Rubrics » Bridging News
Romania, Above Eight EU Member States in Terms of Actual Individual Consumption
In international comparisons of national accounts data, such as GDP per capita, it is desirable not only to express the figures in a common currency, but also to adjust for differences in price levels. Failing to do so would result in an overestimation of GDP levels for countries with high price levels, relative to countries with low price levels. More
The Planet on a Collision Course
The development of science fiction and the Space Race in the mid-twentieth century turned mankind’s attention to the stars, fuelling our collective imagination about the wonders and threats that may lie beyond the skyes, from alien contact to deadly asteroids. The past few years, however, have served as an unkind reminder that our world’s direst challenges come not from the vastness of space, but from within the bounds of our planet. The Covid-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 disrupted the usual comings and goings of societies everywhere in the world, forcing them to face a challenge such as had not been seen in over a century. This has caused significant economic, social and political upheaval due to controversies surrounding the virus, the restrictive measures taken by the government to contain it, and the vaccination campaigns undertaken. Supply chain disruptions, unemployment, rising inflation, grim predictions of a harsh economic recession, opportunistic political infighting, overloaded medical infrastructures, rising Euroscepticism and social divisiveness are some of the more visible effects of the pandemic. More
The Illegitimate Public Debt – A Short Conceptual Discussion
The public debt formation is the direct effect of a causal mix containing at least the following factors: a) the weak capacity of the private sector to push the economy towards its potential, that requires state intervention by increasing the public expenditures beyond the internal possibility to cover such an increase (in a keynesian or post-keynesian pattern); b) the weak capacity of the public sector (state/government) to collect the taxes and other revenues in society (no matter that this incapacity is due to incompetence or a competent corruption), that requires an alternative source of public revenue, public debt (either internal or external); c) the illegitimate exuberance of the politicians (either Parliament or, especially, the Government) with regards to indebting the nation within a populist (that is, in an unjustified way, without mentioning its unsustainable character) framework of politics (no matter the reasons for such a populism). More
Romania’s GDP, 1.6% of EU Total in 2020
Romania’s gross domestic product in 2020 was 218.2 billion euros, which puts us at 13th place among the economies of the EU, according to data published by Eurostat. In the previous year, we were just under Czechia (223,2 billion euros vs. 225,6 billion euros), which had a stronger decline and went down to 215,3 billion euros . More
Poetic Inquiry into Human Thought Foundations (III)
Shortcuts to riches possibly include unlawful activity, damaging to uninvolved parties. Understandable motivation can degenerate into overreaction or well-thought countercurrents directed against structural power centres. Spite and scorn mix with a feeling of furious helplessness and the ethical helm of conduct is abandoned. If beautiful summits are unreachable, then the very base is shaken by all possible means. The final outcome depends on the collective power of these abhorring such “unthankfulness” and refusal to make the best of their own abilities or continue their development. Raging overthinking can easily be confounded with inaction, and more often than not a dangerous spillage of negative emotions floods a society. More
Memories from the Future of the European Union
The “science of future” (future studies, futurology) represents, at least, a paradoxical expression. Before anything else, the future’s flaw is not the fact that it is a too complex web of events, but that it… has yet to happen; we can see it/dream about it, but we cannot “know it” because it neither disseminates “news”, nor emanates “science”. Afterwards, the future is (will be) just one, although there are a lot of probable and plausible futures in the minds of the professional visionaries; and, ironically, absolutely all of them are cursed to never match the real future. More
Reflections 30 Years after the Dissolution of the USSR
This article evaluates the impact of political changes in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1980s on the external and internal situation of the communist regime in the Socialist Republic of Romania. We contend that the outward opening policy launched by Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the usefulness of the Ceausescu regime to the West after 1985. In this context, the cooling of relations with the West, added to the frosty pre-existing relationship with Moscow, led to the external isolation of the communist regime in Bucharest and to a worsening domestic economic situation. Thus, the loss of both support blocs (Western and Eastern) coupled with the poor domestic situation precipitated the collapse of the indigenous national-communist regime. More
Economic Fireside Stories Revisited
The winter holidays is the time for gifts, carols, for meeting with loved ones, for stories near the fireplace and for memories, for mulled wine with cinnamon and warm cake. I propose to you that you read three stories, woven around the teachings of some famous economists from the past centuries. Although they are a product of imagination, the stories describe phenomena that had and continue to have an overwhelming influence on people’s lives. I hope that what you will read further will remind you of the stories you read in childhood, beside the Christmas tree, beyond the economic lessons. More
The Specter that Haunts Economists – Social Justice
I occasionally read, not in a systematic or deliberate fashion, articles or larger studies on economic inequality, poverty, the free-market (or, by way of opposition, less free), democracy, freedom, and the like. It is obvious that a reflection, especially at this high level of generality and abstraction is conducted quite metaphysically, that is, based on pre-reflective assumptions going to beliefs, on the one hand, and theory-laden, on the other hand. I am aware of these two unavoidable conditionalities and I am trying, as much as possible, to compensate for them in the analyses and the conclusions I draw, so establishing a degree of honesty for the authors in case. But the problem is of another kind, namely that the pretentious concepts mentioned above are, at most times, discussed in a common (“civilian”) framework, with a thin background of political theory, or social philosophy, or ethics or, above all, social justice theory. This means either the authors deliberately use a pop style (although, in my opinion, popularization is a more difficult labor than the original one, because it must make compatible both the correctness of concepts/issues discussed and the accessibility of ideas for non-experts) or simply those authors do not hold the minimum necessary background in the matter at hand. It is known that the imprecision (and, sometimes, even the misunderstanding) has the potential to illuminate ideas or directions not intended by the original work, and is just as true that, often, ones who know little in a field can enact revolutionary ideas, exactly because they did not (yet) “gain” the prejudices of that field. But such eventualities are extremely rare and I cannot (no matter how much goodwill I would have) give credit to writings that lead so very important subject into an unintentional (I hope) desultoriness. More
The Saga of Income Inequality: A Three-Dimensional Problem and a Non-Existent Solution?
Income and wealth disparity is one of the defining problems of our time. In sophisticated economies, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is at an all-time high. Inequality developments in emerging markets and developing nations have varied, with some countries experiencing declining inequality while others continue to experience entrenched disparities in access to education, health care, and finance (Gradín, 2021). As a result, governments and scholars are debating the extent of inequality, its origins, and what to do about it. More
Poetic Inquiry into Human Thought Foundations (II)
Modern power dynamics are a continuation of a past in which liberty was not a principle to be taken into account by then-leaders. Former times constituted a division between dictatorial societies and authoritarian civilizations. The variation of the degree of statism depended on political movements succeeding one another. History tells us that this perpetually change does not follow a logical slide from a democratic government form to an authoritarian, then dictatorial one. Regardless of this, the giving up of freedoms is an “encouragement” for corruptible power centres to go on with their policies, until a state of anxiety, then fear, instils into a disoriented people. Whatever a “golden pencil” writes is holy, is “for the people” and can hardly be contested, unless one wants to become an enemy of state commanders. More
“The Market for Polities”: On International Institutional Competition
The Role of State in Varieties of Capitalism conference – SVOC2021 – was organized by the Institute of World Economics of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Budapest, Hungary and Democracy Institute of Central European University.At this years’s edition, I have delivered a presentation entiled “The Market for Polities”: Citizens’ Welfare (as Consumers of Public Goods) by Way of States’ Competition (or Cartelization), that was based on a paper written together with Mihaela Iacob. More