Search

This article examines the historically contentious relationship between the financial market and the public as discussed in academic literature, financial journalism and prescriptive how-to invest handbooks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although financial markets thrive off active public participation, speculating at stock and commodity exchanges has been a sanctioned ritual reserved for a privileged minority. We argue that the financial establishment's intent to control market access through financial entry-barriers (such as exchange membership fees and margin requirements) has been part of a bigger story we need to understand: a history of delegitimating uninitiated 'lay speculators' through the construction of exclusionary narratives about unfit amateur investors and morally corrupt publics. We conceptualize this process as an ongoing and delicate boundary-making exercise contributing to a market participation discourse that has been characterized by a set of reductive binaries, such as those of insider–outsider, professional–amateur and speculator–gambler. We show, however, that attempts to delineate popular participation in financial markets through these binaries have been complicated by the idea that besides being a force of market instability and collective irrationality, the public was a largely untapped source of liquidity. We argue that today's discourse on public participation in financial markets resuscitates these simplified narratives and propose a more nuanced view of non-professional market participants being both destabilizers and liquidity-providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what ways do fintech (financial technology) innovations mediate and articulate heterogenous facets of uncertainty in the context of finance capitalism? Arguing that uncertainty is a resource both produced and exploited, this article analyses how fintech trading applications configure market uncertainty as figures and scenarios of risk and opportunity. Moreover, foregrounding the experiences of novice retail traders, I analyse the weighing of financial risk against extra-financial forms of uncertainty, namely historical contingency, lived precarity, and infrastructural opacity. To map articulations between the various facets of uncertainty involved (i.e. risk, contingency, precarity, and opacity), I propose the concept of risk regimes: sociotechnical constellations or assemblages that interweave technologies of financial calculation and prediction; discourses of probability, possibility, risk, reward, et cetera; technologies of the self; and infrastructures of datafication key to fintech. This study is set in Hong Kong, a context that testifies to the instability of such assemblages. Whereas finance capitalism exploits uncertainty in multiple ways, contingency can also render the future of finance capitalism itself uncertain. Conceptually, I draw on recent media theories, theories of uncertainty and prediction as well as theories of value. Methodologically, I combine app analysis, in-depth user interviews, and digital-methods experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Prace Jezykoznawcze is the property of University of Warmia & Mazury in Olsztyn and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Historical reports show that COVID-19 pandemic has been confirmed over 213 nations or territories which accelerates the livelihoods. It also hampers the livelihoods of urban people's mainly poor slum dwellers in developing countries like Bangladesh. The purpose of this article is to assess the vulnerability of urban slum dwellers based on five livelihood capitals during COVID-19. METHODS: Rajshahi City Corporation area is purposively selected which is grouped into three zones (central, interim and peripheral) based on the distance from the central business district, Shaheb Bazar. The study is conducted with a semi-structured and self-developed questionnaire to fulfill its objective. The questionnaires are focused on predetermined 48 indicators of five livelihood capitals (human, social, physical, natural and financial). Total 361 slum households (9%) are selected from 4010 households at 95% significance level which are proportionately distributed in 12 slum areas and household heads are nominated through simple random samplings. Data are coded, edited and inserted carefully; standardized and livelihood capital index are calculated with SPSS and map is produced with ArcGIS 10.4. FINDINGS: Study reveals that about 47.8% (central), 57.5% (interim) and 45.1% (peripheral) slum dwellers are illiterate and live in a miserable condition. Human capital index is found higher in central slums (0.435) than peripheral (0.406) and interim (0.387). The social capital index is revealed as similar of human capital index. But physical capital index claims the trend as central (0.776)> interim (0.646)> peripheral (0.536). Again, financial capital index of the central slum dwellers is higher as they receive help during pandemic and get earning opportunity and these slum areas are located near the central business district. In addition, natural capital index is totally different and peripheral slum dwellers are in better position (0.635) than interim (0.549) and central (0.358) slums. Finally, the study concludes