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This paper discusses a conceptual model for critically engaging with the effects of financialization on contemporary cities. The current state of theory on financialization in the urban context focuses foremost on the real estate sector activities, regulatory frameworks and governance structures that enable urban financialization. The paper addresses the calls for a closer examination of the spatial patterns that emerge from these practices. By combining financial ecologies as an analytical tool with infrastructure as a perspective, it provides a conceptual model in order to understand the impacts of financialization on cities. The paper discusses the conceptual model in the context of the introduction of the UK Municipal Bonds Agency. It concludes by outlining some of the spatial effects of the UK's changing financial ecology of urban infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the unevenness of the 2007–08 crisis by examining the literature of England's North–South divide. From the 1980s this longstanding divide was exacerbated as a result of promoting London as a global financial hub, so when the crisis hit many expected some regional economic convergence as redundancies spread throughout the financial sector. This has, however, not taken place and previous patterns of uneven development have rather been reinforced. Attempts have been made to explain this deepening of established geographical patterns as the result of different regions’ degrees of economic resilience, but this approach is, however, problematic because it naturalizes crises, downscales responsibility and neglects politics. Inspired by Martin Jones’s concept of the ‘spatial selectivity of the state’, the paper will rather argue that to understand the uneven geography of the economic crisis, one has to look beyond localized resilience to how the state’s austerity policies have displaced the crisis’s impacts away from its origins in a London-centred financial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 1980s economic crises in Egypt and Tunisia ushered in the neoliberal economic austerity era, rampant corruption, increased inequality, and socio-economic exclusion. At the same time, it also built a multi-billion-dollar business empire for the elite class connected to the presidential palace. The increasingly arrogant and violent oppression by the state security apparatus ultimately sparked the revolutionary slogans demanding "freedom, jobs, and dignity." This paper argues that little progress has been made to satisfy those demands because the transition governments (and opposition parties) have failed to put forward an alternative economic program to remedy the negative economic consequences of neoliberalism. Focusing exclusively on Tunisia and Egypt, this paper uncovers the neoliberal roots of economic inequality and socio-economic exclusion that have led to the uprisings. It further suggests that the original institutionalist theory of institutional adjustment provides the most adequate framework for achieving the ultimate goals of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Finally, this paper concludes by outlining the institutional prerequisites for a successful transition to a post-neoliberal system in Tunisia and Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the severity of the European economic crisis, its relation to key aspects of material deprivation remains understudied. In this paper, I use the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions dataset to analyze household food insecurity in austerity-ridden Greece between 2009 and 2014. First, I show that low-income, low-asset and non-EU citizens, as well as households in Athens and island regions, are more likely to experience higher rates of food insecurity. Second, low-income and immigrant households experience disproportionate increases in food insecurity during the crisis; low-income and single-mother households experience higher increases in child food insecurity during the same period. Third, I examine the hypothesis that households turned to the land during the crisis. I show evidence of a negative association between food self-provisioning and food insecurity; however, the share of households that produce food decreases during the crisis, casting doubt on self-provisioning as a widespread coping strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debt crisis in the Eurozone has generated an intense academic debate about the appropriate policy response to the crisis. At the same time, the general public hears a variety of stories about the crisis, and especially stories about the debt crisis in Greece. This paper deals with the economic significance of stories, in particular with the importance of the Greek “morality tale.” Stories are powerful in influencing public psychology, and they can affect the economy through fluctuations in confidence and “animal spirits.” The paper considers the development of the Greek story through a web of related stories, fables, parables, and myths. It argues that the story dramatically distorts the reality of the debt crisis in the Eurozone and poses a threat to the global economy through its adverse effects on confidence and “animal spirits.” It concludes that Europe needs not only a new policy direction, but also a new narrative about the debt crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the response of managers, in the case where the government incorporates certain environmental criteria into public procurement. Some research hypotheses are statistically tested in order to identify the extent of managers' understanding regarding Green Public Procurement mainly under the severe financial conditions of the current economic crisis, during which time public expenditures should gradually be cut due to the flagship policy of the European Union for severe austerity measures. The data were taken from various pieces of research carried out in Greece and Cyprus, two countries which are suffering from an economic crisis and are operating under economic supervision with severe austerity measures. The study highlights that given the current economic climate, managers consider the Green Public Procurement a very weak tool to encourage the adoption of environmental management practices due to the austerity measures and budgetary