This paper develops a functional and historical appraisal of finance. We start by proposing a taxonomy of three core, theory-driven functions of the financial system - intermediation, entrepreneurial, and accumulative - that coevolve throughout the history of capitalism. We build an empirical...

Economic development under capitalism is uneven, both socially and spatially. The existing literature, both mainstream social sciences and Marxist political economy, generally separates social inequality (inequality among classes and class-fractions) from spatial inequality. It also pays...

To progress beyond the orthodoxy vs. skepticism divide, Marxist value theory must endorse both qualitative research into the social relations underlying economic phenomena and careful quantitative modeling. It must also accept scientific conclusions, wherever they may lead. New investigations...

The main point of this article is that inflation is a "real phenomenon" whose essence lies in the sphere of production. The article uses the Marxian Reproduction Schemes as its point of reference, assuming an economy based solely on commodity money, where one unit of commodity money is...

This paper presents new compelling evidence on the company-level ownership structure of military firms detained by asset managers. Employing a unique firm-level interlinked dataset, connecting publicly listed firms in the aerospace and defense industry, and their corresponding structure of...

he energy transition is not only topical in an European context, but has important ramification for the Global South. In his master’s thesis, Jakob Rammer addresses this global dimension and provides a nuanced analysis of energy projects in Chile supported by European actors. Using the example...

Small businesses, particularly micro-entrepreneurships, are a vital economic engine in many developing nations, providing essential income and employment. This study analyzes the post-shock trajectory of Chilean micro-enterprises through the lens of the digitalization-formality trade-off during...

Capitalism's defining feature - profit maximization without limits - drives instability, inequality, and environmental degradation. Traditional policies such as taxation and regulation have failed to curb this dynamic because they do not alter firms' core incentives. This paper proposes a simple...

According to the economics Nobel laureate, Kenneth Arrow, "… capitalism is a flawed system. It probably has the same virtues as Churchill attributed to democracy: It’s the worst system except for any other." Thus, capitalism is a necessary evil, but it is not inherently bad. I argue that...

This paper experimentally examines Max Weber's thesis on the influence of religious narratives - particularly the Protestant Ethic - on attitudes toward wealth redistribution. Weber argued that the Protestant Reformation fostered the belief that economic success signals divine favour, thereby...

The essay traces the evolution of my academic career through three stages: as a Habsburg economic historian, an anthropometric historian, and as a humanistic economist exposing the Achilles hills of mainstream economics and tracing the roots of the rise of the current right-wing populist...

The article examines the reserve army of labor as a constitutive social relation in capitalism, moving beyond traditional views that link it solely to capital accumulation. It explores how relative surplus population shapes class struggle and labor relations, particularly in the neoliberal...

This paper focuses on the relationship between capitalism and the decline in democracy in the West over the past quarter-century. Using data from the V-Dem Institute, Freedom House, and the World Inequality Database, a strong correlation is found between inequality, the rise of tech...

Western societies face unprecedented interconnected crises - climate change, democratic instability, rising inequality, and growing science scepticism - that demand fundamental socio-ecological transformation within a compressed timeframe. However, current university systems, shaped by...

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...

To understand the capitalist state, often labeled as the "modern state," it is imperative to analyze the relations of dialectical unification between the class nature of the state and its public character with the perspective of historical materialism. From the narrative logic of Capital ,...

We examine how political capitalism can develop within modern states that typically have many types of checks and balances. We first discuss how this can occur through various influence channels: government executive and regulatory agencies, legislators, litigation, the press, and the public...

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...

Ludwig Mises' interest in large-scale problems concerning the institutional framework and social as well as economic requirements for a well-functioning economy, makes Mises’ writings on supranational governance particularly interesting. Based on a reading of his German language publications...

"The capitalist system has often been described by its critics as a heartless economic structure corroding social bonds and symbolic values. Its defenders and analysts likewise use narratives that position emotions as central to the economy. This book enquires into the history of these framings....

Political economy has two major concepts of capital. In one, capital is defined as money. Adam Smith proposed the other, which considers capital as anything that has a role in the creation of wealth even if peripheral. It includes, for instance, machines, the biosphere ("nature capital" or...

This paper proposes a theory of the mark-up that is embedded in a circuit model of the capitalist mode of production. The model and the theory are built on Keynes's principle of effective demand, Graziani's monetary theory of production and Pivetti's monetary theory of distribution. The price-...

The present paper offers a systemic literature review on the concept of degrowth by envisioning its impact on democracy. In so doing it first uses the methodology called SPIDER by building on a number of relevant literatures derived from Scopus. Second, it introduces a variety of degrowth...