Mihaela Iacob

Economist, Associate Professor, Ph.D., the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, specialized in public finance and theory of prices and competition

Between Solidarity and Self-Interest within the European Union: Critical Technologies, Power Struggles, and Backdoor Fragmentation

Mihaela Iacob

No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 Industrial Revolutions (IR) have fundamentally revolved around advancements in information and communication technologies (IT&C), facilitating both global integration and connectivity. The power of steam not only moved goods but also transported people and ideas across borders (IR 1.0). This was followed by the rise of electricity, mass production, and the standardization of interchangeable parts (IR 2.0). The subsequent electronic era, marked by the proliferation of microprocessors, set the stage for the widespread diffusion of the internet (IR 3.0). Today, we witness the zenith of these transformations with the emergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cryptocurrencies, and the metaverse (IR 4.0). More

Preparing Students for the Labour Market: The Role of Theory-Based Economic Judgements Against AI-Supported Decision-Making

Mihaela Iacob

No. 46, Mar.-Apr. 2024 Artificial Intelligence would not have been possible without the great thinkers – in both “hard” and “soft” sciences – who educated themselves, then developed theories to be tested in practice, and while they may have failed in solving resistant conundrums, they excelled in fighting for their reasoned convictions. More

Three “Mister K” and Our Recovery from Eastern European “Kafkian” Absurdum

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

In Kafka’s novel, Das Schloß [The Castle], there is a gentleman bearing the name “K” who unsuccessfully tries to obtain a hearing with the enigmatic ruler of a bureaucratic citadel dominating, physically and psychically, an alienated village community, to secure a living in that surreal neighbourhood. In Der Prozess [The Trial], a certain Joseph K. gets arrested and accused by an obscure authority for a crime never unveiled, either to him or anyone else (including the millions of readers of the novel). In Amerika [America], the main character, Karl Rossmann, lives a David-Coppefield-ian life within an illusive and deluding “new world”. All three novels are part of the “absurdist literature”, are unfinished and are posthumous. Even though Kafka didn’t experience communism, his novels can be seen as a crude premonition of that epoch. In the present essay we shall speak, however, about three different characters whose names start with the Kafkian effigy “K” and whose professional careers were devoted to the extraction of Eastern Europe from the absurdum of communism: the Polish philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), the Hungarian economist János Kornai (1928-2021) and the ex-President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus (b. 1941). More

CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. ∞): The Industrial Revolutionizing of the Social Contract: 4.0 Generation Updates

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The “egg-and-chicken” problem when, for instance, reasoning on and ruminating about the history-long and worldwide plethora of technological shifts/rifts/drifts and social/political/economic realities is secondary to a principal obviousness: these two dimensions of the human(e) existence are involved in a co-evolutionary relationship, implying mutual and bi-directional causes and effects. Hence, defining (or decreeing) the “technological” as the independent variable and the “socio-” as the dependent one, or maybe vice versa, solely provides the scholar with insights onto limited segments from what it is, yet, a continuum; but, for the scientist, understanding each and every modest and simple link gets him/her closer to the underpinnings of the mega-complex chains of events. Studying Industrial Revolutions’ (IR) imprint on the functioning of polities is such a link, a compound of the chain of capturing the practical means which get us closer to our principled ends. More

Obelix Runs Away from Fiscalix

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The “fear” of taxation dies hard. In 2013, Gerard Depardieu became a French “tax refugee” in the Russian Federation. Half a decade since then, he became a Russian tax debtor in the Russian Federation. In 2018, he was listed in Russia’s Federal Court Marshals Service database as owing taxes in Saransk (the capital of Mordovia, somewhere in “Yevropeyskaya Rossiya”), where he was registered. More

Santa-Nomics and Santa-Comics Stories

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The gift of wisdom (which does not reside in Santa’s bag of gifts) also enjoins us to reflect an additional second beyond the first impulse. For instance, Christmas is a parable of austere Birth, but we celebrate it with bells and whistles; Christmas floods us with gifts, but with every useless little thing that we receive, some say, welfare is lost; Christmas remains a Christian holiday, but it externalizes secular glamour into a globalization which is decorated with Xmasy globes. More

FIRST EDITION