

- Bracing for Hurricane Democracy Alexandru Georgescu
- Zombified Finance and the Walking Dead Economy Alexandru-Ștefan Goghie
- Romania’s Recovery According to the World Bank Dan Pălăngean
- The 2008 and 2020 Global Crises – Differences and Similarities Grațiela-Denisa Iordache
- Europe’s Paradigmatic Dilemmas amidst Pandemic Woes: How the COVID-19 Crisis May Reshape EU’s Geostrategy Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Annotating the Paris Agreement Henrique Schneider

- Conservatism and Spiritual and Social Recovery Richard J. Bishirjian
- NASA & SpaceX Launch – A New Milestone in Space Exploration Olga Bodrug, Kassandra Maduzia, James Snedden,Michael Migaud, Mohammad Ahmadi, Justin Bullock
- COVID-19 Distributions and Balances of Power. Interview with Professor Cezar Mereuță Adelina Mihai
- Some Thoughts on COVID-19 Pandemic Shock Emil Dinga
- Charter Cities: Vernian Fantasy or Human Reality? Alexandru-Costin Udrea
- The Inconsistency of Biological Analogies in Economics Vlad Popescu

- The COVID-19 Pandemic – Changing the Paradigm Florin Paul
- The Race to the Bottom in Oil Alexandru Georgescu
- On the Self-Testability of the Minimum Wage Gabriela-Mariana Ionescu
- Brâncuși’s Endlessness and the Scarcity of Some Means Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Communicative Action, Subjective Perception and the Hermeneutics of Capital Structure Alexandru-Ștefan Goghie
- Was the Islamic State a Real State? Răzvan Munteanu

- The Anthropocene-Fallacy: Learning from Wrong Ideas Henrique Schneider
- Technology and Ethics: Of Man and Wisdom Georgiana Constantin-Parke
- On Brexit and Other Exits Andreas Stamate-Ștefan
- With Regards to Government Charity for the Private Sector Emil Dinga
- Political and Economic Fallacies: A Tribute to Sir Roger Scruton Steven Alan Samson
- Russian Relations with North Korea Stephen R. Bowers and Kelli M. Nab

- From Marxism to the Ideology of Free Society in 1989 Romania – Transition or Rupture? Ștefan-Dominic Georgescu
- The Power of Vague Things: A Cautionary Tale Steven Alan Samson
- Playing on High Difficulty: The Trade Barriers of Modern Video Gaming Vlad Moraru
- 21st Century Ethics and the New Jus Vitae Necisque? Georgiana Constantin-Parke
- Modern Monetary Theory and Its Poisonous Implications Silviu Cerna
- Gazprom as Policy Instrument Stephen R. Bowers

- The Earthly Algorithms of the Heavenly Affairs Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Sicut in Caelo, Et in Terra Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- The Supreme Unity, the Unity of the Species Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu
- To the Moon and Back Alexandru Georgescu
- The Steering Wheel with Free Will Ana-Maria Marinoiu
- In Memory of Romania’s Last King: His Royal Majesty Michael I (1921-2017) Bogdan C. Enache

- INFatuated, INFuriated, INFlexible? Narciz Bălășoiu
- Future Tense in the Job Market Mihnea Alexandru Ciocan
- Some Thoughts on the Criteria of Nominal Economic Convergence in the EU Emil Dinga
- State Role vs. State Size Gabriela Ionescu
- The Return of Microeconomics Alexandru Georgescu
- The Passions of France Adrian-Ioan Damoc

- New Developmentalism, Old Ideas Bogdan C. Enache
- Karl Marx and Switzerland Henrique Schneider
- Drifting Away Vlad Roșca
- Simion Mehedinti and the Romanian Geopolitics
- A New Way of Solidarity within NATO Florin Luca
- The Impact of Russia’s Strategic Interest in the Black Sea Region on the Imbalance of the Russian Economy Leonela Leca

