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Making History While Snacking: Microwave Meets Marketplace
World War II, going on between 1939 and 1945, was one of the bloodiest confrontations in the world. It cannot be overstated how much this conflict changed the course of history, for better (if anything good can be related to wars) or worse. For instance, many of our modern inventions directly originate in the war period. More
Democracy at Play – or at Risk – in America
In democratic societies, elections are determined by the vote of the people. The democratic process in the United States elected President Trump in 2016. Four years later, after all legal votes are counted and verified, the same process may require that he peacefully transfer that power to someone else. Clearly, from now until the inauguration on January 20, 2021 it will take many state election procedures and court battles in key battleground states to clear up all uncertainties about this election’s popular vote. The democratic process relies not only on the belief of the citizens in it, but also upon their patience with procedures that are comprehensive and time-consuming. Accordingly, President Trump might have jumped the gun when he claimed, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win”. More
Jeffrey D. Sachs, to Talk in Romania on Sustainable Development
The Bucharest University of Economic Studies welcomes distinguished and world-renowned economist Jeffrey D. Sachs for a talk on sustainable development on March 8, 2018. He has been invited by the Romanian Government and will be a keynote speaker at a conference on sustainable development organized by the Department for Sustainable Development. More
The Three Kinds of Money
Recent polemics linked to the fate of the so-called “2nd pension pillar” in Romania (the obligatory privately-run pension, as opposed to the optional private one) has brought to mind an older issue regarding the nature – public or private – of money. Since one of the questions raised by the mentioned discussion is just the nature of the money collected by the state and transferred automatically to the preferred obligatory private pension fund, I will underline some considerations in this article. More
Equality, Justice and Other Nonsense
There are different conceptions of “equality”, and “justice”, but only some of these conceptions are commensurate with the institutions of individual liberty, private property, consensual contractualism and personal accountability. This essay argues that classical-liberal thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke offered superior conceptions of equality and justice than much of the contemporary discourse does. This essay claims that the contemporary use of equality and justice is nonsensical; whereby nonsense is the absence of meaningful denotation and the intentional hiding of subjective normativity. More
Rebuilding Economics: Propaedeutic Assertions
In the last decades, the economic discipline in its hypostasis of Economics (i.e. positive economic theory) was, and also currently is, subject to radical and massive criticism not only from the non-economists (including physicists!), but also from notorious economists, including Nobel Prize winners. The perspectives of such criticisms are very different, starting from the conceptual bases, focusing on the methodological framework, and ending with the predictive potential. Of course, although the initial criticisms were focused on the mechanical ways of economic thinking (by taking over the Newtonian paradigm in physics), other points came to the forefront in recent years: the required interdisciplinary character of Economics, the issue of truth in the economic field (in a wider sense: in the social field), the required evolutionary nature of Economics, because of the evolutionary nature of the society, and even the requirement of a new formalism in Economics based on something other than differential equations (which do not indicate the dynamics – i.e., the causality – in the economic process) and so on. More
The Clawback Tax, Sponsor of Government Programs in Romania
The budget allocated to healthcare in Romania suffers from “chronic subsidization”. Politicians chose, as a long-term treatment for this issue, a tax that reduces the profits of drug manufacturers to the point of non-existence. These entities risk turning from profit-making businesses into virtual nonprofit entities. Through an objective and simple analysis, I will show how, through this tax which aims to ensure the necessary subsidized medication, and as a result of the declaration of pharma companies as public utilities, patients will have to spend more money on medicine. This goes against the stated intention of the ministry and ensures that Romania will always be on the cusp of a crisis of supply in pharmaceutical products. More
COVID-19: Counting the Cost
Fighting epidemics, or stopping them from spreading, has a cost. The direct costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are, of course, deaths and the sickness that prevents people from working. However, the indirect effect or Economic Cost include the labor supply of the people who die, the hours lost due to sickness, and the hours lost due to people caring for family members who are sick, and the hours lost due to preventative measures. This will lead to rising costs of doing business in each sector, due to disruptions of production networks, and shifts in consumption as a result of changes in household preferences. More
The Million Dollar Pixels: How a Student’s Idea Changed the Internet for the Better
The internet. A place where (almost) everybody can see (almost) everything (almost) for free. An incredible technological asset of humanity as a whole. But how can we find everything? Do we pay these people? How many people would agree to make the internet a bigger and better place for free? The answer is simple: a few. The main source of online income comes from advertising. We got used to them on television, radio and even on the streets but who came with the idea of implementing them online? In this article, I will uncover the story behind internet advertisements and the minds behind it. More
Kurt Lewin’s 3-Phase Change Model in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Throughout 2020, the question of how the world would look like after the Coronavirus pandemic has been constantly repeated. The “status quo” has been challenged: our usual lives have been suddenly torn apart and life during Covid-19 has been described as “another normal” or as a “new normal”. Such a massive, transformational change is not commonplace, so the attempts of humanity to regain its balance are understandable. The Covid-19 pandemic ends up being a real case scenario for Kurt Lewin’s famous 3-phase change model, meant as a tool to resolve major social conflicts. More
ICESS 2018 – Challenges and Trends in Economic and Social Sciences Research
Preparing to celebrate the 105th anniversary, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) will host on April 16-17 the first edition of the International Conference on Economics and Social Sciences, under the following aegis: “Challenges and Trends in Economic and Social Sciences Research”. The conference is a great opportunity for participants to enhance their professional networks, by connecting and sharing own research topics with very influential researchers in the field, as well as with practitioners from leading companies from Romania and abroad. More
Politics and Policy
In the vernacular language (even, in some cases, the specialized one) some confusions or, at least, some un-intentioned substitutions occur between two terms (and, consequently, between two concepts which belong to them), namely politics and policy. Of course, etymologically the two terms (and concepts) are cognate, based on the Greek term πόλης, polis (castle, home, town, country) but, in the modern and contemporary language and habits of usage, they hold different meanings, and so address different referentials (denotations). Below I would try to identify both the similarities and differences between politics and policy and, consequently, to suggest some precautions in using them in different situations, either cognitive or pragmatic. More
