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The case for CBDC does not just rest on its benefits or attractions, but also on its scope to avert potential problems associated with stablecoin. In this brief paper I critique the ‘illustrative scenario’ at the heart of the Bank of England’s recent New Forms of Digital Money discussion paper. I suggest that it does not deal realistically with the motives and practices of issuers. The argument speaks to contradictory trends both in the urgency of regulation of stablecoin and the underlying case for CBDC.

High-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) has a significant hereditary component, approximately half of which cannot be explained by known genes. To discover genes, we analyse germline exome sequencing data from 516 BRCA1/2-negative women with HGSOC, focusing on genes enriched with rare, protein-coding loss-of-function (LoF) variants. Overall, there is a significant enrichment of rare protein-coding LoF variants in the cases (p < 0.0001, chi-squared test). Only thirty-four (6.6%) have a pathogenic variant in a known or proposed predisposition gene. Few genes have LoF mutations in more than four individuals and the majority are detected in one individual only. Forty-three highly-ranked genes are identified with three or more LoF variants that are enriched by three-fold or more compared to GnomAD. These genes represent diverse functional pathways with relatively few involved in DNA repair, suggesting that much of the remaining heritability is explained by previously under-explored genes and pathways.

The uptake of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), subject to bottlenecks, seems to have reached a tipping point in the UK and this mirrors a general trend globally. BEVs are being positioned as one significant strand in the web of policy intended to translate the good intentions of Article 2 of the Conference of the Parties 21 Paris Agreement into reality. Governments and municipalities are anticipating that a widespread shift to BEVs will significantly reduce transport-related carbon emissions and, therefore, augment their nationally determined contributions to emissions reduction within the Paris Agreement. However, matters are more complicated than they may appear. There is a difference between thinking we can just keep relying on human ingenuity to solve problems after they emerge and engaging in fundamental social redesign to prevent the trajectories of harm. BEVs illustrate this. The contribution to emissions reduction per vehicle unit may be less than the public initially perceive since the important issue here is the lifecycle of the BEV and this is in no sense zero-emission. Furthermore, even though one can make the case that BEVs are a superior alternative to the fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine, the transition to BEVs may actually facilitate exceeding the carbon budget on which the Paris Agreement ultimately rests. Whether in fact it does depends on the nature of the policy that shapes the transition. If the transition is a form of substitution that conforms to rather than shifts against current global scales and trends in private transportation, then it is highly likely that BEVs will be a successful failure. For this not to be the case, then the transition to BEVs must be coordinated with a transformation of the current scales and trends in private transportation. That is, a significant reduction in dependence on and individual ownership of powered vehicles, a radical reimagining of the nature of private conveyance and of public transportati

In this paper, we pursue a financialisation line of argument exploring the specific features of private equity finance, with a focus on the activity undertaken at scale by the largest management groups or firms. The largest private equity firms wield considerable resources, affect ownership patterns and have the capacity to acquire literally any company. What they do matters. The bankruptcy of Toys R Us and the more general ‘crisis of retail’ illustrate a ‘debt gamble’. A company’s capital structure is radically restructured and equity is reduced and replaced by debt. The gamble is that there will be no change to the external environment that the GP cannot adequately adjust to and that the GP will in fact be able to maintain debt servicing. Although bankruptcy is a ‘worse case’, we contend that from a financialisation perspective, there are a whole set of attendant issues.

The fourth industrial revolution has become a prominent concept and imminent technological change a major issue. Facets are everyone’s concern but currently no one’s ultimate responsibility (perhaps a little like financial stability before the global financial crisis). In this paper, we argue that the future is being shaped now by the way the fourth industrial revolution is being positioned. Whilst no one has set out to argue for or defend technological determinism, anxiety combined with passivity and complacency are being produced, and this is in the context of a quasi-determinism. The contingent quantification of the future with regard to the potential for job displacement provides an influential source of authority for this. A background of ‘the future is coming, so you better get used to it’ is being disseminated. This favours a capitalism that may ‘deny work to the many’ perspective rather than a more fundamental rethink that encompasses change that may liberate the many from work. This, in turn, positions workers and responsibility for future employment (reducing the urgency of calls for wider societal preparation). Public understanding and policy are thus affected and along with them the future of work.

