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This article examines ‘the economics of singularities’ by Lucien Karpik, which is a sociological theory explaining the functioning of markets for a specific type of goods, labeled as ‘singularities’, defined according to three criteria: the plurality of qualities, quality uncertainty and the primacy of quality. According to Lucien Karpik, singularities complement the typology of goods traditionally used by economists, consisting of homogeneous and differentiated goods. He argues that singularities represent a ‘blind spot’ of what he calls ‘neoclassical economic theory.’ According to him, while neoclassical economic theory is adequate for studying homogeneous and differentiated goods, an autonomous framework is indispensable for studying singularities. In this article, we propose a comprehensive overview of the economics of singularities, and we formulate a critique of Karpik’s positioning in relation to neoclassical economic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNatural liberty is a powerful idea of social order. However, a tension has always existed between its reality and social values. Here, I try to identify where the fault line may lie between an order that fulfils social expectation and one that does not. I claim that throughout history, this fault line had been manifested in the distinction drawn between the concepts of price and value. The first emerges in markets and the second reflects social expectations. Juxtaposing the two reveals either harmony or dissonance between natural liberty and social expectations. Convergence then is a necessary condition for social validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Investments in environmentally friendly initiatives can bolster infrastructure projects, agricultural methods, and water management systems that improve the ability to withstand climate-related difficulties. Green investments encompass endorsing carbon markets and financial instruments that incentivise reducing emissions. This research helps attain the climate objectives described in sustainable development goal 13 (SDG 13). Purpose: This chapter aims to investigate the relationship between greenhouse gases (GHG) and gross domestic product (GDP), with the underlying objective of understanding the relevance of green investment for sustainable development. Methodology: For the analysis, the top five countries: the USA, China, Germany, Japan, and India, were chosen based on the world's largest economies in 2023, as per their GDP data. For testing the hypothesis, data from the World Bank database during the period 2002-2022 was retrieved and GDP is used as a dependent variable and GHG as an independent variable. For the study, panel data are used, and the Johansen cointegration test and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression are applied. Findings: In the case of China and India, the null hypothesis has been rejected, which is depicted by the significant and high degree of relation between GHGs and the GDP of these two countries. The null hypothesis is also rejected for the USA and Germany, but it shows a significant and moderate degree of relationship between GHG and GDP. For Japan, the null hypothesis is accepted and reflects a negative relationship between GHG and GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractHenri Poincaré is well known for his work in mathematics, physics, and the philosophy of science. From 1900 onwards, Poincaré had the opportunity to become a forerunner of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), a concept that was formally developed 65 years later, but he never seised it. We show that Poincaré’s view on randomness was incompatible with the EMH framework. Although he did not work directly on financial topics, his work has helped to understand the limits of random walks in asset pricing; a way to reconcile the mathematician with the field of finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We posit that prices are signs, not just signals, that work in the same symbolic way as words. Both are complex, generative systems of shared meaning that rely on a web of intricate symbolic references. Just like the meaning of a word is a product of our social and linguistic action, the meaning of a price is a product of our relationship to the physical world phenomena of people in markets. The fundamental conception of both is to communicate and construct worlds with ourselves and others, enabling us to act in the world. Prices, like words, do symbolic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article explores the evolution of the gravity model in international trade studies, emphasising systematic barriers to its acceptance. Employing a chronological and argumentative approach, it examines the emergence of the gravity concept, comparing Isard’s original contribution with Tinbergen’s econometric approach. It discusses how the heuristic nature of economics and a perceived lack of theoretical foundation initially hindered the gravity equation’s use. The works of Tinbergen’s contemporaries, including Linnemann and Anderson, are introduced. Lastly, recent findings in research will be reviewed, such as Krugman’s New Economic Geography, which seeks to encompass Isard’s intention to combine international trade with localisation theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study explored various dimensions of overconfidence bias (OB) among retail investors in Indian financial markets. Further, these dimensions were validated through formative assessments for OB. Design/methodology/approach: The study applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to 764 respondents to explore dimensions of OB. These were validated with formative assessments on 489 respondents by the partial least square path modeling (PLS-PM) approach in SmartPLS 4.0 software. Findings: The major findings of EFA explored four dimensions for OB, i.e. accuracy, perceived control, positive illusions and past investment success. The formative assessments revealed that positive illusions followed by past investment success among retail investors played an instrumental role in orchestrating the OBs that affect investment decisions in financial markets. Practical implications: The formative index of OB has several practical implications for registered financial and investment advisors, bank advisors, business media companies and portfolio managers, besides individual investors in the domain of behavioral finance. Originality/value: This research provides a novel approach to provide a formative index of OB with four dimensions. This formative index can acts as an overview for upcoming researchers to investigate the OB of retail individual investors. Highlights: Overconfidence bias is an important predictor of retail investors' behavior Formative dimensions of the overconfidence bias index. Accuracy, perceived control, positive illusions and past investment success are important dimensions of overconfidence bias. Modern portfolio theory and illusion of control theory support this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing recognition that anti-poverty policies aimed at increasing access to assets, particularly durable goods, need to address the issue of gender-based developmentally-situated disparities. This study examined how different types of durable goods relate to academic achievement and school attendance in Colombia and whether this relationship varies by gender and school grade, expanding the geographic scope of existing literature on the subject to Latin America. Data for fifth and ninth-grade students with complete durable goods information (N = 364,436) from the 2017 SABER test, a nationwide examination that evaluates reading and math skills, were assessed using multilevel modeling. The results indicated that students whose families owned washing machines, computers or who had internet access performed better academically and were less likely to be absent from school, with larger effects for boys and fifth graders. This research contributes to the existing literature by illustrating the importance of durable goods on children's academic performance. The study recommends policymakers to support the formulation of asset-based policies that promote access to durable goods, particularly for girls and adolescents from low-income families.

