This study aims to determine the most important component of economic freedom and to rank the performance of countries using multiple criteria decision-making tools within the context of fuzzy set theory. To do so, we utilize a combination of fuzzy entropy weighting and fuzzy technique for order...

Many observers see the Covid-19 crisis as marking a major shift in neoliberal globalization. We analyze this question from the perspective of South Africa. We argue that the 2020 crisis has not precipitated a major shift as much as it has rapidly accelerated trends which were already under way...

How can we make sense of the resurgence of the far right across the world? From the re-election of Donald Trump to the flourishing of Hindu nationalism under Narendra Modi, right-wing politicians have undoubtedly grown in prominence over the last decade. There is a burgeoning literature on this...

As with many philosophers of the modern period, Smith's thought was highly influenced by the advent of modern, Newtonian physics as well as by the so-called mechanistic worldview. However, the adoption of this theoretical paradigm leads to an aporia, i. e., to a fundamental problem, within...

How can we better understand the relationship between capitalism and democracy today? This article challenges the prevailing "independence thesis" that views capitalism and democracy as separate and often antagonistic systems. By revisiting Adam Smith's integrationist approach to political...

"The data from text digitization show that "liberal" acquired a sustained political signification for the first time around 1769: the liberal policy principles of Adam Smith and his associates. The bodies of evidence include: (1) the non-occurrence in English prior to 1769 (with a few...

This article examines the interpretation of Adam Smith's writings in The Birth of Biopolitics, where Foucault delves into market processes, the government's role, the nature of economic knowledge, the dynamics of the "invisible hand," and the complex relationship between society and the state....

Libertarian paternalism is "the set of interventions aimed at overcoming the unavoidable cognitive biases and decisional inadequacies of an individual by exploiting them in such a way as to influence her decisions (in an easily reversible manner) towards choices that she herself would make if...

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries prioritised economic growth and development, but continued to face persistent challenges like poverty, inequality, and sluggish progress in attaining sustainability. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the impact of...

This paper examines paternalistic preferences in large-scale experiments in the U.S. Participants decide whether to intervene to prevent a stakeholder, mistaken about their options, to make a choice that is misaligned with their preferences. We find that the willingness to intervene strongly...

In the UK, more than four decades have passed since the introduction of neoliberal economic policies by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This duration provides sufficient time to evaluate the impacts of these policies. A critical question now arises: how can the UK address the enormous...

The geographic spread of nations would pose logistics challenges in production, distribution and servicing, impacting costs, with implications for entrepreneurship. Using panel data from 62 countries spanning the years 2006 to 2021, we find that of the different oceanic geographic dimensions...

Despite crowdfunding platforms' growing involvement in financing welfare, related ethical issues have received little scholarly attention. To address this gap, we focus on GoFundMe, the leading welfare crowdfunding platform in the US, to examine whether it facilitates the establishment of a just...

The literature on policy-making in public health academia portrays the interests of many industries as being implacably opposed to the public interest. Suspicion of large, transnational corporations has evolved into disapproval of a wide range of 'commercial entities' who are depicted as the...

Economic security is considered one of the primary aspects of well-being and it is usually closely associated with poverty. This article intends to explore the main determinants of economic (in)security in European Union countries and to investigate the relationship between the level of economic...

The main aim of this study is to examine how education policies in the public sector of Chile have shaped civic participation among stakeholders in the education sector. We address two complementary research questions. First, has the implementation of top-down State-level education policies...

Based on an institutional perspective, this study examines the influence of the social desirability of entrepreneurship on early-stage entrepreneurs' internationalization and the moderating role of home country economic freedom. Using data from 45,454 early-stage entrepreneurs in 48 countries...