It is widely agreed that economists disagree, but it is also acknowledged that they do so according to common commitments. Perhaps the most peculiar, and thus uncommon, commonality is that economists take it as a given that the role of the economist extends to intervention in public discourse and public policy. If socialised as an economist, it is easy to miss how odd this is. From “speaking as an economist” flows framing analytics, constraining theoretical formulations and a seal of approval. Economists’ expertise saturates social inquiry, and this in turn is saturated by small “p” politics through the way values are treated in knowledge formation. This is as significant as large “P” political ideas. It percolates into policy from the ways economics is situated. This is one important way in which responsibility becomes an issue, and it is this I address in what follows.

In this essay, I set out key aspects of Nicholas’ Rescher’s Metaphysical Perspectives. I illustrate the tenor and value of the text based on extended analysis of Chapter 1 on fundamental issues of what there is and Chapter 2 on personhood. Rescher is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. His works are intrinsically interesting, but also important as resources for realists working in the social sciences.

Wendy Olsen’s “Bridging to action” is a timely intervention that seeks to reorient development research (Olsen 2019a). Olsen’s position takes as its point of departure the growing schism between action research and the use of randomised control trials (RCTs) and specifically argues for a realist alternative approach as one way to underpin and operationalise development research. In the following short essay, I set out the terms of the underpinning warrant for the argument, and in the conclusion suggest additional ways to elaborate.

In this article, I focus on what is implicitly the more humanist aspect of Marx’s work. That is, species being and alienation. I do so informed by a commitment to pluralism and based on a background in social ontology. I argue that species being and alienation continue to provide insight into the nature of the modern world. They are integral components to Marx’s exploration and constructive critique of capitalism and help to make sense of how potential is shaped for a social entity who can be harmed and who can flourish. However, the way in which one relates to Marx as still relevant regarding these matters can cover a range. I then set out how species being provides useful insight in the twenty-first century at a time of anticipated major social and economic change.

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Public Employment Services (PES) are related components of the European Union and member state labour market policy. Typically, PES are analysed in terms of a narrow concern with efficiency and effectiveness of service. In this paper, we argue that PES are constituents in broader processes. They are not just means to facilitate employment, they are also part of transmission mechanisms for a political economy of competitiveness. They play a particular role in governance processes, and so serve to produce and reproduce power relations that are intrinsic to those processes. We argue that the technical ways that PES have been managed over recent decades has contributed to broader processes of disempowering labour, through depoliticized management practices. We argue that attempts at even limited re-empowerment of labour would require a repoliticization of these management practices.

In this article we place Tony Lawson’s account of contrast explanation in context. Lawson’s development of it is given meaning both by the roots of the approach in his work on social ontology and the state of economics that provides the grounds for the critique contained in that social ontology. This is important because such an approach to explanation is not new. Most notably, van Fraassen and Garfinkel have developed it in particular ways and for particular purposes within the philosophy of science and social theory. Setting out the different ways in which the contrastive approach has been developed is useful for identifying what is different about Lawson’s approach, its potential and limits. Lawson’s proposal is more modest and focusses on causal investigation in a manner that flows from his approach to social ontology. Contrast explanation provides a substitute for controlled experiments and facilitates identifying social mechanisms. It also enables exploration of the manifold presuppositions of our explanatory questions. We argue that this is a useful and important contribution to overcoming some of the many problems economics faces.

Contemporary populism is rooted in a crisis of legitimacy. Corporate taxavoidance by multinationals is one cause of that crisi s. Although states tend to beincreasingly formally committed to tackling avoidance, they do so in a system thatpromotes contradictory sets of behaviour. This tends to undermine attempts to solvethe problem of avoidance unless a more transformative collective approach is taken.Ironically, despite its own democratic deficit, the European Comm ission has taken aleading role in promoting such a solution: the Common Consolidated Corporate TaxBase (CCCTB). In this paper, I set out the case for ‘unitary taxation’ based on theCCCTB and state some of its current problems. The problem of corporation taxraises a basic issue in terms of who is sovereignty for, and solving the problemprovides an important contribution to legitimacy of both the state and the EU.