This paper develops a method to identify manipulation of custodial suspects who attempt to invoke the Miranda right to legal counsel during a custodial interrogation. The method, developed from a combination of framing theory and hypergame theory, first documents the point where custodial suspects' preferences shift and second identifies the proximate cause of that shift using excerpts from legal cases. The method applies linguistic analysis within a hypergame framework to reveal rational behavior of custodial suspects who, despite owning an initial preference to invoke, waive their right to counsel without explicit pressure from police. The paper terms this shift in preferences "manipulation" adding the concept to hypergames and to the literature on noncooperative discursive exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of private property has been controversial in Catholic social thought and teaching down the ages. The approach of the Catholic Church to the question of property rights has been discussed by a number of Austrian-school authors, though their focus has been on teaching documents from 1891 to 1931. During that period, and up to the mid-1960s, the modern teaching of the Catholic Church on the right to property tended to be extremely positive. Since that time, ambiguities have crept in, and Pope Francis in particular has given the impression of being lukewarm towards the right to property. We discuss whether Pope Francis's position is radical within the tradition of Catholic social teaching and conclude that it is not especially so, though his emphasis is more negative than that of previous popes and his reasoning not always sound. It is also found that the Catholic Church has left undeveloped the link between private property, economic development and environmental outcomes despite the interest of the Church in poverty and environmental degradation. This, together with the lack of discussion of the exceptions to the general rule of support for private property, is a real omission in Catholic Church teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Digital Markets Act is a new European Regulation which entered into force on October 2022. It will apply to "gatekeepers", namely undertakings providing core platform services, with the aim of fostering "fairness" and "contestability" in the digital sector. If these objectives appear at first sight both relevant and legitimate, this paper sheds light on the dark side of this Regulation by arguing that it will undermine the Rule of Law. Indeed, for several reasons which will be discussed, the Digital Markets Act will impede or limit the respect of principles which are deeply rooted in the legal tradition of European countries. This leads to an important question: is the cure worse than the disease? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There has been a resurgence in scholarship on Karl Polanyi in recent years, against the backdrop of rising populism and critiques of globalization and financialization. In these works, Polanyi is typically portrayed as critic of the contested notion of 'neoliberalism'. In this paper I demonstrate that, to the contrary, Polanyi's Great Transformation (1944) shares many of the themes central to the contributions of the early neoliberals, specifically the ordoliberal thinkers. Polanyi and the ordoliberals did not only seek to analyze the origins of the same social crisis of the 1930 s and 40 s, but their analysis of the deficiencies of nineteenth-century liberalism as well as the subsequent disintegration through rapidly growing interventions in favor of powerful groups in society has much in common. This paper explores these similarities and demonstrates that they also extended to the way they perceived the responsibility of scientists as well as the interdependence of the various orders in society. It is argued that the ordoliberals, their fellow-traveler F. A. Hayek and Karl Polanyi all perceived the interdependence between the state, civil society and the market somewhat differently, but agreed on the need to conceptualize the relationship between the three. Finally, it is suggested that even the normative ideal of Karl Polanyi, the realization of 'freedom in a complex society', has important commonalities with the ordoliberal program: the protection of individual freedom from concentrated forms of power in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of reliability and the cost of failure or maintenance costs of renewable energy sources, including wind farms, is becoming increasingly important, especially as the volume of electricity supply from such installations increases.

