This work is a PhD dissertation, written at the Department of Economics, McGill University. The thesis offers a new framework for inflation as a process of restructuring. Contrary to existing theories of inflation, which tend to take structure and institutions as given for the purpose of...

The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In...

The aim of this paper is to explore the link between credit and output in the context of a developed transition economy. Salient credit market features of these economies are (i) credit market imperfections leading to constraints on growth and (ii) the rapidly growing importance during...

This paper probes the role of banks and credit in our socio-economic system using the metaphor of banks as social accountants (Stiglitz and Weiss 1988). It highlights the credit nature of money, and thus the fact that money is an accounting construct. This motivates the viewing of financial...

The aim of this paper is to explore the link between credit and output in the context of a developed transition economy. Salient credit market features of these economies are (i) credit market imperfections leading to constraints on growth and (ii) the rapidly growing importance during...

Over the past century, the institution of capital and the process of its accumulation have been fundamentally transformed. By contrast, the theories that explain this institution and process have remained largely unchanged. The purpose of this paper is to address this mismatch. Using a broad...