- The Professionalization of the Public/Political Decision-Making Emil Dinga
- Is Small still Beautiful? A Swiss Perspective Henrique Schneider
- The Romanian National Cathedral: The Voice of a People Freed Georgiana Constantin
- Wisdom and Perseverance Ahmed Abdulla Saeed bin Saeed Almatrooshi
- The NEET Tag and Intergenerational Existence on Labour Market Monica-Florica Dutcaș
- The Regional Resources of Ukraine and New Opportunities for Economic Development Until 2030 Ganna Kharlamova Nina Chala Olexandra Gumenna Tetyana Osinchuk

- Football-ism – The Ultimate Global Ideology Savian Boroancă Vlad Roșca
- “Search Neutrality” Is Not Possible Henrique Schneider
- Excess Democracy? Andrei Sandu
- Freedom Under Assail Tanja Porčnik
- From the Queen to the Tsar: on Trump’s Travels to Europe Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Operational Research of the Libyan Civil War and the EU Neighborhood Policies George Zgardanas

- Are Planned Economies Our Destiny? Prince Michael of Liechtenstein
- The Bear Stearns of Romania Bogdan C. Enache
- China’s Belated Spring Cleaning Nicoleta Stoianovici
- Toward Understanding the Balkan Economic Thought Nikolay Nenovsky
- On the Minimal Wage, with Responsibility Gabriela Ionescu
- How Did Horses Become a Luxury? Maria-Mirona Murea

- Romanian Capitalist Economic Thought. Brief notes on pre-1989 diasporic and post-1989 domestic debates Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Rebuilding Economics Emil Dinga
- The One-Size-Fits-All of the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” Reports Emmanuel Olusegun Stober
- “Are Central Banks Literally Independent?” Silviu Cerna vs. Ion Pohoață
- Some Thoughts on the “Global Competitiveness” Costea Munteanu
- Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose Mary Lucia Darst

- Pandora’s Botnet Alexandru Georgescu
- On the Nature of the Concept of Tolerance Emil Dinga
- Romania’s “Sonderweg” to Illiberal Democracy Bogdan C. Enache
- A Community in Search of Unity, a Union in Search of Communion
- Defence and Security: The UK and Romania after Brexit Adam Sambrook
- Orient and Occident – Perceptual and Complementary Macro-Regions Viorel Mionel

- European Construction. Intellectual Project vs. Emergence Emil Dinga
- Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Competitiveness Dragoș Preda
- Womenomics – Is It Worth Talking About Gender? Mariana Nicolae
- The Youth Atlantic Treaty Association and Its Role in Promoting Euro-Atlantic Values John Jacobs
- Water – the Ultimate Geostrategic Resource Viorel Mionel
- North Korea: “Reading the Tea Leaves” Alexandru Georgescu

- Cultural Goods and Cultural Welfare: Some Praxeological and Proprietarian Notes Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Trump and the Paris Agreement Alexandru Georgescu
- The Risks of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Construction of Eurasian Economic Corridor Liu Zuokui
- Music Industry Development – Future Global Trends on the Rise Paul Niculescu-Mizil Gheorghe
- Cultural Diversity: Same Question, but a Different Answer. The Story of Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Raluca Șancariuc
- Planning for Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe: Mises’s Proposal for Political Integration Matei-Alexandru Apăvăloaei

- Shakespeare & Eminescu – Measure for Measure Adrian George Săhlean
- Ethnogenesis in Davos Alexandru Georgescu
- The Clash of Realism and Liberalism: Understanding the Nature of Cooperation on Energy Security between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia Ayhan Gücüyener
- Robots and Empire(s) Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Debating the EU's Fiscal Union Filip Clem
- Space Debris – Visualizing the Risk and Informing Stakeholders Adrian Gheorghe

- The Long Slide towards Autocracy János Kornai interviewed by Zoltán Farkas
- Trumponomics – A New “New Deal” for the American people? Alexandru Georgescu
- The Costs and Benefits of Endowing the Romanian Army George Tăslăuanu & Marius Zgureanu
- Musk v. Hawking Andreea Paul
- The Chinese Dream – An Exhortation to Achieve Daniel Tomozei-Dimian
- The 12 Labours of Narendra Modi – India’s Demonetisation Saga Raluca-Andreea Manea

