evolutionary nature of the society, and even the requirement of a new formalism in Economics based on something other than differential equations (which do not indicate the dynamics – i.e., the causality – in the economic process) and so on. More
The One-Size-Fits-All of the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” Reports
The recently released World Bank “Ease of doing business 2018” report put Nigeria at 145 out of 190 countries surveyed, just behind Niger. This ranking represents a significant improvement over that of last year, when the country was ranked 169th. Therefore, there are several questions that need to be asked: Are these statistics enough? Is Nigeria’s business environment now friendly with entrepreneurs and investors? What do these figures mean to the ordinary Nigerian? More
A Century of U.S.-Romania Relations
Romania’s Strategic Partnership with the United States is a cornerstone of our foreign and security policy. The Partnership’s multiple dimensions, ranging from political to military, from economic to cultural, provide invaluable support for Romania’s development and the fulfillment of its strategic potential. A permanent, open and beneficial dialogue lies at the heart of this relationship. More
Romanian Stabilization in the 1920s and the Missing Gold Reserves
Despite ending the First World War as one of the victors and, as a consequence, having doubled its territory and population and reaching its political goal, i.e. the union of the territories with the majority of the Romanian population in the form of a national state, Greater Romania was, economically, severely affected by the war. According to certain estimates, the war has caused ROL 31 billion worth of damages (Romanian Leu). In addition, the war triggered the disruption of the economic activity, trade deficits in relations with foreign markets, financial chaos and inflation. More
Human Action. The Foundation of Society
Over time, numerous socialist utopians have sought the perfect society. Some had colossal plans and some claimed good intentions, but when social conditions would not meet their hopes and dreams, they blamed moral precariousness. In order to achieve their ideal society, they needed only the “good princes” and the so called “virtuous citizens”. In some cases, these utopians (or their followers) used brute force to reshape society for “a greater good”. They brought concentration camps, instituted reeducation programs, abolished all beliefs that were not theirs, rebuilt the past to match their claim, and redesigned the language in order to limit and control the thought process. In all of these cases, socialist utopia, through the application of brute force, leads to dystopia. More
The Case for a Homeopathic Fiscal Policy
Very recently, a certain initiative of the Minister of Public Finance – namely regarding the possibility that tax evasion be punished by prison time – has generated much rumour and pros vs. cons debates (especially among the TV talking heads). Since the political (or even electoral) reasons of such a proposal are alien to my mind, I will focus this intervention on the general character the fiscal policy should exhibit, according to its nature as well as its purposes and, consequently, on the legitimacy of introducing such sanctions. Another issue of interest will be that regarding the efficacy of the proposed measure. More
A Treatise to Challenge the World of Tweets
One may reasonably question any new… old-style opus, in times of “fast and furious” facts and figures, expressions of international economic relations (scientific literature markets here included): Isn’t it enough that we are now part of an unseen-before democratization of information, from which we can liberally extract what is of genuine interest for us? Cui prodest writing and reading another “scholastic” tome? What did its authors acknowledge that is so urgent to share and has not yet been tackled and “treated” by other scholars somewhere else or sometime else? Such answers are not at hand prior to or short of holding, opening and immersing into this impressive book entitled: International Economic Relations. Theories, Strategies, Policies, Tools and Case Studies [Gheorghe Hurduzeu and Luminița Nicolescu (eds.), ASE Publishing House, 2019]. We hereby call it a “treatise”. For it is one, by any standard. More
Mr. Sam’s Walmart Empire in Uncle Sam’s American Republic
Samuel Moore (or how people liked to call him later on, “Mr. Sam”) was born in 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and lived there until 1923 with his parents, Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee Lawrence Walton. He had a brother, James Lawrence Walton, born in 1921, who later became a co-founder of the Wal-Mart business. More
The New Geopolitics of South Caucasus
The 2020 peace agreement in Nagorno Karabakh is not just redrawing the security relationship between Yerevan and Baku, but, at the same time, it reshapes the regional geopolitics.First of all, the OSCE Minsk Group played an insignificant role in these negotiations. It is true that the support of the West for Armenia is much lower when compared to Azerbaijan. This is because of the chosen foreign policy of either state, Armenia opting to prioritize its relationship with the Russian Federation, including by withdrawing from the Eastern Partnership in 2013. By contrast, Azerbaijan is, along with Georgia, a key NATO partner in the region. At the same time, its energy reserves make Azerbaijan a strategic partner for the EU in its pursuit of energy security. More
“Are Central Banks Literally Independent?”
The independence of the central banks – mysterious or miraculous entities in the eyes of masses – is practically an inexhaustible topic for scholars-economists and political scientists, as well as for business-persons and policy-makers. Still, the ultimate bill-payer of all institutional settings and governance organizations is the consumer-citizen. For this character this bell (of the debate) tolls. More