that mean livelihood capital index of central (0.4334) slum dwellers are better than interim (0.4216) and peripheral (0.4222) slums which assesses all the study slums as moderate. CONCLUSION: The study suggests that financial improvement is becoming an ultimate need for slum dwellers since the financial capital index reveals as poor among all the slum areas. Moreover, individual or community-based strategies, international collaborations, government and non-governmental organizations need to come forward to improve not only the financial capital but also other four capitals in all slum areas to build a sustainable livelihood as majority of them live below the standard livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically assesses debt as a response to ecological, fiscal, and climate disasters that have emerged within the 'blue economy' agenda in the Caribbean. Caribbean countries routinely suffer major losses of life, internal social and economic displacement, increased debt burdens, and significant economic damages due to hurricanes and ecological disasters in the context of an ongoing fiscal crisis. In response, regional public and national agencies have proposed 'blue economy' initiatives to address the regional need for finance, to rejuvenate financial flows, and to compensate for extremely constrained fiscal resources and externally imposed austerity (or debt bondage). Major recent hurricanes and ecological shocks illustrate uneven and interconnected spatial histories of anti‐Black dispossession, disenfranchisement, and deprivation, offering important empirical terrain from which to appreciate how contemporary 'disasters' have become new means to extend hierarchical plantation formations to the seascape through debt‐driven finance and austerity. The paper demonstrates the ways in which coercive financial instruments like catastrophe insurance, debt swaps, 'blue bonds', and traditional public debt constitute tools to further integrate these societies differentially into racialised financial geographies and entrench a coloniality of being. As traditional plantation structures become exhausted and lack capacity to effectively ensure growth, these innovative finance mechanisms are required for 'blue' accumulation. We situate spiralling debt burdens and these new instruments spurred by socially produced and postcolonial disasters within postplantation ecologies that describe socio‐political relations and spatial dependencies linked to interwoven logics of disaster‐based financial capitalism that seek to extend the extractive capacity of the plantation anew. These arrangements tend to naturalise and render disaster, death, and debt as ordinary events and obligations arising from postcolonial statehood, and take for granted their origins in racialised plantation structures. Climate and fiscal crises currently characterise the Caribbean and place major pressure on the region's limited sovereignties. To address these problems, Caribbean actors have proposed a number financialised products, such as 'blue bonds', catastrophe insurance, and debt‐for‐nature swaps and associated governance arrangements, to develop the blue economy. These configurations and relations deepen what I call the post‐plantation ecology, by intensifying extraction commodification, and exploitation of racialized labour towards 'blue' accumulation within the context of conditional sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept of a 'financial elite' has become prominent within politics and the social sciences, it is not clear what value it holds for the analysis of inequalities of income, wealth and power under financial capitalism. Who are the financial elite, and what distinguishes them from other economically powerful groups? We delineate 'distributive', 'categorical' and 'relational' approaches to financial elites, arguing that various unresolved tensions have hampered clarification of the differentia specifica of the concept, and blunted its normative significance. We develop a new concept of financial elites that combines insights from elite studies and financialisation studies. We argue that the financial elite possess not only high incomes, but income primarily derived from 'rentier' channels, as endowed by the institutional structures of financialisation. Financial elites demonstrate the capacity not only to capitalise on these new accumulation channels, but to shape the institutional and regulatory landscapes in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the intersections between finance and fiction in Hernan Diaz's novel "Trust," emphasizing the novel's focus on the connections between reality and fiction in the realm of high finance. Topics include the characters' manipulation of reality, the novel's exploration of different types of fictions, and the potential anarchy in the way fiction, particularly literature, bends reality.

The article explores the role of "things" in Hernan Diaz's novel "Trust," focusing on the character Helen Rask/Mildred Bevel and how the narrative subverts traditional portrayals of women in stories of wealth. Topics include the association of women with things, the intertwining of money and art in the novel, and the significance of objects and commodities in the four distinct narratives that make up "Trust."

