Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive...

This paper contributes to discussions on responses to the financial crisis of 2008, focusing on the regulation of the bonus culture in the financial sector. The paper offers a theoretical critique addressing legal and ethical issues involved in regulating bonuses. It dissects arguments put...

A game-theoretic model for the description of political parties' competition in Ukraine is constructed. The system of assumptions, which is formed the basis of the model, is obtained. The electoral situations in Ukraine, as examples, are described by utilizing the proposed model. A set of...

Domar (1970) has singled out the land/labor ratio as the main cause of both slavery and serfdom. But he then recognizes that scarcity of labor is necessary but not sufficient for serfdom to exist, and that an exogenous political factor is required to determine the status of labor.I show that in...

China's transition from a planned to a market economy has been very successful, although the reforms have been quite different from those proposed by most Western observers. Despite the fact that property rights were not well defined or formally secured, and that one party dominated the...

Following the inconclusive results of the Greek election on May 6th 2012, talk of a Greek exit from the Eurozone (known as Grexit in the financial press) has dominated international media. A lot of discussion however by policy makers, political and economic commentators in Greece and...

According to the Financial Times (James Wilson & Gerrit Wiesmann 12.3.2012) German investors were seeking lawsuits over the Greek debt swap, immediately after it was set in motion in March 2012. According to reports, a German law firm was preparing lawsuits against banks and the Greek state on...

Media pundits and some politicians would have us believe that industrial production has been declining in the United States. Some would even say that “we don't make things anymore.” However, the statistics show a different picture. This paper examines the trade statistics for the United...

Citizens' preference for redistribution determines many key political economy outcomes. In this project, we aim to understand how do ancestors' redistributive experiences affect the descendants' preference for redistribution. We conduct a survey experiment under the historical backdrop of the...

This paper argues that capitalist social relations do not presuppose wage-labour. It defends a functional definition of the capitalist relations of production, in terms of what Marx calls the ‘subsumption of labour by capital'. I argue that there are at least four modes of subsumption, one...