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We re-examine the Systemic Cycles of Accumulation (SCA) of Arrighi (2010) and Arrighi and Silver (1999) which provide a framework for the analysis of the cyclical patterns of geographical expansion of trade and production and the related shifts of hegemonic power within the world capitalist system. Within the SCA framework, the last stage of a hegemonic cycle is characterized by what is called ���systemic chaos���, however the drivers of these chaotic dynamics have not been explicitly analyzed. This article fills this gap by providing a link between the accumulation process, the spatio-temporal fix, and systemic chaos, in three steps. First, we show that the accumulation process can be mathematically described by what is known as a logistic map. Second, we show that the different stages of the accumulation processes in Arrighi (2010) correspond to different values of the parameter of the logistic map which in our framework captures barriers to accumulation. Third, drawing on well-known properties of the logistic map in dynamic systems, we demonstrate that as this parameter crosses certain thresholds, the accumulation process becomes more complex exhibiting nontrivial and chaotic dynamics. In this way, our approach provides the missing detailed understanding of how systemic chaos is an outcome of the contradictory dynamics of capital accumulation itself while being based on the key insights of the SCA framework of hegemonic cycles.

In the overlapping global emergencies of the pandemic, climate change and geopolitical confronta- tions, supply shocks have become frequent and inflation has returned. This raises the question how sector-specific shocks are related to overall price stability. This paper simulates price shocks in an input-output model to identify sectors which present systemic vulnerabilities for monetary stability in the US. We call these prices systemically significant. We find that in our simulations the pre-pandemic average price volatilities and the price shocks in the COVID-19 and Ukraine war inflation yield an almost identical set of systemically significant prices. The sectors with system- ically significant prices fall into three groups: energy, basic production inputs other than energy, basic necessities, and commercial and financial infrastructure. Specifically, they are “Petroleum and coal products”, “Oil and gas extraction”, “Utilities”, “Chemical products”, “Farms”, “Food and beverage and tobacco products”, “Housing”, and “Wholesale trade”. We argue that in times of overlapping emergencies, economic stabilization needs to go beyond monetary policy and requires institutions and policies that can target these systemically significant sectors.

We construct a new global commodity-level export dataset to analyze the persistence of export patterns as proxies of productive capabilities across the first and the current waves of global- ization. We find that productive capabilities are path-dependent and historical capabilities are powerful predictors of countries’ incomes today. This is robust to controlling for persistence in geography, institutions, and colonial status, and confirmed by instrumenting past capabilities with asymmetric reductions in travel times following the switch from sailing to steamboats. We also show that the “great specialization” in primary goods and manufacturing goods exporters coincided with a great polarization in global diversification levels.

This paper develops a comparative and connected history of the debates over transition to a market economy in West-Germany after World War II and in China during the first decade of reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping (1978-1988). At both historical moments the political aim was to reintroduce market mechanisms into a dysfunctional command economy. The question what kind of price reform this required was subject to heated debates among economists. This paper shows how the West-German 1948 currency and price reform was introduced into the Chinese reform debate by German ordoliberals and neoliberals like Friedman. It traces how the West-German case study was mystified as “Erhard Miracle” and became a metaphor for the vision of universal overnight price liberalisation in China – a core element of shock therapy.

The History of Economic Thought as a field has long taken it as a premise that so far as ancient economic thought is concerned, only the Greeks and Romans are worth studying. This paper introduces the Guanzi as a core text in ancient Chinese economic thought on price stabilization from a comparative perspective with ancient Greek contributions. The Guanzi presents a framework for the empirical analysis of market fluctuations and price movements and derives principles of economic governance from this analysis. In contrast Plato and Aristotle come to the question of price determination from the angle of moral philosophy. They foreground the right behaviour on the part of the individual not the structural features of the market. The Guanzi articulates the so-called “light–heavy” (轻重, qingzhong) principles, where heavy represents “important” or “essential” and light connotes “unimportant” or “inessential.” It argues that essential subsistence goods and production inputs are always “heavy,” while the relative importance of each commodity shifts with market fluctuations. It suggests that the markets are inherently unstable, if left to their own devises. The state should participate in the market of “heavy goods” in order to stabilize the economy as a whole.

China has created a distinct economic system. Yet despite a growing literature with valuable contributions on the institutional arrangements under ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’, the precise economic mechanisms underpinning China’s state–market relations remain undertheorised. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework of what we call China’s state-constituted market economy. We define essential as ‘systemically significant from the perspective of the state’. We argue that the Chinese state ‘constitutes’ the market economy by creating, participating and steering markets for essentials in order to stabilise and guide the economy as a whole. We draw on China’s statecraft tradition as well as on proposals for financial policy reform in the US to conceptualise the state market- constitution in China.

Investigate the long first decade of reform in China (1978-1992) to show that Mises, in particular his initiating contribution to the Socialist Calculation Debate, became relevant to the reconfiguration of China’s political economy when the reformers gave up on the late Maoist primacy of continuous revolution and adhered instead to an imperative of development and catching up. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao had rejected the notions of efficiency and rational economic management. In the late 1970s, the reformers under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership elevated these notions to highest principle. As a result, Mises’ critique that socialism could not achieve a rational economic order came to be debated throughout the 1980s and Chinese economists developed their own reading of Mises and the Socialist Calculation Debate. When Deng Xiaoping reinstated market reforms in the early 1990s after the Tiananmen crackdown, a history of thought review of the possibility of rational socialism and socialist markets helped to justify the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics the official designation of China’s economic system to this day.

Does what you exported matter? We build a new global commodity-level export database for the previous era of globalization and find persistence in productive capabilities proxied by economic complexity, export diversification, and sophistication across a century. We also show that productive capabilities at the turn of the 20th century are a powerful predictor of today’s income levels. We demonstrate that our results are not driven by persistence in geography or institutions. The persistence mechanism is the complementarity between past and future productive capabilities with one important qualification, the persistent negative effect of European overseas colonization. We also study shocks that undermined persistence, confirm the resource course hypothesis for the long run and find a positive but slow effect of democratization.