Credit spreads behavior displays a range of features that are challenging to model--strongly fat-tailed distribution of changes, periods of relative stability interrupted by prolonged violent shifts, lack of symmetry in spread rises vs. falls, etc. This article proposes a new model for spread behavior that incorporates these peculiarities without bringing excessive mathematical complexity. At the core of our approach is a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) that assumes that spreads follow a 2-state stochastic process. In a key departure from traditional HMM, the authors introduce explicit auto-regression into their formulation. The assumption behind that innovation is that while regime switches may be instantaneous and regimes may be characterized by different spread "fair" levels, the transition between such levels is gradual as opposed to instantaneous. As they illustrate, this assumption is critical for proper description of the spreads dynamic. The model lends itself well to tactical asset allocation involving high-yield credit assets and in a broad, multi-asset class setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on global statistics, floods rank the first among natural disasters that severely disrupt human life, property, and the environment. Iran, as one of the flood-prone countries, is located in southwestern Asia. The geographical elevation, maritime influences, seasonal winds, and proximity to mountain ranges or deserts play a significant role in its daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations, as well as its precipitation patterns and types. According to official statistics in Iran, among climate-related hazards, some 70% of the annual funds of the Plan for Reducing the Effects of Natural Disasters have been spent on compensation for damages from floods. Yet, what augments the importance of floods and their damages is the fact that human and urban centers have been located in flood-prone areas. Therefore, considering the dense populations and financial capitals in such areas, it is necessary to assess the vulnerability of urban floods, especially in big cities like Ahvaz. This metropolis, as the capital of Khuzestan province, is located in the marshy plains with a population of over one million people. It is traversed by the country's most water-rich river, the Karun. The aim of this study is to assess the vulnerability of Ahvaz from flood as a natural hazard and its coping capacity. The methodology of the study is descriptive-analytical and is based on its practical purpose. Fuzzy Hierarchy Model (Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process) has been used for the spatial analysis of vulnerability and the capacity to deal with floods. In summary, the findings are as follows: (a) Considering the floods that have occurred in the past six decades and comparing the affected areas with the results of this research in terms of highly vulnerable areas in the central part of the city, the model used has shown high efficiency in determining the vulnerability caused by urban flooding. (b) As far as vulnerability is concerned, location and physical–environmental conditions stimulate and reinforce other factors which are influential in determining the level of vulnerability. (c) Encroachment on river boundaries, especially limiting the river width, leads to a reduction in flood capacity and an increase in vulnerability in those areas. (d) The vulnerability level of Ahvaz to flooding, based on area, falls within five categories of vulnerability spectrum as follows: Very High 4.6%, High 8.7%, Moderate 13.4%, Low 15.2%, and Very Low 58%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that public debt financing facilitated the appropriation of the territories of Indigenous nations in the British settler colonies and does so through a detailed examination of Prince Edward Island's public debt. The island's government used public debt financing as a technique to direct capital into the colony, but to receive loans, the colonial government first needed credit. Settler-colonial credit derived from colonial governments' claiming the territories of Indigenous nations as government assets. This history highlights the deeply racial characteristics embedded in the expansion of global public debt financing that characterized finance capitalism beginning in the 1820s. In this way, the unique history of the island and its "land question" can be placed into the broader global context of debt markets and processes of racial capital. Specifically, the 1853 Land Purchase Act used public borrowing to purchase lands from British landowners so that the island's government could hold the land title. British landowners had their ownership rights secured despite the eighteenth-century Peace and Friendship Treaties that guaranteed the Mi'kmaq nation rights to their territory, which included Epekwitk, what the British named Prince Edward Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border regional innovation systems (CBRIS) have emerged as a key concept in innovation studies, but there have been few successful CBRIS in practice. In this paper we focus on asymmetry in the distribution of benefits as a potential barrier for the development of CBRIS based on an in-depth analysis of collaborative activities in the development of Hong Kong–Shenzhen innovation system. Our analysis reveals that Shenzhen companies are more active than their Hong Kong counterparts in driving the cross-border linkages, are better at leveraging cross-border university resources and have more success in attracting cross-border financial capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxists often link the emergence of finance capital to developments