Economic Ideas Research Articles

On the Road to a Green Economy: How Do European Union Countries ‘Do Their Homework’?

Multidimensional crisis phenomena (financial–economic, environmental and social), plaguing the international community, especially in the last 30 years, have intensified resentment towards traditional models of growth and socio-economic development. The European Commission has placed the idea of a green economy (GE) at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy. This paper presents an assessment of the implementation of the green economy assumptions in EU countries in 2018, taking 2010 as the base year. Using taxonomic methods, a synthetic evaluation index (GEI—Green Economy Index) was constructed based on a multi-criterion set of 27 indicators. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: How green are the European economies? What are the main challenges in this context? The average value of the index for the EU countries decreased in the studied years from 0.3423 to 0.3294, which can be interpreted as a slowdown in the greening processes. The key recommendations for the upcoming years include the improvement of energy efficiency indicators, the further increase in the share of renewable energy sources in the energy balance. Moreover, a significant problem continues to be the high percentage of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion, as well as low CO2 and resource productivity rates.

Legal Regulation of Kazakhstan’s Transition to the Green Economy

To preserve nature, it is necessary to carefully monitor the state of the natural environment, normalize and prevent industrial emissions, and develop and implement waste-free and resource-saving technologies. Chemical safety is an important element of the national security of the Republic of Kazakhstan in “green economy” conditions. The main goals of safe management are prevention, reduction, minimization of toxic substances’ potentially harmful effects on public health and environment.
 Today, humanity has begun to realize that any economic branch first of all affects the environment. Therefore, the world community is considering various mechanisms for preserving the environment, and certainly, the idea of a green economy is one of them. A green economy is not just an opportunity, but a mandatory path of development for all countries which strive to ensure a secure future for their citizens.
 The present research aims to suggest recommendations concerning the legal issues of the transition to a green economy and to improve the regulatory framework of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
 In the course of the study, the authors propose theoretical and practical recommendations for improving the current state mechanism for the transition to a green economy.

Building Emotional Resilience: Japanese Women’s Religious and Spiritual Coping Strategies in the Time of COVID-19

This paper explores the moderating effect of religious and spiritual coping mechanisms on the COVID-19 pandemic-induced emotional distress among a group of Japanese women practising temple meditation and yoga. A growing body of literature identifies religion and spirituality as sources of coping mechanisms for emotional distress during the pandemic, in that they enable individuals to find ways to improve subjective well-being and quality of life. The study uses a descriptive phenomenological approach, drawing upon narratives collected between September 2020 and June 2021 from thirty-two respondents composed of a mix of religious-affiliated and self-identified non-religious women practising temple meditation and yoga. Findings indicate that more women, including religious affiliates, have favoured spiritual coping mechanisms in the forms of meditation and body–mind practices to build emotional resilience. This reflects a quest for greater subjective well-being to compensate for the increased burden of emotional care during the pandemic. Overall, while organised religions have come to appropriate more holistic forms of spirituality to respond to demands of emotional care, body–mind spiritual practices have become more appealing for younger religious and non-religious Japanese women alike, in that they downplay gender-conforming ideas of the care economy with its emphasis on dedication and dependency.

Henry George’s Reforms as Economic Impetus for Lev Tolstoy’s Moral Doctrine

ABSTRACT Tolstoy became acquainted with the works of Henry George as he was writing his treatise “What Then Should We Do?” George’s economic ideas fascinated him so much that he stepped away from the treatise to spend time trying to comprehend the American economist’s solutions. At first, the project of a single land tax did not appeal to him, and he writes in his treatise, “George proposes we recognize all land as state property, and therefore all taxes, both direct and indirect, should be replaced by rents. That is, everyone who uses the land should pay the state the value of its rent. What would that be? … It would be slavery, as determined by the volume of land use.” However, from the moment he read Progress and Poverty and Social Problems Tolstoy unequivocally agreed with George’s position that “private ownership of land is theft,” though it took time for him to comprehend and adopt George’s position on the single land tax.

Comprehensive Chemical Description of Pyrolysis Chars from Low-Density Polyethylene by Thermal Analysis Hyphenated to Different Mass Spectrometric Approaches

In the last decades, the production and demand of plastics has drastically increased, with severe environmental impact. Concerning climate change and the idea of a circular economy, waste incinerat...

