Octavian-Dragomir Jora

Professor, Ph.D., Habil., at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, where he has cultivated and developed interests in comparative economic systems, critical/creative thinking, and geo-politics/geo-economics of cultures and civilisations. Dr. Jora is involved in epistemic communities – i.e., board member of the Romanian Economic Society, the Research Center in International Business and Economics, etc. Recently, he received the Woodrow Wilson Scholarship from the Romanian Cultural Institute for research conducted in Washington, D.C., United States of America. He is (co-)author of numerous scientific works (100+ titles), as well as of journalistic op-eds, essays, pamphlets (1000+ titles), his works being distinguished over time with plentiful and prestigious scholarly and mass-media awards. Also, dr. Jora is editor-in-chief of the Œconomica journal and founder editor of The Market for Ideas pop-science magazine (Curriculum Vitae)

The Asian Future of Europe?

No. 54, Jul.-Aug. 2025 “The light comes from the east” – a go-to byword spread in Eastern Europe in the dawn of the Communist rampage to come, hiding one of the most tragic optical illusions in history. However, the saying is, in fact, much older. “Ex oriente lux” marks the ultimate (“Eastern”) spiritual origin of our (“Western”) world: Indo>European populations, Greco>Roman syntheses, Judeo>Christian religions. All these, E>W. It would also be the other way around. “Ex occidente lex” shows us that the law and order of civilization flourished where an unmistakable chain reaction between various ideas and institutions occurred. The recipe, for Niall Ferguson, includes competition, science, private property, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. This time, the arrow is W>E. While this explains the historical rise of the “West” over the “Rest”, it predicts a reversal of polarity too, amid Western degeneration under the cumulative burdens of intergenerational over-indebtedness, market over-regulation, legislation hypertrophy and civic atrophy. The “Rest” (Westernized or at least modernized) demands a reassessment of its share of participation within the production (and consumption) of “a better future”. With the East (aka Asia) at the forefront. More

Governance Unboxed (for Dummies, not for Dumbs)

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 54, Jul.-Aug. 2025 Mythology and, beg your pardon, the mythomania of governments – this being the case everywhere and since forever – maintain the idea that the solutions for the peace and prosperity of the polis somehow come “from above”: either from the heights of the skies (descending from the divinity and transmitted, through epiphanies, to the priests), or from the heights of the sciences (processed by gifted brains, organs that are in the custody of the scholars). Am I insinuating that this is not how things are?! To be honest, if I can’t really say anything useful about the first route, because my own heavenly revelation is still waiting to be experienced, about the second I can say that it is a huge hoax: an erroneous interpretation, which can degenerate into a… fraudulent one, of the area of sciences – economic and political ones alike. More

Mathe…magicians’ Superpower…lessness

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 I don’t know if Bertrand Russell, the famous and fabulous logician and philosopher, writer and civic activist (arrested, at 89, at an anti-nuclear protest, foreshadowing the roughing up, some 13 years ago, of a Romanian mathematician at an anti-real estate developer protest), would have liked the play on words in the subtitle. No more, no less, the Briton sought to rebuild mathematics entirely, emptying it of the rubble of overly specific notions, such as “number” or “square root”, in favour of pure concepts, such as “proposition” or “class”. The Russellian, logical reordering of mathematics follows the Newtonian, mathematical reordering of the natural sciences, but the logic of the physicist-mathematization of the social sciences is much shakier ground, despite its spread. From the arithmetic of the modest merchants to the econometrics of the modern mandarins, something makes it so that neither derivatives nor integrals automatically produce economic growth nor balanced budgets. Mathematical sciences are still exhibiting a quite majestic incapacitation. More

Bridges Are Built Not Only with Steel, Concrete, and Asphalt, but with Trust, Vision, and Economic Freedom