in the categories of capital, such as flight to money capital, sometimes associated with changes in the organic composition of capital. While not disputing the importance of transformations in capitalist categories, this paper examines the causal role of working-class agency in the emergence of finance capital. The paper addresses finance capital in Britain, giving due consideration to a variety of causal factors cementing its dominance. It then considers the role of labour unrest in developing a working class in itself, gravitating towards and away from political expressions (syndicalism, social democracy) in pursuance of its immediate economic struggles. The overall argument is that the emergence of finance capital in the parasitic form it took in Britain was fundamentally a response to the power of a working class in itself. Parasitism became the default trend to control the working class and prevent any potential movement towards a working class for itself from gaining hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet has increasingly become a critical part in digital era, the Internet has changed how we interact through social media, access information and public services, and navigate spatially. This article argues that adopting a Smart City concept to meet the needs of urban residents should be done in a careful and sustainable manner. Using the city of Malang in the East Java Province as a case study, the research employees a spatial of SWOT analysis, Pentagon Assets Analysis, and 3D IPA. The results showed a disparity of Internet access amongst Malang City residents. The Pentagon Assets results identified that the residents' social and financial capital is still conventionally trying to fulfill their basic needs. Likewise, the spatial SWOT analysis showed that the Internet coverage area was still constrained by the infrastructure network and basic urban infrastructure. This was also supported by the results of the 3D IPA analysis, which showed that most residents have not received good and proper internet network services. The paper offers several public policy implications in the context of the Smart City development. It concluded that policymakers should consider several aspects such as fulfilling basic urban services, increasing community capacity, or fulfilling Smart City development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the force of automation and its contradictions and resistances within (and beyond) the financial sector, with a specific focus on computational practices of credit-scoring and lending. It examines the operations and promotional discourses of fintech start-ups LendUp.com and Elevate.com that offer small loans to the sub-prime consumers in exchange for access to their online social media and mobile data, and Zest AI and LenddoEFL that sell automated decision-making tools to verify identity and assess risk. Reviewing their disciplinary reputational demands and impacts on users and communities, especially women and people of colour, the paper argues that the automated reimagination of credit and creditability disavows the formative design of its AI and redefines moral imperatives about character to align with the interests of digital capitalism. The economic, social and cultural crises precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic have only underscored the internal contradictions of these developments, and a variety of debt resistance initiatives have emerged, aligned with broader movements for social, economic, and climate justice around the globe. Cooperative lending circles such as the Mission Asset Fund, activist groups like #NotMyDebt, and Debt Collective, a radical debt abolition movement, are examples of collective attempts to rehumanize credit and debt and resist the appropriative practices of contemporary digital finance capitalism in general. Running the gamut from accommodationist to entirely radical, these experiments in mutual aid, debt refusal, and community-building provide us with roadmaps for challenging capitalism and re-thinking credit, debt, power, and personhood within and beyond the current crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Agricultura Sociedad y Desarrollo is the property of Colegio de Postgraduados and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a powerful assertion of geopolitical power and conflict. But Russia's nationalist and expansionary drive takes place within the context of transnational economic ties. Such ties help define the nature of the war, and both the Russian and western response. The contradictory pressures of nationalist desires conflicting with transnational integration is an underappreciated complexity of the war that this article will explore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Realidad Economica is the property of Realidad Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose- Owramanat County in Kermanshah province with 14 tourism regions, is one of the best tourist destinations of Kermanshah province, in which the tourism activists have faced challenges during the period of the outbreak of the Covid- 19 pandemic. