Mihaela Iacob

Economist, Associate Professor, Ph.D., the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, specialized in public finance and theory of prices and competition

Sustainable Finance Unfolded: When Classic Banking Aligns with Environmental Goals

Mihaela Iacob

No. 59, May-Jun. 2026 At a time when the debate surrounding the green transition oscillates between strategic urgency and immediate economic cost, sustainable finance has long since outgrown its status as a niche topic confined to public policy circles or academic discussions. From the European taxonomy, ESG regulations and climate finance to the redefinition of the role of banks, investments and fiscal policies, sustainable finance has become one of the major intellectual and institutional challenges of our time. For some, it represents an unavoidable necessity in a world increasingly confronted with climate, energy and social pressures; for others, the pace and costs of the transition raise legitimate questions regarding economic competitiveness, energy security and the social sustainability of the proposed transformations. Precisely for this reason, such a topic calls for discernment, critical thinking and interdisciplinary dialogue. More

Romanians in Malaysia: International (Temperate) Economics Lectures in An Intellectually Warm (Equatorial) Climate

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

No. 59, May-Jun. 2026 The visit of Professor Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Ph.D., and Associate Professor Mihaela Iacob, Ph.D., under the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Teaching (STA) scheme, to Universiti Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, April 6-10), was conceived from the outset as an exercise meant to move beyond the constraints of mere comparability, highlighting instead the deeper scientific compatibility of the nowadays world. Beyond the inevitable need for mutual translation between distinct cultural and intellectual frameworks, what ultimately prevailed was a shared vein toward knowledge and critical inquiry – mediated by economics and empathy. In the lectures “Artificial Intelligence and Artistic Imagination: Rethinking the Cultural Economy of Industrial Revolutions” (Political Economy) and “The Market for Ideas amid Social Settings and Institutional Infrastructures: A Glimpse from Economics+” (Critical Thinking), layered meanings of the inescapable contemporary acronym “AI” – “artificial intelligence” and “artistic imagination”; “agoras of ideas” and “accelerated internationalization” – were revisited, across times and spaces, featuring as subtle junctions between technology and sensibility, as well as between sciences and consciences. More

The “Movements of the Earth” and the “Phases of the Moon”

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

No. 58, Mar.-Apr. 2026 There is, in the way humanity names its grand projects, a form of allegorical memory that refuses to fade. The Apollo program was not merely a technological demonstration; it was an invocation of order, light, and reason amid the epic tensions of the Cold War. Today, Artemis brings onto the stage not another god, but a sister – a possible correction to “solarian” excesses. Artemis embodies rhythm, cyclicality, a return that is less triumphalist and more contemplative. NASA itself speaks, in recent communications, of “sustainable exploration,” suggesting that the epic is no longer about “reaching” the Moon, but about “settling” upon it. Myth does not disappear, it refines itself: from heroic gesture to ecosystemic one. In this sense, naming no longer legitimizes ambition alone, but responsibility as well – an ethics of human presence beyond Earth, in which mythological symbolism functions as a cultural compass within an increasingly “abstractly-technological” universe. More

Pluralism or Prestige? Why Economics Still Needs the Courage to Talk to Itself

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

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

Between Solidarity and Self-Interest within the European Union: Critical Technologies, Power Struggles, and Backdoor Fragmentation

Mihaela Iacob

No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 Industrial Revolutions (IR) have fundamentally revolved around advancements in information and communication technologies (IT&C), facilitating both global integration and connectivity. The power of steam not only moved goods but also transported people and ideas across borders (IR 1.0). This was followed by the rise of electricity, mass production, and the standardization of interchangeable parts (IR 2.0). The subsequent electronic era, marked by the proliferation of microprocessors, set the stage for the widespread diffusion of the internet (IR 3.0). Today, we witness the zenith of these transformations with the emergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cryptocurrencies, and the metaverse (IR 4.0). More

Preparing Students for the Labour Market: The Role of Theory-Based Economic Judgements Against AI-Supported Decision-Making

