Search

Malcolm Bradbury's novel Rates of Exchange, taking the economic term "rates of exchange" as a central metaphor, depicts various exchanges occurring in the socio-economic landscape of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of governmental emphasis on economic development, the novel intricately explores exchanges among diverse entities, playing with multiple meanings of the term "exchange". In this way, the novel itself becomes a form of "legal tender," exchanged for reader comprehension, communication, and participation. It highlights the ubiquitous presence of exchange and the risks associated with the uncertain exchange rates between different entities. Furthermore, it invites readers to participate in the story-telling and the nostalgic journey back to British literary tradition. This paper, drawing on Roland Barthes's semiotic theory along with structuralist and poststructuralist concepts, investigates the multifaceted meanings of "exchange" in the novel. Through this analysis, the paper aims to illuminate the semiotic significance of various narrative forms and the profound thematic concerns in Bradbury's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a framework is presented for comparing the values derived from the different dimensions of water, without incurring the problems of commensurability. The framework is based on the concept of opportunity cost, which values any good by what one is willing to sacrifice to get it, which is a way of comparing seemingly different things. By simulating changes to a water resource and then measuring the economic, social and environmental impacts in metrics common and accepted by each dimension, a curve of the trade-offs between each metric can be derived. This makes trade-offs intrinsic to decision-making explicit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Economics, it has not been valorized the practice of euro's successful development in the EU as a case study for creating global paper money. On the assumption that the EU can be perceived as the world on the whole (regarding all dissociations in terms of their differences), it is a fact that the Eurozone countries which had accepted the euro as a single regional currency, in reality, proved that there was a possibility of creating "global" paper money. It would be in accordance with the objective process of dematerialization of commodity money whose functions were integrally performed in the system of a gold standard. The idea of the euro's case study arises from the fact that the Eurozone countries' national currencies have transformed themselves into one currency, whereas the other EU countries retained their national currencies and established rates of exchange in terms of the euro. After a nearly two-decade euro's rise (of course, along with many difficulties), it was created a situation where the euro (the Eurozone single currency) can be observed as an opportunity for creating global paper money. It means that a few more developed countries can also use their currencies to create global paper money (for instance, Global), whereas the other countries in the world can determine their currencies' value in terms of the Global, and they can also struggle to enable themselves (if they intend to join the system of global paper money) to use the benefits of the global market. In this context, the previous problems in relation to the euro's functioning would also present potential problems to the future global paper money. However, many of them can be avoided from the beginning, based on the experience acquired by strengthening the euro's functions. After having abandoned the monetary systems of the gold standard, by fulfilling the idea of creating global paper money on the pattern of the euro in the European Union, there were created conditions for overcoming the problems generated by the national currencies which perform an international role of intensifying the integrative (globalizing) processes in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]