cuts. They also claimed that the classical policy tools (e.g. environmental legislation and market-based instruments) might shape an unsustainable environment for their future operations and additional measures would force them out of market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate crisis and austerity in the context of the European Union (EU) by appealing to the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Evidence suggests that after the recent US and Eurozone economic crises, fiscal consolidation intensified the deterioration of socio-economic conditions in Europe. We turn to analyses versed in the Bourdieusian tradition to explain crises and austerity in relation to the domination of the financial field and the ascendancy of neoliberal policies, processes of symbolic violence and misrecognition, and struggles for symbolic power. We then apply this framework to assess the EU economic governance system and the rhetoric imposed on Member States and social partners to justify austerity. Finally, we discuss ways to confront these conditions by presenting Bourdieu's conception of the 'collective intellectual', who collaborates with other social groups in order to uncover the power relations and inequalities generated by neoliberal policies and to promote alternative economic policies for social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches welfare state evolution in terms of protection against household income volatility. It maintains wage earner household income instability emerges from firm routines, household habits, and welfare state provisions. It considers the impact of austerity measures in the context of a longer trend of labor market institutional evolution. Prior to austerity-driven measures, labor market developments shifted risk from firms to state and households. Austerity measures amplified previous trends and left household incomes exceedingly exposed to effective demand risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prospects for young people in Europe look bleak. The ‘social condition’ of young people is characterised by experiences of exclusion, and a sense of betrayal and anger at having been ‘sacrificed’ by the older generation. Many more young people, from more diverse backgrounds and perspectives, are now exposed to precarious social circumstances. Spontaneous and planned ‘riots’ and urban protest have displayed the anger and the anxieties of youth in Europe. How young people will continue to respond to these conditions is clearly a matter for conjecture and there is a range of possibilities. The democratic imperative is by no means certain. This paper advances a scenario in which historically socially disadvantaged youth may connect with newly intellectually disaffected young people to produce either more toxic or more creative alliances amongst the young. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Conservative-led Coalition government in Britain is strongly committed to a programme of austerity. In the short term, this is a programme which makes more difficult the country's exit from a period of recession and slow growth; in the longer term, it threatens cuts and privatisation which call into question the welfare state. Yet, politically, the Coalition has managed the post-2008 crisis more effectively than other European governments. Focusing on education, where the government's right-wing radicalism is strongly evident, this article explores possible reasons for its political success. It looks particularly at the Coalition's policies for teachers, and for the extension of private influence over schooling, as well as at the way it justifies its policies with reference to a reconceptualisation of 'equal opportunity'. It suggests that these are the culmination of more than 40 years of discursive elaboration and programme-building, which have weakened opposition to a point which makes the immediate costs of policy implementation quite low. It suggests, however, that the Conservative achievement is an unstable one, more likely to sharpen long-term political and social tensions than to resolve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief article we argue that questions regarding the sustainability of debt, in particular public debt, have been incorrectly debated in terms of economic production, whereas a more fertile ground for analyzing such questions is that of social ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss a methodological approach I refer to as "critical financial analysis," which blends critical theory with public finance tools. As geographers and other scholars have documented, there have been profound shifts in urban governance over the last three decades (Harvey 1989; Brenner and Theodore 2005; Hackworth 2007; Whiteside 2018). The squeezing of public budgets and tax restrictions, compounded by the 2007–2009 recession, have pushed municipal governments to look for cost-saving measures, seek out creative financial resources, and engage in entrepreneurial activities (Sbragia 1996; Weber 2010; Ashton, Doussard, and Weber 2014; Beswick and Penny 2018). While a robust and growing body of work on financialization exists, the state's role in financialization (as an initiator and innovator, not just passive facilitator) is an emerging area with fewer studies to date (Aalbers 2017; Beswick and Penny 2018). Critical financial analysis is one approach that can be used to help fill gaps in the literature in light of these shifts. Critical financial analysis operates from the premise that financial data is a "field site" through which contested spaces, practices, and power relations can be explored.I illustrate my approach and its potential using a case study of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). The CHA example highlights the type of rich information that can be obtained by conducting detailed financial analysis. It demonstrates how empirical data combined with critical theory can be used to probe how public finance functions as a technology of power, and how particular finance logics can orient public institutions away from their social missions. Such work can help deepen our understanding of urban governance, and illuminate how macro processes intertwine with locally specific histories, political-economic conditions, and material realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the