In this paper, I focus on the British future from Brexit. The institutional form this will take is not yet fixed. However, one can consider likely outcomes based on dominant economic frameworks. From this perspective, it seems unlikely that Brexit will address the actual grievances that resulted in Brexit. These transcend European Union membership.

In the following review essay I provide some background in order to place Margaret Archer's edited Volume 3 text, Generative Mechanisms, in context of the series (Social Morphogenesis) from which it derives. In doing so I provide some sense of the significance of the series. Thereafter, I provide an overview of the key substantive claims of the essays, with some comment on how they may be linked together in terms of the theme of the series.

Wednesday, 12 October 2016 Time: 5.15pm to 6.45pm Location: Maurice Keyworth Building SR (1.09) Leeds University Business School

The Handbook of Heterodox Economics contains a significant variety of contributions invited and ordered according to a number of themes. One useful way to bring final order to the whole, and by way of conclusion, is to return to the issue of what heterodox economics is, and to emphasize the characteristics that make the varieties of heterodoxy common and valuable. Heterodox economics is important irrespective of innovation within the mainstream. Its collective potential is as a critical community subject to constructive pluralism, and its further characteristics establish it as a living body of knowledge that plays an important role as social science, able to address the most important questions.

The point of departure of David Ellerman's paper is that the role of labour in economics can be looked at in a fundamentally different way than has typically been the case. The paper's purpose is, therefore, oppositional. However, it cannot simply be dismissed. It is clearly articulated, well reasoned, and most importantly, thought provoking. It requires one to rethink how one conceives some basic issues in economics. As such, one does not need to be entirely convinced by the argument to consider it worthy of dissemination. At the same time, if one subscribes to the ethic of structured or critical pluralism one must also consider the pressure points of the argument. Below, I briefly reconstruct Ellerman's core claims and provide some comment on that argument.

Pathologies of central nervous system (CNS) functions are involved in prevalent conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, depression, and Parkinson's disease. Notable pathologies include dysfunctions of circadian rhythm, central metabolism, cardiovascular function, central stress responses, and movement mediated by the basal ganglia. Although evidence suggests exercise may benefit these conditions, the neurobiological mechanisms of exercise in specific brain regions involved in these important CNS functions have yet to be clarified. Here we review murine evidence about the effects of exercise on discrete brain regions involved in important CNS functions. Exercise effects on circadian rhythm, central metabolism, cardiovascular function, stress responses in the brain stem and hypothalamic pituitary axis, and movement are examined. The databases Pubmed, Web of Science, and Embase were searched for articles investigating regional brain adaptations to exercise. Brain regions examined included the brain stem, hypothalamus, and basal ganglia. We found evidence of multiple regional adaptations to both forced and voluntary exercise. Exercise can induce molecular adaptations in neuronal function in many instances. Taken together, these findings suggest that the regional physiological adaptations that occur with exercise could constitute a promising field for elucidating molecular and cellular mechanisms of recovery in psychiatric and neurological health conditions.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has developed a concept of decent work and set this as a standard in 1999. However, in many places in the world people labour under conditions that are far from ‘decent’. Many people are subject to forced labour and experience unfreedoms, which raises important theoretical and practical issues. In this contribution we set out some of the ways in which forced labour manifests and how it has been changing over recent years in India. India is of particular interest because, according to the ILO, Asia, and India within Asia, has more victims of forced labour than any other region. India illustrates that specific structures of social relations underpin one’s vulnerability to becoming a victim of forced labour. It illustrates also that forms of forced labour integrate into and develop within capitalism. Although neo-liberal policy prescriptions are formally opposed to forced labour, the neo-liberal capitalist system also facilitates its reproduction and spread.