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate and analyze the resilience of rural tourism and identify the key drivers affecting it in the face of Covid-19 pandemic in Owramanat County. Design/methodology/approach- the present applied, quantitative study has been conducted with a combined approach (combination of descriptive-analytical and exploratory methods). The questionnaire method was used for data collection and its validity and reliability have been confirmed by observing scientific principles. In order to achieve the purposes of the study, the opinions of 150 people from the local community active in the field of tourism were used to evaluate the resilience, and the opinions of 30 experts were used to identify the primary factors affecting the resilience and also the views of 25 experts were taken into consideration in order to identify the key drivers affecting the resilience of rural tourism. The SPSS and MICMAC software were used to analyze the collected data. Findings- The research findings showed that, the average of four variables including local government budget, environmental knowledge, community welfare, and social support system as the main components of the resilience of rural tourism were 1.757, 2.358, 1.808, and 2.295 respectively and have been significantly lower than the base average. The overall assessment results showed that the calculated average with a value of 2.014 has been significantly lower than the medium level. The results also showed that, among 17 factors affecting the resilience of tourism, 5 factors of government financial support, financial capital, sanitary equipment, infrastructural facilities and disease control are the most effective key drivers on resilience. Originality/ value- Evaluation and analysis of the resilience of rural tourism in the face of Covid-19 pandemic with an approach of presenting the key indicators and variables in this field and also identification of key drivers affecting the resilience of rural tourism have received less attention from researchers and this proves the originality of the present study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fintech start-ups, such as Zest AI and LenddoEFL, promise enhanced levels of financial inclusion via the creation of "re-socialized" credit profiles derived from accessing clients' online banking habits and social media accounts. As our social data becomes credit data, the performance of "appropriate" online selfhood can now, quite literally, become money. This article explores the reputational demands, disciplines, and contradictions of ostensibly alternative computational/platformed credit scoring. It argues that the world of "surveillance capitalism" involves the maintenance of a relentlessly promotional value chain. As we are summoned to assiduously self-promote online in pursuit of a creditable reputation and financial inclusion, the self-reflexive promotional logics of the platforms themselves work to remake the world in their own image, paradoxically undermining the productive economic assumptions upon which they are predicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its comprehensiveness, Lenin's classical analysis of the imperialistic nature of capitalism deserves to be considered under a new lens. This article is an attempt to highlight some important features of late imperialism. While Lenin's analysis is the focal point of critical inquiry, the article goes beyond his account to examine some important features of classical theory that remained unaddressed by Lenin. The attempt is to dialectically sublate Lenin's theory with the analysis of contemporary imperialism. It is suggested that the mechanism of financial accumulation, concentration and centralisation of finance capital is broader than classical conception of finance capital. Another important driver of contemporary imperialism is the globalisation of industrial capital driven by transnational corporations and arm's length production. The central feature of this new form of production is global monopoly capital resulting from combined interplay of concentration and internationalisation. The article also endeavours to understand the global proletarianisation of labour as a consequence of the accumulation at the world scale; a point only obliquely addressed by Lenin. The article concludes by comparing capitalism's crisis and decay in Lenin's analysis with the capitalism of present times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Realidad Economica is the property of Realidad Economica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article revisits the concept of the dividual, taking as a starting point Deleuze's diagnosis about the relevance that dividual practices have gained with the advent of biotechnology and digital culture. Although we agree with this diagnosis, we highlight the intersections between the dividual and the individual both in Modernity and in the present time. The contemporary dividual is in tension with the modern individual, but not as a substitution, division or duplication of the individual. Rather, we state a complex dividual-individual composition, focusing on biotechnologies, digital culture and financial capitalism. Following a Foucauldian approach, we understand this composition as a result of technologies of power and the result of certain modes of subjectivation. In dialogue with Simondon's theory of individuation, we suggest that the dividual takes part in a new mode of subjectivation which can be named a 'dividuation' in the context of technologically mediated experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the influence factors lie behind the livelihood choices of rural households are of crucial significance for improving the sustainable livelihoods of rural households in tourism regions. Five villages in Sa Pa District, Vietnam, were selected in this study, to conduct household surveys and interviews with 180 households. Based on this, a comprehensive approach, which includes multinomial/binary logistic regression, Ripley's function, and geographical detector, is applied to understand the households' capital endowment and factors lie behind their livelihood choices. Results show that for rural households, tourism livelihood yields the highest income, but the lack of diversity of livelihood activities may make