- To Be or Not to Be... Charlie! Camil A. Petrescu
- The Dissolution of the Communities Alexandru Georgescu
- The Banks in the Economy Silviu Cerna
- Geo-economics and Geopolitics of Brexit Crisis Napoleon Pop
- The Piketty-ism – A Childhood Illness for the 21st Century Ion Pohoață
- Simion Mehedinți – A Man of Fulfilled Ideas Silviu Neguț

Bracing for Hurricane Democracy
With the conclusion of the two ceremonial national conventions of the two US parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, one may say that the presidential race has begun in earnest. The current election will be unique in modern American history for its overlap with a pandemic which may not be the deadliest in recent times, but it is certainly the most mediatized and has elicited the strongest public policy reactions ever. At the same time, much like 2016 but also other important American elections, the Presidential campaign takes place against the backdrop of rioting, looting and general social strife which has become inextricably linked to the political race. The issues are more complicated than breathless media analyses make them out to be and there is a great deal of unknowns for an event that is scrutinized by the entire world in unison as a determining factor of the next four years in the still-extant Pax Americana. Ultimately, trying to predict the result of the November election can be as mystical or as wonkish as we want – some may try polls and statistical models and others the tea leaves. Both options are equally valid in the current climate. More

Zombified Finance and the Walking Dead Economy
The financial crisis of 2007 was the result of a constant accumulation of risks facilitated by the gradual lowering of interest rates. This decrease allowed the emergence of an allocation of resources incongruous with the economic reality, decisively affecting the complementarity of production processes. As a viable example, the Federal Reserve, led at the time by Alan Greenspan, decided that between December 2000 and June 2003, the federal funds rate would be reduced from 6.5% to 1%. Immediately after that, in June 2004, the federal rate was increased by 0.25%, to curb the rise in inflation in the real estate market. But a constant decrease in the interest rate was reflected in specific, interest-sensitive sectors, such as real estate. This increase in investment appetite in the real estate sector was also due to legislative provisions, such as the Housing and Urban Development Act, which obliges GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to have at least 30% of their loan purchases directly linked to affordable housing, which would stimulate mortgage lending in communities with limited resources. This phenomenon was also precipitated by the appearance of the Community Reinvestment Act, all of which facilitated a loosening of lending standards. At the same time, to support these mortgage practices, mortgage-backed assets appeared and implicitly the development of the shadow banking system. As these investments were interest-sensitive, with the increase in inflation in the real estate sector, a tightening of monetary policy affected the profitability of these investments and hence the ability to repay, effects that have also translated into the shadow banking system, repo markets and, finally, international markets. The detailed processes that led to the outbreak of the financial crisis are not the subject of this article, but their brief presentation was necessary to continue the presentation of the phenomenon of economic zombification. More

Romania’s Recovery According to the World Bank 2021 forecast compared to the start of the pandemic
The data included in the autumn report of the World Bank, “COVID-19 and Human Capital”, which brings the forecast for Europe and Central Asia countries up to date shows the skepticism of this institution’s specialists regarding a rapid recovery of the Romanian economy, by reference to official estimates issued locally. Thus, the National Commission forecasted an economic decrease of -3.8% this year, followed by a recovery of 4.9%, which would bring GDP level in 2021 to + 0.9% above that registered in 2019. More

The 2008 and 2020 Global Crises – Differences and Similarities Economy Near Us (XXXIII)
The years 2008 and 2020 saw two global crises with important similarities, which evoked numerous comparisons. I shall briefly sketch differences and similarities between these two global crises and the European Union response. This comparison will help us understand how European Union’s institutions are learning and adapting their reaction to the volatile environment. More

