This study complements the inclusive growth literature by examining the determinants and consequences of the middle class in a continent where economic growth has been relatively high. The empirical evidence is based on a sample of 33 African countries for a 2010 cross-sectional study. OLS,...

This paper revisits one of the classic debates on world capitalist development – the ‘transition to capitalism’ debate framed in Robert Brenner’s classic critique of World Systems and Dependency Theory. It was originally presented to the July 2007 conference of the International...

Why, despite unceasing technical advance, do most people live in growing poverty, and why has the inequality between nations increased apparently without limit throughout the history of the world market? Thes two deeply-related (though distinct) problem reduce to the following: how is it that...

This paper was due to be presented to the 2013 conference of the World Association for Political Economy, in Florianopolis, Brasil. In the event, the author was unable to attend. The paper summarises the main conclusions of ten years of research into the Creative Industries in London and the UK,...

The two sides of envy, destructive and competitive, give rise to qualitatively different equilibria, depending on economic, institutional, and cultural environment. If inequality is high, property rights are poorly protected, and social comparisons are strong, the society is likely to settle in...

This paper asks whether, and how, the state can solve the present crisis. The method of enquiry is to analyze what it did in the two comparable crises of 1893 and 1929. In each case, a prolonged and structural slowdown in the world economy was followed by financial crisis, a period of turmoil...

Latin America has often been depicted as one of the most unequal regions in the world. However, after the rising of inequality, the figure decline dramatically starting from the year 2000. In this setting, Bolivia has been one of the poorest performers on income distribution efforts, lately,...

This article is a prepublication transcript of ‘Has the Empire Struck Back?’ in Albritton, R, Makoto Itoh, Richard Westra and Alan Zuege (eds) Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises, and Globalization, pp195-215. London: McMillan. ISBN 0 33375 316 X The paper conducts an empirical...

This paper was originally presented at the ‘Marxism and Political Economy’ conference called by the International Socialist Journal on Saturday 29th September 2007. A revised version was presented to the Historical Materialism conference on 13th November 2007. It enquires why, although...