tourism livelihood household more vulnerable to the external risk and shocks than balanced livelihood households. Different types of households are found to show clustering feature, with clustering degree ranking as: agricultural > balanced > tourism > labour. Households with more natural capital are less likely to choose livelihoods other than agriculture livelihood. And households with more financial capital are less likely to engage in agricultural livelihood. Both financial capital and social capital can facilitate engagement in balanced livelihood. And financial capital is key to tourism livelihood, and a barrier impeding agricultural households to participate in other livelihood activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), a multinational financial cooperation with semi-governmental privileges, was founded in 1881 following the Ottoman government's declaration of bankruptcy. Acting within a complex inter-imperial setting, the OPDA's headquarters constituted the center of an expansive material network engendered by debt, operationalizing a system of resource extraction across a wide economic geography. Focusing on the concept of trust underlying the financial instrument of debt, this paper considers architecture to be both a medium and a product of the logics of modern finance developed in the late nineteenth century. The building's methodical ordering of space, modest yet specific ornamentation, and unique façade design did not simply mirror the financial activities it housed, rather it actively mobilized them to regain creditors' trust following financial collapse. I argue that the OPDA building's design—in its incorporation of past, "traditional" forms—materialized an ongoing process of borrowing from the future, naturalizing the debt system's stability and thus enabling its endurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that a new form of finance capital has been consolidated in the United States since the 2008 crisis—defined as a fusion of financial and industrial capital. In this regime, financiers have become more entrenched in the governance of nonfinancial corporations while, reciprocally, industrial firm managers have increasingly become financiers. Indeed, this fusion has taken place on two interconnected levels: (1) within the nonfinancial corporation itself, and (2) between the nonfinancial corporation and the financial sector. Internal diversification and internationalization over the postwar era led to the reorganization of the industrial corporation as a financial group, managing not concrete production processes, but portfolios of financial assets. This was reinforced by the increasing power of outside investors over the neoliberal period. However, new forms of financial organization that emerged after 2008 produced tighter and more direct linkages between external financiers and the nonfinancial corporation, constituting the new finance capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each partner in an at-will partnership can obtain a cash payout of his interest at any time. The corporation, by contrast, locks in shareholder capital, denying general payout rights to shareholders unless the charter states otherwise. What explains this difference? This Article argues that partner payout rights reduce the costs of two other characteristics of the partnership: the non-transferability of partner control rights, and the possibility for partnerships to be formed inadvertently. While these characteristics serve valuable functions, they can introduce a bilateral-monopoly problem and a special freezeout hazard unless each partner can force the firm to cash out his interest. The corporation lacks these characteristics: shares are freely transferable, and no one can commit capital to a corporation without intending to do so. Therefore, in most corporations the costs of shareholder payout rights--which would include the cash-raising burden and a hazard of appraisal arbitrage--would exceed the benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality in capital, property and income is a major determinant of modern society. An enormous concentration of the capital is accomplished.The number of the rich, and extremely rich, is increasing. On the other hand are those who have less and the poor. There is also an increase in the number of global plutocrats. Growth dynamics is slowing down. The future is uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to see the growing social inequality as a problem nowadays. Historical, deductive-inductive, structural and comparative analysis are applied. The distribution of wealth is one of the most debated issues today. But do we know enough about its long-term development? Does the dynamics of accumulation of private capital inevitably lead to a strong concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few? Do equalization of growth rate, competition and technical progress lead to less inequality and greater stabilization in the advanced stages of development? What do we know about income and wealth development and what lessons can we learn from it? The history of the distribution of wealth is always deeply political and cannot be reduced to pure economic mechanisms. The history of inequality depends on the way economic, social and political actors see what is unfair and what is not, as well as on their relative power and the resulting common choices: distribution is a common product of all actors. The dynamics of wealth distribution reveal powerful mechanisms that alternate between convergence and divergence, so there is no natural spontaneous process that would prevent destabilizing, non-egalitarian tendencies from permanently prevailing. We start with the mechanisms that move