Europe’s Paradigmatic Dilemmas amidst Pandemic Woes: How the Covid-19 Crisis May Reshape EU’s Geostrategy
The much-awaited vaccine has recently been announced and reignited hope that the coronavirus pandemic that has kept the planet in a tight grip for about a year now is about to end. Though the vaccine itself is not beyond suspicion as some question the methodology used to validate it (normally, vaccines are vetted after being tested over several years), the world is gasping for a glimmer of hope against a threat it has struggled to understand and contain with mixed success. After an initial wave in the first and second quarters of 2020 that brought most of the planet to a halt with businesses closing down, unemployment rising and trade plummeting, the lockdown measures succeeded in putting a damper on the spread of the virus, leading to a relaxation of the lockdown measures during the third quarter so as to breathe new life into the ailing economy. Yet, this has caused the virus to emerge once more, thereby sparking a new wave starting around the middle of the third quarter of 2020 and continuing to this day. More

The Fourth Estate. And So Forth About going past the median in mass-media. And about disintermediation in the news market
The press today makes it easier to formally prove one’s credentials as a journalist as opposed to one’s calling for the profession or even vocation, through personal probity and other underlying yet necessary qualities. You may say that this utterance is an opinion, a matter of taste or a value judgement. You may even call it confirmation bias. There is nothing wrong with such thoughts, but we say about journalism that, before values enter into the equation, it must concern itself with verifiable facts and objectivity. More

The War of the Worlds: Macro-societies in Battle Against Micro-organisms An ongoing chronicle of a contagious era
As the lockdown has been relaxed (in Romania, the homeland of TMFI), yet social distancing is still a sacrosanct recommendation, we release the second episode from our collection of editorial products, this time from our in-house harvest. We hope that the variety and the quality of these “corona-readings” to function as a cure equally for unjustified anxieties and for mind hibernation. More

The Fight for the US Supreme Court and Its Political Ramifications
Impartiality is crucial to any judicial system, even more so when constitutional and supreme courts have to adjudicate conflicts between different state authorities, political actors, or certify election results in democratic polities. This impartiality has long been under siege in the United States Supreme Court, which has evolved to reflect the increasing polarization of American politics. Senate confirmation hearings of would-be Associate or Chief Justices are now the highest battleground of the culture wars between liberals and conservatives. The 9 Justices have become familiar faces to many average Americans, some reaching an almost hero-status among their respective supporters (the late Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg easily come to mind). The recent passing of Bader Ginsburg and the subsequent vacancy on the Supreme Court, coupled with what is shaping out to be an unusual Presidential election that may well end up in the courts, has led many to draw uncomfortable parallels to the Bush v Gore debacle. Will the Court weather the storm and come out of it unscathed, avoiding a loss of credibility and legitimacy? And if the Court is forced to take a decision regarding the election, what will the best course of action for the future of judicial integrity be? The answers to these questions depend, like many others, on the results of the November 3rd election. More

The Rise of Islam and American Policy in South Asia
The challenge of Empire to traditional constitutional order occurs when the first response to acts of terror increases the powers of the State. The Patriot Act and the attack on Iraq by the Bush Administration empowered a "war faction" in the American President’s Party and millennial fundamentalists who saw these acts in term of the “Last Days”. That places President Donald Trump in a position to increase his Imperial powers when confronting a rising Islam. Thus far, President Trump has chosen to withdraw American troops in Afghanistan and Syria. The real test is in relation to the Islamic regime in Iran. More

“Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree”… I Forgot My History
It is strange for any of us who live in relatively free societies to picture oppression. It is probably why most of us have an insatiable desire for dystopian television productions. The hair raising, mind and heart stimulating stories take us to a place with which we are not familiar, a place which makes us wonder “what would I do in this situation?”. Many of us are quick to point out that we would always do the right thing. But, just as one can watch surfing on TV, believe it to be fun, and then hate its difficulty when they try it out themselves, TV productions, or even books, do not really test our stamina and mettle. Spectatorship is a sport filled with experts and critics, after all. More