Keep Calm and Cite Better: Impact Factor Pressures and Review Articles in the History of Economics

Clarivate Analytics’ suppression of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for three history of economics journals in 2018 resulted from the publication of a single review article solicited for History of Economic Ideas (HEI). That episode highlights several connections between JIF pressures on authors and editors, on the practice of writing review articles, and on the field of history of economics. We examine the different roles and proliferation of review articles, discuss recent examples of review articles in the history of economics literature, and conclude with a brief discussion of review articles, in connection with the way historians of economics cite.

Observations Beyond the 2-Year Impact Window

In 2018, Clarivate Analytics, publisher of the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports (JCR), suppressed publication of the 2017 Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for three of the four journals that it then indexed in the academic field of history of economics. Clarivate judged one of the journals, History of Economic Ideas (HEI), to be the “donor” of citations that distorted the impact factors of the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought (EJHET) and the Journal of the History of Economic Thought (JHET). The other journal, History of Political Economy (HOPE), was not included in that judgment. Our purpose is to define the JIF, summarize the controversy that gave rise to this symposium, and discuss methodologically and historically some of the problems with the use of citation indexes in general and the JIF in particular. We show how these problems pertain differently to the scholarly field of the history of economics than to economics in general. In so doing we also introduce the following five articles of this symposium.

The Transformation of Analytical Centers as an Element of Chinese “Soft Power” in the 2010–2020

Transformations in China’s cultural and ideological narrative since the 2010s have required the establishment of specific Chinese “think tanks of a new type,” which are formally institutionalized in Chinese legislation. In the initial period of their development (2013–2018), thinktanks were tasked with becoming a significant “soft power” tool to promote and explain key political and economic ideas, including Xi Jinping’s initiatives, so say to “reconceptualize” official ideas at the expert and analytical level and translate Chinese ideological initiatives language into the generally accepted language of expert discussion. However, since 2019–2020, being challenged by creating an anti-Chinese alliance, think-tanks were required to carry out not only expert-analytical work but also to develop draft decisions on critical issues of external and internal development. China’s political leaders seek to create a new type of analytical culture, stimulating the development of new types of centers and completely transforming the old ones. Of the four types of centers – governmental, academic, university, and public (non-governmental) – the governmental and public centers have proved the most effective. In contrast, the centers that grew out of academic institutions and university structures have been criticized for being slow and impractical in their judgments. At the same time, a number of public analytical centers have grown into giant corporations: today, they have branches in dozens of Chinese cities and abroad, maintain ties with Chinese Huaqiao, and advise the country’s authorities on crucial issues of political and economic development.

Countermovements: Rural Social Imaginaries Confronting Neoliberal Economics and Politics in Southern Poland

During the postsocialist economic transformation, liberal economic and political ideas encountered different pre-existing ontologies of power, work and economics in Poland, which were particularly prevalent in rural mountain regions in the south. This different world-making is the basis for a Polanyian countermovement against marketisation. However, the incompatibility of alternative ontologies does not prevent villagers from achieving economic success. These inherited ontologies are stabilising the uncertainties stemming from economic and political liberalisation through family ties and appraisal tools based on the values of rural culture.

Computing Marginal Cost of Durability of Energy Systems Components by Structural Optimization With Fatigue Constraints

Abstract There is a relationship between product durability and the effect the product has on the environment and economy. One approach that impacts this dynamic involves a circular economy. The idea of a circular economy is gaining more traction as some businesses have begun to shift toward a product as a service model in which they, the businesses, maintain ownership of the product. One example of this business model is emerging in the energy sector. Given this shift, the life of the product becomes more important as it directly impacts the bottom line of the business. This gives rise to the marginal cost of durability (MCD) metric. The MCD determines the cost of the product in relation to the life of the system. For longer life, the design generally necessitates more cost-intensive measures to ensure durability. In the context of sustainable design, system life is particularly important for renewable energy systems that promote sustainable living. These large structures often require a high volume of materials and the end-of-life disposal for those materials. The design requirements for material also increase as the design life increases. The additional materials provide a safeguard against failure phenomena, such as fatigue. The MCD metric has been used in previous studies. However, there is no formal method for determining the MCD. This article examines a method for measuring the MCD for the commercial class of wind energy production systems. A metamodel of the damage response is built in lieu of expensive computational models. Design optimization is used to search for the design parameters having fatigue damage as a constraint. This process is repeated for a set of system life values, yielding a set of designs. Curve fitting is used to find a mathematical relationship between life and cost. An example of this method is applied to the study of a wind turbine tower life. The study indicates that the wind turbine tower design for 80 years has 34% more mass and cost than a 20-year design. The results from the proposed method provide information that can be used to determine the design life of a system.