Mihaela Iacob

No. 46, Mar.-Apr. 2024 Artificial Intelligence would not have been possible without the great thinkers – in both “hard” and “soft” sciences – who educated themselves, then developed theories to be tested in practice, and while they may have failed in solving resistant conundrums, they excelled in fighting for their reasoned convictions. More

Three “Mister K” and Our Recovery from Eastern European “Kafkian” Absurdum

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

In Kafka’s novel, Das Schloß [The Castle], there is a gentleman bearing the name “K” who unsuccessfully tries to obtain a hearing with the enigmatic ruler of a bureaucratic citadel dominating, physically and psychically, an alienated village community, to secure a living in that surreal neighbourhood. In Der Prozess [The Trial], a certain Joseph K. gets arrested and accused by an obscure authority for a crime never unveiled, either to him or anyone else (including the millions of readers of the novel). In Amerika [America], the main character, Karl Rossmann, lives a David-Coppefield-ian life within an illusive and deluding “new world”. All three novels are part of the “absurdist literature”, are unfinished and are posthumous. Even though Kafka didn’t experience communism, his novels can be seen as a crude premonition of that epoch. In the present essay we shall speak, however, about three different characters whose names start with the Kafkian effigy “K” and whose professional careers were devoted to the extraction of Eastern Europe from the absurdum of communism: the Polish philosopher and historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), the Hungarian economist János Kornai (1928-2021) and the ex-President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus (b. 1941). More

CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. ∞): The Industrial Revolutionizing of the Social Contract: 4.0 Generation Updates

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The “egg-and-chicken” problem when, for instance, reasoning on and ruminating about the history-long and worldwide plethora of technological shifts/rifts/drifts and social/political/economic realities is secondary to a principal obviousness: these two dimensions of the human(e) existence are involved in a co-evolutionary relationship, implying mutual and bi-directional causes and effects. Hence, defining (or decreeing) the “technological” as the independent variable and the “socio-” as the dependent one, or maybe vice versa, solely provides the scholar with insights onto limited segments from what it is, yet, a continuum; but, for the scientist, understanding each and every modest and simple link gets him/her closer to the underpinnings of the mega-complex chains of events. Studying Industrial Revolutions’ (IR) imprint on the functioning of polities is such a link, a compound of the chain of capturing the practical means which get us closer to our principled ends. More

Obelix Runs Away from Fiscalix

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The “fear” of taxation dies hard. In 2013, Gerard Depardieu became a French “tax refugee” in the Russian Federation. Half a decade since then, he became a Russian tax debtor in the Russian Federation. In 2018, he was listed in Russia’s Federal Court Marshals Service database as owing taxes in Saransk (the capital of Mordovia, somewhere in “Yevropeyskaya Rossiya”), where he was registered. More

Santa-Nomics and Santa-Comics Stories

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Mihaela Iacob

The gift of wisdom (which does not reside in Santa’s bag of gifts) also enjoins us to reflect an additional second beyond the first impulse. For instance, Christmas is a parable of austere Birth, but we celebrate it with bells and whistles; Christmas floods us with gifts, but with every useless little thing that we receive, some say, welfare is lost; Christmas remains a Christian holiday, but it externalizes secular glamour into a globalization which is decorated with Xmasy globes. More

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TheMarketForIdeas

Sustainable Finance Unfolded: When Classic Banking Aligns with Environmental Goals

Romanians in Malaysia: International (Temperate) Economics Lectures in An Intellectually Warm (Equatorial) Climate

The “Movements of the Earth” and the “Phases of the Moon”

Pluralism or Prestige? Why Economics Still Needs the Courage to Talk to Itself

Between Solidarity and Self-Interest within the European Union: Critical Technologies, Power Struggles, and Backdoor Fragmentation

Preparing Students for the Labour Market: The Role of Theory-Based Economic Judgements Against AI-Supported Decision-Making

Three “Mister K” and Our Recovery from Eastern European “Kafkian” Absurdum

CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. ∞): The Industrial Revolutionizing of the Social Contract: 4.0 Generation Updates

Obelix Runs Away from Fiscalix

Santa-Nomics and Santa-Comics Stories