About the “Fair” Sharing of Economic Value Added Economy Near Us (XXXV)
Periodically, economists put on the table a remarkably interesting (and disputable, as well) topic, that of model for sharing the value added between labour and capital. The subject is present both on the work table of theoretical scientists and on that of researchers interested in the social justice echo of the income/wealth distribution inside the society (like Piketty, for example). In this intervention, I am interested not in the social justice considerations on the evoked topic, but in a very “ideologically free” approach. More exactly, I shall discuss the possible fair sharing of the value added between labour and capital (as main production factors) from the perspective of economic sustainability. This is distinct from economic optimality or economic fairness, although, as it is well-known, there is a so-called trade-off between equity and efficacy as impact of economic distribution. Without any doubt, the social justice angle of the topic is of multiple interests (including the scientific one) but, as said, this perspective will be postponed for the moment. More

The Economists Need Skin in The Game Economy Near Us (XXXVI)
The concept of economic crisis encompasses quite different situations (from either a causal perspective or a consequentialist one), from a conjunctural transient state all the way to a real blockage of the economic system. For this article, we shall presume that the phrase ‘economic crisis’ is used correctly, by indicating a dysfunctionality, either of structural or functional nature, in the economic process or system concerned (for example, the national economy of Romania). Economists throw the phrase left and right with a grave face, which does not bode well for ignorant people. More

The Impact of Social Justice Measures on Unemployment During the Pandemic Economy Near Us (XXXIV)
Currently, one of the worst employment crises is in full swing, as a result of the health crisis, with consequences for increasing poverty and therefore economic and social inequality. Just a few of the effects on the labour market include:- Decreased employment, reduced number of hours worked, for those who kept their jobs;- Poor chances for graduates and other new entrants into the labour force to secure a job or even a part-time job;- The decrease in job supply from the dramatic decline in employment on the part of organizations (as we know, some temporary contracts of employees have not been renewed); More

Owning Now, Owing Then. Culturally Sustainable Development Is about Material Property as Much as It Is about Spiritual Legacy Keynote speech delivered at Social Science and Humanities Research Association’s (SSHRA) XXV International Conference on Business, Economics, Law, Language & Psychology (ICBELLP), 18-19 November 2020, London, UK
Social Science and Humanities Research Association (SSHRA) is an international community of researchers, practitioners, students and educationists that is devoted to the development and the spread of ideas in the field of social sciences and humanities. SSHRA is promoted by Eurasia Research. SSHRA aims to bring together worldwide researchers and professionals, encourage intellectual development and create opportunities for networking and collaboration. These objectives are achieved through academic networking, meetings, conferences, workshops, projects, research publications, academic awards and scholarships. More

November Revealed the Highest Number of New Cases Worldwide Since the Start of the New Coronavirus Pandemic
The most powerful 19 countries in the world had different evolutions regarding the number of new cases in the third quarter of the pandemic.November 30 marked 9 months since March 1, considered the beginning of pandemic with the novel coronavirus. Tables 1 and 2 show the monthly figures and daily averages of new cases during the September - November period and the October / September, November / October and November / September volume indices. 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

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

Central Asia: The World’s Next Powder Keg
Firstly, we shall explain the geographic and historic situation background of Central Asia. The name is self-explanatory when referring to the location of the region but what stands out is the climate, history and demographics. The land is mostly arid and sparsely populated while the Northern part is dominated by the Eurasian steppe, a flat grassland which stretches from Ukraine all the way to the northeastern parts of China. Historically this steppe was inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples whose economic activity was herding and one of their main assets was the horse. The region was dominated by Iranian peoples until the Turkic migration (some 1000 years ago) happened. The land was fought over multiple times in history as it was once seen as an important connection between East and West due to the Silk Road. The inhabitants earned a reputation as great warriors especially when riding a horse (horse archery was one of their strong traits). For reference, here is a brief listing of the most important empires who ruled over Central Asia: the Persian Empire, Göktürks, Mongol Empire (and its successor states), Seljuk Turks, Timurids, Russian Empire (later U.S.S.R.) and even incursions coming in from China. More

Accelerating University 4.0 by Technology Shifts and Pandemic Drifts
The intersection between the technological and the pandemic shock became a real paradox to be managed by the higher education institutions. It all started in March 2020 with the decision to suspend face-to-face teaching activities and the following week thousands of students were learning online until the end of the semester. The main challenges regarding the business model of higher education institutions remain unresolved – as there is a general feeling of uncertainty and anxiety regarding the end of the pandemic and the resumption of normality. More

