Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix Last week I ran a Twitter survey to see what software my fellow researchers use. It turns out they like R: As an avid R …

Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Capital-as-power, a framework from Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, holds that companies don’t seek to be as profitable as possible – but rather to accumulate as much power as …

Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix According to behavioral economics, most human decisions are mired in ‘bias’. It muddles our actions from the mundane to the monumental. Human behavior, it seems, …

Abstract Capitalizing a Cure takes readers into the struggle over a medical breakthrough to investigate the power of finance over business, biomedicine, and public health. When curative treatments for hepatitis C launched in 2013, sticker …

Abstract There is little doubt that, in the last hundred years or so, progress has been made in lifting more people out of extreme poverty. Yet, considerable economic inequalities both within and between nations persists …

Abstract הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין “הביקורתיים” על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם — ההון — אינו ידוע. לאחר יותר ממאתיים שנה של התפתחות …

The Business of Strategic Sabotage SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN January 2023 Abstract In a recent article, Nicolas D. Villarreal claims that our empirical analysis of the relation between business power and industrial sabotage in …

Pensions and Power The Political and Market Dynamics of Public Pension Plans ERALD KOLASI June 2022 Abstract This paper uses the theory of ‘capital as power’ to analyze the struggle over public pensions in the …

Costly Efficiencies Healthcare Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Healthcare Debate CHRIS MOURÉ May 2022 Abstract Proponents of private healthcare often claim that the private sector is more ‘efficient’ at delivering healthcare services. This paper tests …

Hype The Capitalist Degree of Induced Participation YURI DI LIBERTO April 2022 Abstract Power is usually considered as either a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ construct, as in the power to force action versus the power to …

Soft-wars A Capital-as-Power Analysis of Google’s Differential Power Trajectory CHRIS MOURÉ October 2021 Abstract The capital as power framework, developed by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, argues that the aim of business is not ‘profit …

Reconsidering Systemic Fear and the Stock Market A Reply to Baines and Hager JAMES MCMAHON August 2021 Abstract This article responds to Baines and Hager’s recent critique of the capital-as-power model of the stock market. …

Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix Last week I ran a Twitter survey to see what software my fellow researchers use. It turns out they like R: As an avid R …

Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Capital-as-power, a framework from Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, holds that companies don’t seek to be as profitable as possible – but rather to accumulate as much power as …

Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix According to behavioral economics, most human decisions are mired in ‘bias’. It muddles our actions from the mundane to the monumental. Human behavior, it seems, …

Regan Boychuk The bias of Alberta’s media in favour of our dominant industry is both pervasive and obvious to any careful observer. But how to prove it? Studies of media bias are notoriously difficult and …

Regan Boychuk Author’s note: At the end of the First Cold War, Canada tried to make the polluter pay. This resulted in the United States launching an unknown, but successful coup in Alberta over the …

Regan Boychuk Author’s note: At the end of the First Cold War, Canada tried to make the polluter pay. This resulted in the United States launching an unknown, but successful coup in Alberta over the …

Abstract Capitalizing a Cure takes readers into the struggle over a medical breakthrough to investigate the power of finance over business, biomedicine, and public health. When curative treatments for hepatitis C launched in 2013, sticker …

Abstract There is little doubt that, in the last hundred years or so, progress has been made in lifting more people out of extreme poverty. Yet, considerable economic inequalities both within and between nations persists …

Abstract הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין “הביקורתיים” על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם — ההון — אינו ידוע. לאחר יותר ממאתיים שנה של התפתחות …

Abstract This paper uses word frequency to track the rise and potential peak of capitalist ideology. Using a sample of mainstream economics textbooks as my corpus of capitalist thinking, I isolate the jargon of these …

Abstract Steve Keen’s book, The New Economics: A Manifesto (2021), offers a new path for economics, and for good reason. In his view, neoclassicism, the paradigm that rules modern-day economics, has become a serious menace: …

Abstract Covid-19 and the Global Political Economy investigates and explores how far and in what ways the Covid-19 pandemic is challenging, restructuring, and perhaps remaking aspects of the global political economy. Since the 1970s, neoliberal …

Abstract Marxists love to hate the theory of capital as power, or CasP for short. And they have two good reasons. First, CasP criticizes the logical and empirical validity of the labour theory of value …

Abstract This paper builds an empirical and theoretical model to analyze how the financial goal of risk reduction changed the insides of Hollywood’s star system. For the moviegoer looking at Hollywood cinema from the outside, …

Abstract Neoclassical economics is the official scientific underpinning of capitalism as well as its main ideological defence, and according to Keen, it fails in both tasks. Contrary to received opinion, neoclassicism cannot explain capitalism – …

Abstract This note offers some speculative ideas worth considering. One of the key features of all hierarchical civilizations is their rulers’ fear of death. This fear was famously narrated in the ancient myth of Gilgamesh …

Abstract The debate around public versus private health care often turns on cost – that is, on how to reduce costs, and particularly government expenditures, when it comes to health care. This paper examines the …

Abstract Although the determinants of income are complex, the results are surprisingly uniform. To a first approximation, top incomes follow a power-law distribution, and the redistribution of income corresponds to a change in the power-law …

Jonathan Nitzan

Full text: https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/774/ PREAMBLE In 1989, we applied for a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation grant to investigate the funding of fascist and Neo-Nazi movements in Israel. The Foundation did not find the topic important enough, …

CM

Brian, your question of what is causing changes in the fertility rate is an interesting one. I think you’re right that many factors are at work, and that at least some important ones can be …

jmc

A very annoying ordeal! We that run this site are just a small group of people. Hopefully when we have the time — or another volunteer! — we can upgrade the notification system.

Andrew Sorrells

I’m still getting notification emails. Is that the system just catching up with the backlog then? Thank you for dealing with this. Must be so annoying.

Scott Laing

I got the same.  Every two minutes across several hours.

Scott Laing

Agree and disagree. ‘Non-sustainability’ is an ideological construct.  It floats the narrative that societies must learn to adapt to ever greater restrictions on standards of living.  Veblen demonstrated profits can be created through the destruction …