This paper explores the rise of money and class society in ancient Greece, drawing historical and theoretical parallels to the case of ancient Egypt. In doing so, the paper examines the historical applicability of the chartalist and metallist theories of money. It will be shown that the origins...

I subject some aspects of Roosevelt's "New Deal" to critical analysis, with particular attention to what is termed "liberal democracy". This analysis demonstrates the limits to reform, given the power of "vested interests" as articulated by Thorstein Veblen. While progressive economists and...

This paper will present the Modern Money Theory approach to government finance. In short, a national government that chooses its own money of account, imposes a tax in that money of account, and issues currency in that money of account cannot face a financial constraint. It can make all payments...

This paper discusses the role that finance plays in promoting the capital development of the economy, with particular emphasis on the current situation of the United States and the United Kingdom. We define both "finance" and "capital development" very broadly. We begin with the observation that...

For the past decade, the U.S. economy has been driven not by industrial investment but by a real estate bubble. Although the United States may seem to be the leading example of industrial capitalism, its economy is no longer based mainly on investing in capital goods to employ labor to produce...

The Federal Reserve has been criticized for not forestalling the financial crisis of 2007-09, and for its unconventional monetary policies that have followed. Its critics have raised questions as to whom, if anyone, reins in the Federal Reserve if and when its policies are misguided or abusive....

It is commonplace to speak of central bank "independence" as if it were both a reality and a necessity. While the Federal Reserve is subject to the "dual mandate", it has substantial discretion in its interpretation of the vague call for high employment and low inflation. Most important, the...

The economic returns to education in transition countries have been extensively evaluated in the literature. The present study contributes to this literature by estimating the returns to education in Georgia during the last transition period 2000–04. We find very low returns to education in...

This paper evaluates the gender wage gap among wage workers along the wage distribution in Georgia between 2004 and 2011, based on the recentered influence function (RIF) decomposition approach developed in Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009). We find that the gender wage gap decreases along the...