AbstractEfforts to improve the welfare of community are an important agenda for rural development. The community-based development (CBD) has been applied in rural development models such as the model of Integrated Agriculture Development (IAD), the Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM), and Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM). However, the models have revealed certain weaknesses, to achieve resilience and sustainable growth in village’s community. We evaluated the current practices of CBD in rural Indonesian by applying proper governance and social innovation as a conceptual framework at village development level. Field work was applied in 15 villages in Indonesia to collect qualitative data from the key persons. The qualitative analysis was undertaken to actualizing the proper governance and social innovation dimensions based on the data gathered from 15 villages in Indonesia. It is observed that the CBD practices vary in three different rural’s typology namely farming, forest, and coastal villages. The CBD practices can enhance developmental resilience and sustainability in rural areas, if the current practices can add more attention in four key factors namely institutional setting, financial strategy, program’s sustainability, and post-program mentoring.

We argue that in a core–periphery economic world economics imperialism as advanced by the postwar Chicago School and economic imperialism led by the economies of the north are two sides of the same coin. We first review the parallelism between postwar capitalism’s core–periphery expansion of the north into the south and the Chicago theory of economics imperialism. We then distinguish four forms of relationships between different disciplines, and using Rodrik’s augmented global capitalism trilemma argue Chicago adopts his Golden Straitjacket pathway, both for north–south capitalist expansion and core mainstream economics’ orientation toward other social science disciplines. The paper then uses Ricardo’s classic theory of rising rents to argue the Golden Straitjacket pathway is self-undermining for both, because it produces costly rising inframarginal rents in the north economies associated with financialization and in Chicago economics associated with its defense against other disciplines’ reverse imperialisms. We conclude that long-term forces operating on global economic development and the evolution of the social sciences suggest an alternative pathway for both that would produce a more pluralistic world economy and a more pluralistic economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractEarnings management (EM) and its association with firm performance has been a subject of research interest for decades. This study re-examines the EM—firm performance nexus in a novel way using a nonlinear framework and introducing macro-economic misery index (MI) as a possible threshold variable in the analysis. 52 sampled non-financial listed firms are drawn from nine emerging sub-Saharan African countries spanning a period of 2007–2019. The study employs the dynamic panel threshold estimation approach in analyzing its models. By using MI as a threshold variable, the results show new findings of the performance effect of EM contingent on a uniquely identified MI threshold of 22.51. The study finds that the performance-enhancing effect of EM is realized only when a firm’s MI is below the identified threshold. Above this threshold, the effect of EM on performance is negligible or sometimes adverse. The estimated nonlinear effect of EM on firm performance and the threshold of MI can be benchmarks for Africa and other emerging countries. The findings suggest important implications for national governments in adopting policies that help to minimise the economic misery of the citizenry, as they would generally inure to the greater good of businesses and their varying stakeholders.

Economists are divided over the potential impact of robotisation, especially when the effects on labour are considered. Several experts fear that the labour substitution effects will outpace the number of new jobs created, while others find that balancing forces will work this time as well. In this article, I focus on the impact of these processes on the Hungarian manufacturing industry, as Hungary is a good example of an FDI-dependent, production-focused country. The analysis is based on several interviews with experts and managers, mostly from the automotive industry. The result of the discussions shows that there is a growing robotisation trend in Hungary, along with the other Visegrad Four countries. While this trend decreases the number of workers needed for a certain production volume, it does not pose a serious immediate threat as it is balanced by the tendency of a lack of workforce with the necessary skills.

Abstract This paper aims to defend Adam Smith’s ideas of taxation via moral philosophical approaches. In the conventional interpretation such a view is assumed to be inconsistent particularly due to the shortcomings of his economic theory. We suggest that via his notions of justice and equity, and of surplus income counted on an equilibrium basis in his natural price system, his argument for proportional taxation is rather coherent, while considerations for horizontal equity would result in a support for some progressivity in taxation. In the latter sense the equity-based tax reform plans have some policy implications on distributive justice in the modern state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial development and economic growth in different time horizons for Turkey. In this study an ensemble of wavelet analysis and Granger causality test were used. PSC was used to represent financial development and GDP was used to represent growth. The annual data used are for the period 1961–2018. The result obtained for a one year period shows that the demand-following hypothesis is valid for Turkey. Financial development is the Granger cause of growth and positively affects growth. The financial sector should be supported for growth in the short term. While there is no causal relationship for the 2–4 year period, bidirectional causality relationships were determined for the periods of 4–8 years, 8–16 years and 16–32 years. Because variables are a Granger cause of each other and affect each other in a positive direction supporting the financial sector is a preferable policy when the purpose is to achieve growth in the long run.

