Economy

In mainstream contemporary art, price formation is a multisite process no longer solely handled by artists, dealers, and collectors but also by dark intermediaries. This essay examines the impact of four layers of value (technique, innovation, aura, and emotions) as well as the development of an invisible art market for the top-earning 1% and the rise of “global galleries.”

Proving his mastery of Weber’s oeuvre, Scaff’s new book considers the imprint left by various aspects of Weber’s work on the imagination and production of three generations of authors from Europe and North America. He shows that the confrontation between contemporary scholars and Weber’s legacy is a show that will run and run…

According to Australian specialist of social classes David S.G. Goodman, China is still far from a capitalist country. In this interview, he maps out the connections between the Chinese middle classes, the upper class and the Communist Party and their political implications.

The history of European debt is a cautionary tale about the powerful inducements for households, companies and states to ‘live beyond one’s means’. This risk extends well beyond public finances into the role of the banks in potentially destabilizing credit and money creation. In this essay, Kenneth Dyson addresses this potential “Achilles’ heel” of Europe.

One of the most commonly used concepts in modern humanities and social sciences, capitalism is also one of the most misunderstood. Away from politically biased takes on the subject, Geoffrey M. Hodgson proposes a new, law-based framework for understanding capitalism.

Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.

After declining in 2008-2009, income inequality has now returned to its pre-crisis level and even beyond. This situation is part of a longer trend that began in the 1980s in developed countries. Change will therefore not come from the crisis itself but rather from the political responses it generates, particularly regarding taxation.

In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, four participants from France, Germany and the US re-visit the inequalities debate sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital, comparing perceptions of income, economic equality and political economy.

A selection of four essays recently published on Books & Ideas offers new perspectives on the definition, historiography and potential applications of environmental theory.

Denouncing the neglect of the independence era by African historians, Frederick Cooper asserts that a continent of nation-states was not the inevitable outcome of decolonization.

One of Albert O. Hirschman’s contributions to economic theory is a richer understanding of the concept of the “rational actor,” which, he demonstrated, possesses the deliberative capacities that democratic market societies require. This following is a profile of an economist who was also a dissident and an activist.

An ambitious environmental tax policy must be part of a broader reform that addresses several problems simultaneously: the equity and progressivity of the tax system, reducing social security withholdings, pension finance, and paying down the debt.

Randomized evaluation has become very fashionable. Initially developed in the field of development economics, it has now spread to many public policy areas. Yannick L’Horty and Pascale Petit here discuss the advantages and the limits of this relatively recent tool for evaluating social policies.

In his latest book - now an international bestseller - anthropologist David Graeber analyses the role of debt in the evolution of human history. Focusing on the morality of debt, the book shows a comeback of anarchist positions, reflecting a growing frustration with the institutions of the state and the market.

What do we really know about economic growth, wealth, the population or the structure of the economy in Africa? Building a history of how economic statistics about Africa are produced and consumed helps Jerven design a new approach to developing a periodization of the African state.

Behind the commendations of the nonprofit sector and the promotion of “Social and Solidarity Economy”, Matthieu Hély discerns the retreat of public service and the deliberate deregulation of the wage system. The nonprofit sector can no longer be idealized and misconstrued as a compromise between different and antagonistic logics. It must be addressed in light of what it has become: a labor market with increasingly precarious actors who have been stripped of the statute formerly guaranteed by public service.

After four years of monetary crisis in Europe, with serious political and social consequences for some countries, as well as a general mistrust of Europe’s political and economic models, new analyses bring light on what happened in 2009 and on how to improve the current situation. Books&Ideas presents them in a selection of essays and reviews on Europe, its money, its construction, and its politics.

Environmentalist icon Lester R. Brown denounces our excessive ecological footprint and the prevailing food insecurity that stems from the current geopolitics of food. From this pessimistic and alarming standpoint he proposes a “Plan B” to help us cope with this vicious cycle. Yet the way out remains uncertain and imprecise.

Most observers think of the crisis of the European monetary union primarily as a crisis of failed fiscal discipline in a monetary union. Bob Hancke proposes a very different way of looking at this. The crisis of EMU since 2009 has laid bare problematic aspects of the interaction between employment relations, and in particular wage bargaining systems, on the one hand, and central banks on the other.

Resurrecting the life of John Cary’s Essay on the State of England, a book which travelled all over Europe throughout the 18^th century, S.A. Reinert challenges our understanding of Enlightenment economics, while calling for a more nuanced and historically-informed understanding of political economy in general.

In this interview with Books&Ideas, specialist of German economic history Adam Tooze answers questions on the history of the Third Reich : was there such a thing as a Nazi economic policy ? what were the economic reasons for Hitler’s total war against Europe ? what were the legacies of this experience for the post-1945 German economy ?