Remarks on the 2020 Romanian GDP Estimate – Reduced for the 3rd Time in the Official Forecast
The GDP 2020 estimate has been reduced for the third time in a row in the so-called Preliminary Autumn Forecast for the budget amendment published by the specialty National Commission. From an economic result of RON 1,141.4 billion according to the estimate issued in February, we went to RON 1,082.1 billion in April’s estimate, to RON 1,058.0 billion in August and now we reached RON 1,050.5 billion. More

Romania’s Public Debt Relative to GDP – Implications
The public debt officially measured by the Romanian Ministry of Finance based on the European methodology advanced, in July 2020 alone, almost as much as in the whole second quarter, when Romania was caught in the middle of the pandemic-induced crisis shock and the quarterly GDP decreased by 12.3% compared to the previous quarter. The explanation for the relative increase as a public debt share of GDP (2.1 percentage points in Q2 and 2 pp in just one month, July 2020) is not limited to the increase by about 40% of the additional monthly borrowed amounts (RON 13.5 billion compared to the monthly average of 9.7 billion in full pandemic), but also in the reduction of the reporting base by over RON 20 billion (approx. EUR 4.1 billion) as a result of the methodology used. More

The Effects of the Coronavirus on the Labor Markets in the EU Romania among the least affected countries in Q2, 2020
Romania was among the least affected EU Member States in Q2 2020 in terms of temporary layoffs, reduced working hours or job losses, according to the analysis published by Eurostat. The consequences of Covid19 pandemic varied significantly from one country to another, the most affected being Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Ireland and Greece. More

The Romanian Leu, Koruna, Zloty and Forint in Pandemic: A Comparison in Terms of Stability and Its Effects
The Romanian leu was much more stable during the pandemic than the currencies of Central European countries with a similar exchange rate regime – the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Data published by the National Bank of Romania shows a much lower devaluation of our national currency against the euro, of only 1.95% between January and October, well below the levels recorded by Czech koruna (-7.38%), Polish zloty (-6.44%) or Hungarian forint (-7.78%). More

Democracy at Play – or at Risk – in America
In democratic societies, elections are determined by the vote of the people. The democratic process in the United States elected President Trump in 2016. Four years later, after all legal votes are counted and verified, the same process may require that he peacefully transfer that power to someone else. Clearly, from now until the inauguration on January 20, 2021 it will take many state election procedures and court battles in key battleground states to clear up all uncertainties about this election’s popular vote. The democratic process relies not only on the belief of the citizens in it, but also upon their patience with procedures that are comprehensive and time-consuming. Accordingly, President Trump might have jumped the gun when he claimed, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win”. More

Kurt Lewin’s 3-Phase Change Model in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Throughout 2020, the question of how the world would look like after the Coronavirus pandemic has been constantly repeated. The “status quo” has been challenged: our usual lives have been suddenly torn apart and life during Covid-19 has been described as “another normal” or as a “new normal”. Such a massive, transformational change is not commonplace, so the attempts of humanity to regain its balance are understandable. The Covid-19 pandemic ends up being a real case scenario for Kurt Lewin’s famous 3-phase change model, meant as a tool to resolve major social conflicts. More

Engines of Liberty: American Experiment in Self-Government
Brague’s Challenge. In an American Spectator blog post, “Sin No More,” dated May 1, 2008, Rémi Brague stated a thesis worth exploring: “What cultures that were influenced by the Jewish and Christian religions made of the ideal of liberty that I have been finding in both Testaments is a task for historians. Impartial historians will observe how miserably the ideal and its realization often jarred with one another. On the other hand, they will have to acknowledge that free institutions hardly ever developed in places that were not influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas. Outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, it has been rare for thinkers to suppose that God endowed us with a nature of our own, that freedom is part of that nature, and that it is through the exercise of freedom, and the errors that inevitably stem from it, that we fulfill God’s plan… And when Lord Acton tells us that ‘liberty is not a means to a higher political end; it is the highest political end’, he is echoing voices that can be heard in all the sacred books of our tradition, from the Torah to the epistles of St. Paul”. What follows is a lightly edited excerpt from this writer’s Crossed Swords: Entanglements Between Church and State in America (1984), chapter 5, “The American Commonwealth”. It illustrates the practical ways the ideal and its realization have been imaginatively developed even as they “jarred” with each other. More