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 53, May-Jun. 2025 In the age of “infrastructure diplomacy”—and we may place under such label the Three Seas Initiative (3SI)—, it is tempting to think that connectivity is just a matter of tracks, pipelines, and wires. But the true lifeblood of regional cooperation does not flow through stone, steel or silicon—it pulses through institutions, as, inter alia, last year’s laureates of the the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel—Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson—convincingly demonstrated. “Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better” —this is how the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences justified the award. It is common sense, before anything else, yet “command and control” does persist in governments’ fantasies. In the “Trimarium”—as 3SI is sometimes nicknamed, a reminder of Józef Piłsudski’s interwar geopolitical plan, Intermarium/Międzymorze—, where strategic geography meets political ambition, economic freedom emerges as “the” indispensable condition for durable connectivity. More

“Liberation Day”, the Nightmare to Stay?!

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 52, Mar.-Apr. 2025 It is said, for example, that America has not even responded with tariffs commensurate with the mockery it has been subjected to by friends and enemies alike; that nations that sell it more goods or services than they buy from it are, in fact, raping it with a sick lust; that the country will fare better by repatriating the industries exiled abroad by the ignorance of previous administrations. Except that America is not populated only by “xenophobic economic agents,” but also by consumer-citizens hurt by suddenly inflated prices by thickly penned signatures, as well as by producer-citizens hit by shrapnel from supply chains blown up by tzealous “equalizer” – the US/world’s economies/societies are far more diverse and complex than that… More

Flat Earth and Rare Earths

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 52, Mar.-Apr. 2025 The rules-based international order, through which global organizations were conceived for collective problem-solving, for reducing protectionist impulses and for stabilizing the postwar global economy, is a feeble exception to the world’s true “state of nature”: the anarchy of the balance of power. Fetishized by the idealists who naively believe in the vigor of its architecture, this “order” makes, by comparison, the flatness of the Earth seem like a reasonable hypothesis. More

Technological and Institutional (Co)Evolutions, Revisited by (Political) Economists

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 Industrial Revolutions (IR) are more than just marches of technological and scientific advancement; they are strides of profound societal transformation that defy and reshape the very structures of political, economic, and social life. The forces of technological progress, economic development, and political maturation have historically collided, for instance, with those of tradition, heritage and conservation, placing the accommodating institutional settings under significant strain. In times of transformation, societies undergo veritable “stress tests” that demand realignments, rebounds and resilience. As technological innovation pushes the boundaries of possibility, social/political/economic institutions are forced to respond, either by embracing change or opposing it, resulting a dynamic interplay between progress and stability. These periods of transformation are not just of interest to historians or theorists in economics and other social sciences; they are crucial for everyone’s understanding of the future existential trajectories – micro, meso, macro, mondo. The study of Industrial Revolutions can be set as a needed inquiry into the future of humanity itself. The current episode, Industrial Revolution 4.0 – driven by artificial intelligence (AI) as its flagship –, has already raised common sense questions regarding what systems of production and governance, of social security and civic engagement will become commonplace. Notably, the relationship between Industrial Revolutions and socio-political-economic institutions is one of co-evolution. Technological breakthroughs often drive the restructuring of social, political, and economic systems (with their norms and habits), while these systems, in turn, influence how technology is adopted, regulated, and integrated into society. The interaction between institutions (immanently, stabilizing forces) and technologies (congenitally, disruptive) is simply… complex. More

The Most Serene DOGE

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 51, Jan.-Feb. 2025 The President-Elect of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has begotten an inquisitorially-minded anti-waste institution dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The bicephalous institution (an initial red flag when it comes to institutions everywhere) is jointly run by noted tech giant Elon Musk (worth 330 billion dollars or thereabouts) and the pharma entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (a mere 330 times “poorer”). The department will not be an actual government body, which presumably would require Congressional complicity in downsizing the leviathan it helped create. DOGE will be a sort of outside consultant specializing in “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies” (Trump dixit). Presented as a veritable “Manhattan project for our times”, the nascent body is born under a feeble star sign (since the President relies on bipartisan support from Congress, not just a pen, no matter what Obama claimed back in the day), while also being coupled with unrealistic and exaggerated claims of two trillion dollars in yearly savings, which is a third of all federal expenditures outside those of interest on debt. More

AI on Rye, Hold the Mayo!

