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Responses to Science and the Industrial Order, 1914-1950 [Part II]
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Modern technology invests political and other organizations with the means to increasingly organize all variables which impinge upon their operation. The need to economize an organization’s activities, due to a condition of insufficient means and material, motivates an effort to secure greater control over those variables on behalf of the organization’s presumed interests. This article – the second of two parts – is drawn from the second part of a paper written in 1971, which was used as the second chapter of my 1974 M.A. thesis, The Methodical Conquest: Perceptions of the Impact of Modern Technology on Society. It focuses on ideas put forward by writers from 1910-1950. More
Pluralism or Prestige? Why Economics Still Needs the Courage to Talk to Itself
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Academic disciplines, like nations, cultivate myths about their origins. Economics especially. Some say it was born from rational choice. Others swear by spontaneous order. Some invoke institutions, others values. Each camp writes its own genealogy; each believes the plot finds its resolution in itself. Yet if there is one lesson that social sciences should have learned by now, it is this: intellectual monocultures are lethal. A discipline does not collapse because it disagrees – it collapses because it stops disagreeing. More
Bucharest-Ilfov Region, European Leader in Work Intensity but Encircled by Poverty
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The capital region of Romania is the European leader in work intensity, according to data presented by Eurostat for 2024. While 7.9% of people in the EU lived in a household with very low work intensity, the lowest shares among EU regions were in the capital regions of Bucharest-Ilfov in Romania (0.6%), Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia (0.8%) and Warszawski stołeczny in Poland (1.1%). More
The 2025 Economics Nobel Prize, ESG and Innovation
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Every year, the Nobel Prize in Economics delivers more than academic prestige; it offers a snapshot of the questions that will define the future of markets, institutions, and societies. It highlights the deep forces reshaping economic behaviour and policy — forces that increasingly converge around sustainability. More
“Innovation” and “Economic Growth” – “Winners” of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2025
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics celebrates the fruitful dialogue between the history of economic ideas and the modern theory of sustainable growth. The Nobel Committee awarded half of the prize (11 million Swedish kronor, approximately 1.2 million US dollars) to Joel Mokyr, and the other half to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, in equal shares. More
When Green Dreams Meet Geopolitical Nightmares: Europe’s Climate Diplomacy in a Fragmented World
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Europe’s inclusive multipolarity, driven by climate diplomacy, faces its greatest test as geopolitical fractures threaten to derail the Paris Agreement’s momentum. With Washington and Beijing heading on a collision course and developing nations embarking on strategic non-alignment, Brussels must reinvent itself as a credible bridge-builder. More
Disciplining Disorder: A Juridical Meditation on Sanctions and Order in International Law
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Who hasn’t heard of international sanctions these days has probably avoided reading any global news in the past decade. The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation triggered an avalanche of reports, analyses, and commentaries about the sanctions imposed on Moscow — tens of thousands of articles published in the international press, academic centres, and political think-tanks. More recently, after February 2022, that number has increased more than fivefold, a clear sign that international sanctions have become not only instruments of foreign policy, but also products of media consumption. More
Paso Doble: Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Fiscal (budgetary) policies and monetary policies are macroeconomic and conjunctural in nature. They are developed and applied by different authorities, independent of each other, namely the government and the central bank. This does not mean that the two types of economic policies are not interdependent. Both act on the economy and influence its overall performance, and the interdependence between them is manifested by the reciprocal effects and constraints that they impose on each other. As a result, the coordination of fiscal and monetary policy is necessary for the stability of the economy, the promotion of sustainable economic growth and the efficient approach to various challenges. More
Salvation in Marble, Memory in Concrete – Romania’s Religious Return to Monumentalism
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 Renowned for its enchanting myths and timeless folklore, Romania continues to cling proudly to its spiritual dimensions. So much so, in fact, that the nation began a new era of (sacred) magnificence by raising the world’s largest Orthodox Cathedral, right in the very heart of Bucharest. More
Dissolving Dreams: Breaking Records for All (the Wrong) Reasons
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 2025 marks a bleak chapter for Romania’s economy. A number of structural and cyclical factors are responsible for a slowdown, including a 1.7% decline in gross fixed capital formation (investment) in 2024 (the first since 2020), a negative net foreign demand contribution brought on by a 3.6% year-over-year drop in exports and a 3.4% increase in imports, as well as a loss of momentum in important industries like construction following the most recent governmentally imposed austerity measures. More
AIconomics: More, Faster or Outrightly Different?
No. 56, Nov.-Dec. 2025 There is no such thing as a closed science – the problem is not the (un)expected novelty, but the old, still unresolved epistemic conflicts. It is also the story of economics. From the classics and the revelation of price as a social compass, to the marginalists and the subjective revolution of utility; from the Keynesians, with their emphasis on aggregate demand and public policies, to the monetarists’ reply and then to the rigorous micro-foundations of the neoclassical “synthesis”; from the new macro- to the behavioural economics to be incorporated into fancy impact assessments (which no longer add apples to oranges, but make juice out of the both). Each stage wanted to have the “last word”, but the quarrel of the wise (among themselves and then with the world) continues unabated. The contemporary “synthesis” is not a stable temple, but a construction site. With plenty of scaffolding and sequelae. More
Price Increases and Their Economic Consequences
No. 55, Sep.-Oct. 2025 In many countries, including Romania, the prices of goods and services tend to rise. This process is called inflation. Prices are determined by many factors: supply and demand, the cost of labour and raw materials, competition among sellers, and so on. But, in essence, inflation is related to supply and demand: if the demand for goods and services increases faster than the supply, prices tend to rise. More