towards convergence, i.e. towards reducing inequality. The main force of convergence is the process of disseminating knowledge and investing in training and education. The law of supply and demand, as well as the mobility of capital and labor, which is a variant of that law, can be equally relied upon in that direction, but the impact of this law is less powerful than the spread of knowledge and skills and is often ambiguous and contradictory. The process of disseminating knowledge and skills is a key mechanism that simultaneously enables general productivity growth and reduction of inequality. From a strictly theoretical point of view, there are potentially other forces moving towards greater equality. Technological rationality should automatically lead to the victory of human capital over financial capital and real estate, capable managers over shareholders, skills over nepotism. Somehow it would automatically lead to democratic rationality. The issue of wealth distribution will always have a subjective and psychological dimension. The answers offered are always imperfect and unfinished. Changes are logically possible and to some extent real, but their impact is far smaller than we can imagine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The links between design and the forces of capitalism, while contingent conditions of practice, are easily elided in architectural discourse. An architectural poster-child of neoliberalism, Canary Wharf, was conceived at a time when global financial markets were deregulating, real estate developers were looking across oceans for more prestigious downtown redevelopment projects, and architectural practices split responsibilities in complex arrangements between a lead designer and teams of consultants. What this article seeks to investigate is a more nuanced understanding of the contingent relationships among the increasing financialization of real estate, a political tide-shift, and the ways in which architects responded to these conditions, both in their designs and in the organization of their practices. How was the financial risk understood, and to what was it seen to be contingent?

The article focuses on the diversity of spatial solutions, finishes and equipment that Antonio P. Haché's portfolio that has high-tech floors and floor boxes, carpets and wallpaper, partitions and furniture, among many others allowed a satisfactory response to the requirements of design and setting of the BHD Financial Campus buildings with the high standards established for the project.

An example of near-future climate fiction, Nathaniel Rich's 2013 novel Odds Against Tomorrow envisions a catastrophic, global warming-related flooding of the New York City area. Despite the novel's (post)apocalyptic focus, a large part of it can be in fact perceived as preapocalyptic, inasmuch as it explores people's traumatic responses to potential future disasters, even before they actually happen. The aim of the article is to analyze the novel's depiction of the culture of fear, which has permeated the modern society as a consequence of it becoming what Ulrich Beck famously termed a "risk society." In a risk society, human industrial and technological activity produces a series of hazards, including global risks such as anthropogenic climate change. In the novel, Rich shows how financial capitalism commodifies these risks by capitalizing on people's fears and their need for some degree of risk management. Finally, the paper looks at the text as a cli-fi novel and thus as a literary response to the pretrauma caused by environmental risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green bonds represent an increasingly popular way to match "environmental sustainability," growth, and the aspirations of global financial capital. In this article, we leverage a world-ecology approach to unpack and make sense of green bonds as public/private constructions that shape and subordinate the complex ecologies of territories to the needs of finance and reproduce the global patterns of uneven development and capitalist accumulation. Through the study of recent green bond issuances realized by private companies active in the forestry sector in Brazil, we discuss how green bonds as a "new" form of "green" debt put nature at work and transform the territories and natural elements in the global south into "temporal and spatial fixes" for the needs of global financial capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Istanbul Journal of Economics / İstanbul Iktisat Dergisi is the property of Istanbul Journal of Economics / Istanbul Iktisat Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Criterio Libre is the property of Revista Criterio Libre and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article is part of contemporary discussions that challenge economic sociology and the sociology of work to reflect on a new socioeconomic phenomenon: the arrival of trade unionists in the financial market, through creation and, above all, the management of pension funds. Social actors of the construction of this new financial phenomenon, unionists come to (re)signify not only their strategies, but also their speeches, adding moral and social questions to the interests of the market. The work demonstrates that using the logic of capitalism itself in the fight against financialization of the economy and the productive restructuring would be the new ethos of Brazilian unionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour is at sea. The party must rediscover its historic identity as the party of the labour interest, and offer a new model of sustainable and shared economic growth to replace our current, failing model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]