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...

The Hard Steps model is applied to argue that the Industrial Revolution (IR) heralded a terminal phase of human existence. Assuming six hard steps, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method is used to pinpoint the start of the IR to ≈ year 1700. Once these hard steps were cleared, the global economy...

This paper investigates the timing of labour strikes in Hollywood. The occurrence of strikes, such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, can make sense when we have the hindsight to piece together the historical details of what created rifts between labour and management. But why do strikes...

Seit einigen Jahrzehnten verschiebt sich das Kräfteverhältnis zwischen Finanz- und Realwirtschaft zugunsten der Finanzwirtschaft. Angesichts der finanzwirtschaftlichen Krisen des 21. Jahrhunderts wird die Dominanz dieses Wirtschaftssektors aber problematisiert. Stimmen aus Politik, Theologie...

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 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...

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...