From the perspective of the diversity of capitalism and that of economic sociology, the article deals with the issue of center-peripheral relations as one of the key dimensions of economic diversification that determines the development opportunities of the European Union. The collapse of the convergence processes during the 2008–2010 financial crisis revealed the separateness of development trajectories of various countries and geographical regions of the EU. Without reversing this phenomenon and working out new mechanisms of development convergence and institutions supporting them, the process of European integration will enter further structural crises that may lead to the disintegration of the EU. Various classifications of the core and of the peripheries of the euro area are characterized, within which several types of countries are identified with different economic characteristics (countries of the Northern core and of the Southern peripheries of the euro area, different types of peripheries in Southern Europe and in Central and Eastern Europe, the internal core and the external core or the outer core, and the internal peripheries and the external peripheries, as well as the super-peripheries including candidates or potential candidates to join the EU). The COVID-19 crisis has an asymmetric impact on the economic situation of the Member States. As with other crises, this impact will be the result of the interconnection of the prior state of economies, structural differences in growth patterns, and responses to new challenges brought about by the pandemic. Also, the consequences of the pandemic for the reconfiguration of center-peripheral relations in the EU are discussed, with a particular focus on the CEE.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced an extensive aggravation of people's anxiety level. Different policies aimed at fighting the spread of the virus could affect anxiety in various ways. We built an ad hoc web-based survey, administered to the student population of three Italian universities at the beginning of the pandemic and at one year's distance, to collect information on retrospective and current anxiety levels and the underlining reasons. The survey also included questions concerning sociodemographic, economic, labor, lifestyle, academic career, and on-line teaching features, which prevents students from identifying the main survey topic to be anxiety. This research aims at assessing the change in anxiety levels between the analyzed periods and the main determinants of such change, focusing on students' economic expectancies. Results from a Poisson regression model show that anxiety has increased compared to both the pre-pandemic level and the one quantified during the first lockdown. This increase is revealed to be mostly driven by economic and career-related uncertainties, rather than by job loss and proximity to COVID-19. Thus, policymakers should take action to provide certainties both in terms of economic prospects and reopening strategies, especially to avoid that the resulting increase in anxiety translates into an amplified suicide risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the connections between epidemiology models and the search and matching (SAM) approach and draw conclusions about modeling the trade-offs between lockdowns and disease spread. We review the pre-COVID epidemics literature, which was mainly by epidemiologists, and the post-COVID surge in economics papers that use meeting technologies to model the trade-offs. We argue that modeling the decentralized equilibrium with economic trade-offs gives rise to substantially different results from the earlier epidemics literature, but policy action is still welfare-improving because of several externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on the results of research on the sector of public relation (PR) agencies in Poland, which is an important part of the entire PR industry. The purpose of this article is to determine the potential of this sector in the post-pandemic period in the light of research results. The analysis focused on key parameters that influence the condition of the PR agencies sector, such as the number of agencies, type of activity, legal form, territorial distribution and financial indicators. Desk research (qualitative methodology) was used as the main research technique. The research was conducted on the basis of available databases and own datasets, such as lists of PR agencies, data from the Central Statistical Office (GUS), records stored in the Bisnode database, data from PR agencies’ websites and others. At a further stage, quantitative analysis of the collected statistical data was applied. The article illustrates the role of PR agencies in terms of the entire PR industry and presents a scheme for building a sampling frame on this type of companies.

The literature connecting growing socio-economic inequality and populism as the main political consequence of it, is burgeoning. However, modern studies are often limited to one-directional models that are based on the available data and are often operationalized on a limited number of variables. This article provides an in-depth literature review of elements of socio-economic inequality and populism, as well as introduces a new conceptual framework to provide pointers for qualitative or qualitative applications. In terms of independent variables, the framework decomposes the multilayered concept of socio-economic inequality into inequality of income (insecurity, polarization and perception) and wealth (via its link to rent-seeking and state capture) as well as inequality of opportunity (circumstances and effort, perception of opportunity). The main dependent variables that define populism are attitudes and voting on the demand side of populism, as well as party strategy and policies on the supply side, with the latter having the potential for a reverse causality. The most important innovation of the theoretical model is the incorporation of the institutional filters as mediating variables and their influence on the impact of inequality on populism. When economic and political institutions do not function well or citizens do not evaluate them positively, it has a potential to further exacerbate the economic grievances and amplify the support of populism. The proposed theoretical framework is particularly useful for case study and large N research designs focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, as besides the role of institutions, it incorporates the literature on rents.