The Crisis of Our Age: A Retrospective Glance
As a political philosophy and system of governance, liberalism is a product of Western Christian civilization. Yet some of its roots are decidedly illiberal. Thomas Hobbes offered an intellectual framework for our burgeoning Provider State, reducing people to hedonistic machines that accept the oversight of a Sovereign who serves as theologian-in-chief. Jean-Jacques Rousseau cited man’s natural compassion in support of rendering everyone collectively dependent on a sovereign General Will, which Jacques Maritain later called an “immanent social God”. Frederic Bastiat dismissed these pretensions by noting how self-serving lawmakers bend morality to justify—via greed and false philanthropy—the legal plunder that divisively empowers them. More

The Neighbourhood and Its Meanings Some colourful shades of grey
In order to know the Romanian society as it is today more intimately, it is preferable that we analyse it from the inside to the outside, for the general characteristics and conclusions that might be traced from this “outside” (such as national psychologies or civilizational traits) are brought into existence by a set of norms and behaviours embraced by the “inside” (which, in this case, refers to every individual, to his family and then to his immediate community). More

A Pragmatic Approach to Higher Education – University 4.0
The 4th Industrial Revolution has changed the industrial practices of manufacturing and production, now transformed by digitization and automation and supported by advanced technologies and techniques. The adjustment process of industry to the latest developments, leading to its structural change, has been named Industry 4.0. This article proposes a mature consideration of the necessity to transform he educational system which trains people to function in the economic life of this new reality. We will start from the essential supposition that the free market is or should be the one that shapes the educational system and not vice versa, which is essential for a healthy industry manifested within a free market economy as a basis for economic progress. Today, industrial development is partly based on a thorough but standardized knowledge base traditionally accumulated and perfected behind the thick walls of academia over a standardized period of time that is required for certification. More

Sustainable Development – Excerpts from a New Lodestar in the Field Ion Pohoață, Delia-Elena Diaconașu and Vladimir-Mihai Crupenschi revisit the discourse of the founders
Sustainable development has been making the rounds since 1987 as a buzzword to be employed in the rarefied heights of policy discourse on economics, industrialization and much more. Unlike other fashionable concepts, it at least aspires to validity by positing as its main goal the minimization of the cost to the future incurred by advancement in the present. This has many applications, some not utterable anymore in polite society. They include finance, economics, environmentalism (local and global), resource use and many more. The classic example is a society in the present borrowing for wasteful consumption or malinvestment and transferring the burden of its current policies to future generations of taxpayers, including those yet unborn, thereby constraining their own ability to save money and to borrow for projects or for crisis periods. Another example is the exhaustion of common resources under the “tragedy of the commons”, where everybody is incentivized to abuse an asset held in common as gains are privatized, while losses are socialized, leading to an unsustainable pattern and ending in pollution, resource exhaustion and even extinction. The ethics of this can much debated, but the implications are there for all to see. More

2020 Gaudeamus Book Fair, Featuring the Bucharest University of Economic Studies Treatise launch: International Economic Relations: Theories, Strategies, Policies, Tools and Case Studies / Gheorghe Hurduzeu, Luminiţa Nicolescu (eds.)
The 27th edition of the Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair took place between November 16-22, 2020. The fair was held exclusively online this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The most popular book fair, staged by the most-listened-to radio station in Romania has thus been held continuously for more than a quarter of a century. With this occasion, the Faculty of International Business and Economics, within the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, released the treatise entitled International Economic Relations. Theories, Strategies, Policies, Tools and Case Studies [Gheorghe Hurduzeu and Luminița Nicolescu (editors), ASE Publishing House, 2019]. More