Blog
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix Pity the billionaires. High in the towers on Billionaires’ Row, life is hard. The pencil-thin buildings groan as they sway in the wind, keeping penthouse …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Sitting through the Academy Awards ceremony can be frustrating if you watch a lot of films. The breadth of your viewings has given you the perspective to …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Unless you are Mexican, it is easy to forget that California was not always in the United States, having been a part of Mexico until the Mexican-American War of …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Our societal narratives are invisible by dint of their ubiquity, but they are far more important in stabilizing the status quo that all the cops and jails and domestic …
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix If there was an award for the most pernicious scientific idea ever, what theory should get first prize? I would vote for eugenics, a theory …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis One of my favourite graphs in recent writing on economic history might seem obscure. Reproduced below, it is found on page 28 of the working paper underlying the latest …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power is David Dayen’s new book about the concentration of industry in America and around the world; one interesting implication of monopolies …
Originally published at dtcochrane.com DT Cochrane Commissioned and originally published by The Blackwood Art Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga. As I write this, disability justice advocates are rallying in opposition to Bill C-7, …
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix It was a bet heard around the world. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. It was a bet heard mostly by academics and sustainability buffs. But still, …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Following the Second World War, there was a worldwide dollar shortage due to the United States’ high level of self-sufficiency as an agro-industrial behemoth. Governments therefore imposed quantitative controls …
Originally published at ownlynch.org Owen Lynch Part A: Overview 1. A Need for Better Theory If you are a well-educated person in the 21st century, you probably have conflicted views. On the one hand, the …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow In his 2019 book Dignity, Chris Arnade left his Wall Street job and traveled America, talking to poor, marginalized people, mostly at McDonald’s restaurants. Now, in a new essay …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon A survey of academic writing on the business of culture will show that authors seldomly restrain themselves from making predictions or giving recommendations to the hypothetical economic …
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix Do you remember peak oil? It was all the rage a decade ago. Now, almost no one is talking about it. The funny thing is, …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena-Junguito (2016) have produced a data set of world trade that includes exports and imports, in both current and constant prices, going back to the …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow A YouGov poll found 80% of Britons “would prefer the government to prioritise health and wellbeing over economic growth during the crisis, and 6 in 10 would still want …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager In a new briefing with Common Wealth, Miriam Brett, Joseph Baines and I examine ownership and financial data for the “Big Six” UK energy companies: Centrica (British Gas), …
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix It’s been 20 years, but I still remember the feeling. It was a mix of curiosity and unease. I was curious because I was learning …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis In a previous post I discussed a working paper in which I criticised Roberto Cortés Conde’s estimates of Argentina’s industrial output from 1875 to 1913. In a new version …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow The Internet Society (ISOC) is a nonprofit that is in the enviable position of receiving tens of millions of dollars every year merely for overseeing work that someone else …
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix This post begins with a sigh. For the last month, I’ve been working on a project that analyzes word frequency in economics textbooks. I’d hoped …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon I have been fortunate enough to teach university classes on politics and film. I am certain few students in these classes could guess how stressful it was …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis When a prominent economic historian provides a new estimate of something, it is likely that the estimate will be taken at face value. Other economic historians will cite it, …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” advanced a simple, data-supported hypothesis: that markets left to their own will cause capital to grow faster than the economy as a …
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix It was a Thursday in August when all hell broke loose. The place was Logan County, West Virginia. The year was 1921. Over the next …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Revising our assessment of the Spanish empire is in vogue among economic historians. Most notably, Regina Grafe and Alejandra Irigoin (2006; 2008) have sought to revise the nature of …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow The web is unusably beshitted and encrufted with popups, interstitials, rolldowns, nagware, paywalls, autoplaying video, ads that scroll with the page, and worse. I haven’t looked at the web …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager News of the immanent demise of companies responsible for a significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions might sound like a boon for efforts to avert climate breakdown. …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (AJR, 2002) famously argued that a ‘reversal of fortune’ had taken place among ex-European colonies. Generally speaking, they argued, those ex-colonies that …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow “Surprise billing” is when you go to the ER and discover that the doc, the specialist, or the test you got were performed by “independent contractors” who are not …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager Switching Things Up This year I am introducing a new second year undergraduate module on theories of international political economy. Modelled on the theory module I teach on …
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix A few weeks ago, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson contacted me about an essay series he’s editing called Advice for an Aspiring Economist. The series …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Last year the eighth edition of the Penn World Table (PWT) was released to considerable fanfare – indeed, one commentator described it as ‘a special day for all researchers …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Comparing the government to a household or a business isn’t merely inapt (a government is a currency creator, while a household is a currency user – their budgeting constraints …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager Last month I had the pleasure of working on a new Common Wealth report entitled Commoning the Company with Mathew Lawrence, Adrienne Buller and Joseph Baines. In the …
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix Last fall, I wrote a short article for The Mint Magazine about how income relates to hierarchy. The Mint, if you’re not familiar, does great …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Jeffrey Williamson‘s (2011) book Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind is one of the most interesting attempts to explain the ‘great divergence’ between rich and poor countries. It is …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow One of the most exciting, eye-opening articles I’ve read in AGES. Showing how shareholder capitalism is a lie BY ITS PROPONENTS’ OWN TERMS…Genius. https://lpeblog.org/2020/02/18/privatizing-sovereignty-socializing-property-what-economics-doesnt-teach-you-about-the-corporation/ Marx thought individual property would …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager For four years now I’ve been teaching a postgraduate module called Global Political Economy: Contemporary Approaches. This is one of two core modules for our MA programme in …
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix In the field of ecological economics, Frederick Soddy looms large. Born in 1877, Soddy became a chemist and eventually won a Nobel prize for work …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Andre Gunder Frank’s Lumpenbourgeoisie, Lumpendevelopment was published in 1972, almost half a century ago. Reading it now, it is surprising how contemporary it seems. Most notably, in a few …
Note from Blair Fix: In a series of essays published in 2013 and 2014 on capitaspower.com, political economist Tim Di Muzio explored the concept of ‘sabotage’ as it applies to capitalist power. I recently rediscovered …
Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Reagan turned the country upside-down, in a very bad way. The “Reagan revolution” was indeed revolutionary (or, rather, counter-revolutionary), reversing a half-century of progress on social safety nets, workers’ …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager Earlier this month in Berlin I participated in the third workshop of the “Doing Debt” research network. I received the invitation back in May and was asked by …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Recently the Economist published a front-page feature on ‘The Tragedy of Argentina: A Century of Decline‘. By summarising the current scholarship on the ‘Argentine paradox’, the article demonstrates why the study of …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager The following piece is based on my State of the Art article in Socio-Economic Review. It was originally published for The Conversation and the World Economic Forum Global …
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis I never met my grandsupervisor (the PhD supervisor of my PhD supervisor), but I have enjoyed reading his rants. One in particular made a major impression upon me. In Mickey …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Your movie turned out the be a flop? “Nobody knows anything”. You mistakenly believed consumers wanted to see a movie set in the 1920s? “Nobody knows anything”. …