Within political philosophy, money has widely been characterized as conferring a negative form of liberty, because it renders the motivational forces behind the preferences of agents both invisible and irrelevant. During the course of this paper, I distinguish between descriptive and normative versions of this claim, and argue that both dismiss fundamental aspects of the practices that constitute modern money. The central thesis of this paper is that money does not, as the normative claim suggests, make nonpublic beliefs dispensable to achieve social stability. Rather, it relocates them from the past into the future.

This paper examines poverty through the lens of what households aspire to own. Using panel data from the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey between 2014 and 2022, the study constructs an aspiration index and a realization index. The analysis reveals that aspirations are strongly influenced by income, education, gender composition, and occupational structure. The realization of those aspirations is, however, uneven and shaped by persistent disadvantages. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households are more likely to remain aspirationally constrained. The results are robust across fixed effects models and remain consistent when using Principal Component Analysis-based indices. A Mundlak adjustment further confirms the role of structural and household-level variables. The study highlights the value of moving beyond standard measures of deprivation to examine the gap between what households wish to achieve and what they are able to realize. This gap reflects a different layer of poverty that is both psychological and structural.

Deliberative democratic theory has defended workplace democratization to render business decision-making more politically legitimate and of better epistemic quality. By disestablishing top-down hierarchical management in favor of a rational exchange of arguments over the common good of the firm, deliberative democrats hope to include rank-and-file workers in business decision-making. However, the actual implementation of workplace democracy involves much more conflict and non-deliberative tactics of opposition. Especially the division between managers and workers persistently troubles democratic workplaces. I argue that implementing workplace democracy via consensus-oriented procedures risks encouraging ‘deliberative domination’, a condition where privileged workers use their organizational and social privileges to consistently overrule others. To avoid deliberative domination, we must pursue agonistic workplace democracy. The latter envisions workplace democracy as a struggle between opposing stakeholders over company strategy. Rather than requiring democratic workplaces to pursue a rational consensus among stakeholders, workplace democracy must facilitate power-sharing between fundamentally disagreeing stakeholders.

The goal of this article is to assess how network heterogeneity relates to the use of consumer credit. We propose a theoretical framework that underscores three interrelated mechanisms based on social comparison and comparison groups, through which the socio-economic heterogeneity of interpersonal networks could amplify consumption and indebtedness patterns: emulation, competition, and belonging assertion. Socio-economic network heterogeneity is gauged using the ‘position generator’ – a well-established survey instrument in social capital literature, prompting respondents to indicate whether they have social contacts across various occupations or classes. The results derived from our regression analyses indicate that a higher level of socio-economic heterogeneity within one's network is positively associated with the likelihood of possessing consumer credit, whether sourced from department stores or banks. Additionally, we found that network heterogeneity influences the acquisition of consumer credit to a similar degree for individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds in terms of education, social class, and income.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of compliance with the social norms of assistance and solidarity during social events on the time management of day laborers in Burkina Faso using cross-sectional data collected from 140-day laborers in Ouagadougou's industrial zones. We used a recursive system of equations, a fractional probit and a general linear model. Estimates were made using the conditional mixed process (CMP) proposed by Roodman (2011). The results show that: (i) workers in companies with relatively high wages have a lower degree of compliance with social norms than those with low wages; (ii) an increase in the degree of submission to social norms has a negative impact on the working time of the day laborer. This result suggests the need for a formal flexible social protocol for optimal participation in economic activities and manifestations of solidarity with in our societies.

Agro-pastoral conflicts remain a major concern in sub-Saharan Africa. This article examines the sources of agro-pastoral conflicts in Benin and evaluates the effectiveness of the politico-institutional measures. The evaluation focuses on multiple factors, including sociodemographic, ethnic, economic, political, and climate change-related variables. Using descriptive statistical analysis and an endogenous switching probit model, the study finds that the conflicts are driven by ethno-cultural, economic, and, most notably, climate-related factors. The results also indicate that existing measures, such as transhumance corridors and land ownership policies, are largely ineffective. Key challenges include water scarcity, limited forage availability, and the adverse effects of climate change on local flora and fauna. Addressing these issues is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of conflict regulation strategies. Governments should implement multilingual awareness and education campaigns targeted at farmers. At the regional level, economic communities must develop and operationalise comprehensive climate change adaptation strategies tailored to local contexts.

Disadvantaged social groups in the US suffered disproportionately in the covid pandemic and the Great Recession, worsening high levels of inequality associated with their post-1980 declining intergenerational income mobility. For black Americans, this reflects the long history of racial discrimination beginning with slavery. Reparations paid to descendants of enslaved individuals to eliminate the black–white wealth gap is a step toward addressing this history. A further needed step is to build predominantly black communities' human and social capital through public investments in community health care centers (CHCs) and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). There is considerable evidence that investments in early childhood education positively affect later school performance, income and earnings, higher education, crime, and other well-being outcomes. CHCs and HBCUs promote early childhood education. This paper argues that compensation is due to both individuals and their communities, and reparations payments should be accompanied by public investments in those communities.

The aim of this article is to analyse the financialisation of for-profit hospitals in France as the central driving force behind the transformation of hospital capitalism. It shows that over the last 30 years, the for-profit hospital sector has undergone a process of financialisation that has led to a high level of concentration. At the end of the last century, the sector was mainly made up of independent structures, often owned by doctors, but now it is characterised by the existence of interdependent groups, the largest of which are financialised. Between 2004 and 2020, the number of independent structures has been divided by 4.3, while the number of structures belonging to a group has multiplied by 2. These transformations have been made possible by substantial funding from public insurance. Moreover, the business model of hospital capitalism is based on patient selection and task selection, to the detriment of public hospitals.

Research on tipping norms in beauty salons is limited to behavioral economics. This study examines tipping by analyzing both extensive and intensive margins among 1,361 participants using a cross-sectional survey methodology. Findings reveal that clients’ willingness and ability to tip are influenced by service quality, the desire to maintain a social image, expected returns from repeat customers, and demographic factors such as religion, education, and income. Additionally, external shocks, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly impact tipping behavior. Variables like monthly income, client gender, job loss due to the pandemic, and religious beliefs notably affect the amount clients tip. These factors not only shape the financial capacity to tip but also influence the social dynamics and expectations surrounding gratuity in beauty salons, highlighting the interplay between economic conditions and individual behaviors in the context of tipping.