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 The tech evangelists would have us believe that AI will be part of „our daily bread” (in biblical and practical terms) in the Industry 4.0 era. Some will put anything on their sandwich and are quick to try out new technologies and mainstream them if they bring in the profits; others are shaking and shivering simply hearing about it. The providence and peril of new technologies, among which AI is the “queen”, are, how else, unequally distributed. The fatcats and the working stiff, to turn to class depictions, are not equally represented in the spoils of AI. Between organizations and businesses, the ones with visionary and versatile leaders in terms of incorporating AI in production processes will win out against those who are more reticent or rigid. Within the organizations and businesses, AI helps less qualified or productive workers make up some of the gap in productivity compared to the high performers. Until we get to the point where AI will replace either the former (“the useless class”, apud Yuval Noah Harari), or the latter (the underappreciated in “Gresham’s Law”), who knows where we are going?! The researchers are working day and night on the predictions and the explanations. More

Liber Amicorum in Praise of Amfiteatru Economic

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 50, Nov.-Dec. 2024 I shared the following thoughts before and they have already been printed in the pages of the book that tells the story of the most appreciated Romanian magazine of economic science. I also recommend the other testimonies collected between the covers of the volume edited by Professors Vasile Dinu and Laurențiu Tăchiciu, Amfiteatru Economic și dimensiunea colectivă a prieteniei intelectuale [Economic Amphitheater and the collective dimension of intellectual friendship]. Because, yes, beyond any metric, writing-for-communication endures only when it becomes writing-for-communion. More

The Industrial Revolutions of Art

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 49, Sep.-Oct. 2024 The bonds between cultural studies and economic science – timeless, as they endure “materially” married, yet peripheral, as they seem “spiritually” divorced – need to be revisited and reviewed with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0). It is in the midst of the debates on the future of “humanity” (understood as species and spirit) – given the new technologies that affect and alter micro-/meso-/macro-/mondo- business organizations, production processes, consumption habits – that this research endeavour unfolds. Both cultural facts and economic tools are subject to an intricate intellectual “stress test”, therefore scrutinizing the “4.0” cultural concepts/definitions and attitudes/behaviours, observable in markets’ as well as in policies’ deliverables will help us to fairly (fore)see what we might risk losing or stand to win, culturally, as communities, nations, human kind.Industrial Revolutions (IR) remain at the crossroads of several binomials: intellectual design and spontaneous emergence, institutions and technology, necessity and fortuity, and so forth. The shifts from mechanised production (IR 1.0) to mass production (IR 2.0) then to automated production (IR 3.0) and to the ascending scale/scope of digital transformation (IR 4.0) – with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as flagship technology – triggered mode(l)s of development, devised profound societal upheavals and fuelled worries about freedom and fairness. Culture(s) too host(s) such civilizational twists and turns – as spots of reflection on social disruptions, as sites of refuge from own uprooting, as spaces of sharable hidden energies – and IR 4.0 excites and upsets them via novel ideological biases, vanguard niche markets, public versus private spaces trade-offs, or geo-cultural/-political/-economic resets. More

A Journey Through Another Dismal Science

Octavian-Dragomir Jora

No. 49, Sep.-Oct. 2024 I first met Professor Silviu Neguţ as a name on a book cover, probably the noblest of encounters between a (timeless) master and a (future) disciple. In my wayward youth, I was enamoured of everything that resembled geography, a passion second only to football. I have matured since then into the fullness of my wisdom and subtlety of pursuits ;-), therefore I can no longer claim a passion for geography. I just… love it. (As for football, the passion remains, defying maturity, wisdom and subtlety :-D). More