fashion departments of London's West End department stores were not only challenged by austerity and bomb damage but also by the growth of multiple retailers selling branded ready-to-wear goods. This article investigates how department stores responded by investing in display and visual merchandising to attract custom and rebuild their fashionable reputations. It argues that the difficulties caused by austerity conditions forced department stores to embrace new retail methodologies that helped them adapt to the changed circumstances of post-war fashion retail and compete with multiple retailers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to take a long view of many economic problems. This article explains how the large-scale loss of industrial jobs in parts of Britain during the 1980s and 1990s still inflates the contemporary budget deficit in the United Kingdom. Drawing on the findings of several empirical studies by the authors, the article shows that although there has been progress in regeneration the consequences of job loss in Britain’s older industrial areas have been near-permanently higher levels of worklessness, especially incapacity benefits, low pay, and a major claim on present-day public finances to pay for both in-work and out-of-work benefits. Furthermore, as the UK government implements reductions in welfare spending the poorest places are being hit hardest. In effect, communities in older industrial Britain now face punishment in the form of welfare cuts for the destruction previously wrought to their industrial base. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the radical left and its activities in Greece. It mentions the election of the Parliament on May 6, 2012 during the debt crises and the implementation of austerity measures by the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Commission in the country. An overview of the creation of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) is also presented.

The article focuses on developments related to criminal justice administration in three criminal justice jurisdictions of Great Britain since 2010. Topics discussed include the UK Justice Review project which focuses on developments in criminal justice, an increase in spending on criminal justice, no common policy approaches inspite of austerity, establishing of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), privatization of probation service and prisons and reduction of legal aid.

During the global financial crisis in 2008–10 Estonia symbolized a pathway of fiscal consolidation and austerity. Moreover, despite opting for austerity and all the social and political consequences of achieving fiscal consolidation, the governing coalition in Estonia succeeded also in avoiding a negative political reaction from the voters and remained in power. The current article analyses the variables that made the austerity reforms in Estonia in 2008–11 electorally successful. The economic success of Estonia has otherwise been attributed to a combination of political, institutional, and economic factors: timing; a fiscal policy that was not pro-cyclical; the availability of reserves in Estonia; and the ownership structure of the banks. The present study asks more specifically about the variables that saw the economic success in the implementation of the austerity measures accompanied by a positive electoral outcome. As it will be argued, these factors include the communication strategy chosen intentionally or otherwise by the government, the design of the austerity measures, the peculiarity of the electoral cycle, lack of political alternatives, and the performance of neighbouring countries in implementing austerity measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Given the massive government support for banks during the financial crisis, the purpose of this article is to address briefly if there is a tendency towards long-term "decoupling" of the banking sector from the rest of the economy. It also seeks to understand whether the support that governments offered during the financial crisis and the ensuing "Great Recession" reflects a unique phenomenon, or whether - through its fiscal policy actions - this support is recurrent in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western economies have undergone a significant transformation over the last half a century as they have moved away from a commitment to full employment, going from activist fiscal policy to its abandonment with the adoption of budgetary austerity. This is not because of any technical or physical incapacity to achieve full employment. Analyzing the broad macroeconomic experience of Canada and the United States in the post-WWII era, the article finds that this growing unemployment has essentially resulted from a deliberate policy choice not to stimulate sufficiently demand via fiscal measures. Learning from the experience of the Great Depression, Michal Kalecki had offered an explanation for this type of policy response in favor of rising long-term unemployment. This article recognizes the relevance and appropriateness of Kalecki's analysis and seeks to determine whether the Minskian institutional proposal for achieving effective full employment (via government as the employer of last resort) would withstand an original Kaleckian critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising as a proportion of national income rose from the late 1940s and peaked in the mid-to-late 1950s. This growth however exhibited inflection points in 1949 and 1951 which coincided with political economy shifts. During this period of growth all sectors producing consumer goods increased expenditure on advertising; expenditure on advertising by the tobacco, and the clothing and footwear sectors rose the most relative to consumer spending on these product categories. From the mid-1950s, advertising of household goods, a category which included electrical durables and furniture, rose at the fastest rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been just over a year since the 'historic', (in David Cameron's terms) Conservative-led Coalition came to pass. Twelve months of anticipating and assessing who will experience the most hardship and where the greatest social damage will be done as a result of the Coalition's austerity programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]