This paper considers the scourge of vaccine nationalism as it applies to the geopolitical/geoeconomic context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It identifies the frightening challenge that vaccine nationalism poses to global public health outcomes, and particularly so in the developing...

Pensions and social protections are a complex political topic in all countries. In Pakistan, the difficulties arise from various structural and procedural elements, and this paper suggests certain directions, including: (1) looking at the wider (non)structures of informal economic life, (2)...

This paper seeks to highlight key issues pertaining to debt relief and moratoria under the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), including the importance of debt relief under public resource constraints in the developing world, the difficult trade-offs of capital markets access and accruing...

The events that surrounded the short squeeze of various downtrodden stocks such as Gamestop (GME) allude to a counter-hegemonic financial effort, with small-scale investors pooling in to sabotage the short-positions of large Wall Street players such as hedge funds. This paper frames these events...

This paper examines frequent efforts by individual polyglots to monetize their linguistic capabilities through social media and YouTube. In drawing an analogy from microeconomic studies, the paper finds that the microeconomic logic of monetizing individual distinction in polyglots is flimsy,...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had devastating global effects from both a public health and economic point of view, yet countries have shown vastly different levels of success in responding to the outbreak, even at similar levels of development. This working paper seeks to compare the...

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) constitute a response by sovereign monetary authorities to the emergence of cryptocurrencies. Although they share commonalities as “virtual assets,” they do diverge significantly in key monetary, oversight/surveillance, and philosophy aspects. As such,...

The aim of this paper is to examine Fall of Kabul (2021) through the tools of public value (PV) theory, particularly in terms of PV disvalue and the strategic triangle. It looks at socioeconomic and governance flaws in the public administration of the Ashraf Ghani government, including ethnic...

The aim of this working paper is to explore the domain of aerial warfare through the lens of economic thought, drawing upon rudimentary but salient economic perspectives to discuss the nature of air forces, aerial warfare, and aerospace sectors, particularly in light of the emergence of the...

The popularization of the term “economic hitman” (Perkins 2004) in Pakistan has coincided with its being put on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list” in 2018. Given the economic duress that the FATF’s politicization has imposed on Pakistan, the aim of this paper is to...