A SOCIAL ECONOMY AND SUSTAINABILITY: IS THERE POTENTIAL FOR AN INTERFACE?

South Africa is plagued by high unemployment, extreme poverty and a worrying skills deficit. Job creation strategies focus on the formal economy, but some argue that the focus should shift to policies that would help with the expansion and development of the social (or solidarity) economy that exists alongside the public and private sectors. This sector is driven mainly by a concern to better the interests of their members, or to fulfil a public benefit, rather than to maximize profits. It has been argued that cooperatives provide a suitable vehicle for organizing workers in this sphere. Jackson (Prosperity Without Growth, 2011), in advancing the idea of a sustainable economy, calls for macro-economic interventions that, inter alia, include a structural transition to service-based activities and working-time policies aimed at thefacilitation of shared work. The former strategy (structural transition to service-based activities), although developed in a completely different context, shares many synergies with the underlying notions associated with the development of a social economy. It evolves around business models providing services which are resource-light, but which are not the same as the service sector development which,worldwide, is associated with a concomitant decline in the primary and secondary sectors.The article explores, first, the potential of the social economy as a site for the creation of decent jobs and the possible role in this regard of structures such as cooperatives and, second, whether any meaningful lessons can be drawn in this regard from the research that has be done on the “greening” of economic growth.

Seeing like a macroeconomist: varieties of formalisation, professional incentives and academic ideational change

ABSTRACT An emerging literature in political economy points to ‘hinges’ between academia and policy as important sites of analysis and emphasises the role of quantitative models in lending scientific legitimacy to economic ideas. This paper contributes to this literature by asking: what drives change in what is seen as authoritative macroeconomic modelling in academic settings? And how do drivers of ideational change in academia differ from drivers of ideational change in economic policy institutions? In answering these questions the paper emphasises the way in which variations in the formal structures of macroeconomic models interact with academics’ individual professional incentives. Specifically, it argues that ‘portable’ forms of modelling that do not require access to extensive resources are likely to trump ‘fixed’ and resource-intensive forms of modelling. Making this distinction helps elucidate critical junctures in the history of macroeconomic thought. Analytically, the paper relies on a framework that connects the sociology of science, the sociology of professions and the institutionalist tradition in political economy.

Economics ripped from the headlines: The Economist ascourse text

The author of this article presents an innovative economics course based on current events and news, using The Economist as the primary course text. The course constructs shared learning around news in real time to inspire and excite students’ ability to see economics in their world. The course supports Allgood and Bayer’s competencies, including the application of the scientific process to economic phenomena, the ability to analyze and evaluate behavior and outcomes using economic concepts and models, critical thinking about economic methods and their applications, and communicating economic ideas in diverse collaborations. The author provides sample assignments that can be scaffolded by the instructor for implementation of this teaching strategy, as well as advice for replicating this course or adopting some of its techniques.

Leveraging outside readings and low-stakes writing assignments to promote student engagement in an economic development course

The author of this article describes an intermediate economics course structured around outside readings, which include academic journal papers, policy briefs, and news articles. Students complete low-stakes, high-frequency writing assignments that promote accountability and encourage critical thinking about the readings. This pairing of outside readings and writing assignments leads to increased student engagement, high rates of self-reported reading, and high satisfaction with the course without imposing an unreasonable grading workload on the instructor. This model may be especially useful to instructors in intermediate and advanced courses who seek to increase students’ exposure to recent developments in their field and strengthen their ability to engage critically with economic theory and ideas.

Zhigoneshi: A Culture of Connection

Zhigoneshi describes the symbiotic dependencies that weave together to produce the world. The Kogi concept of mutuality, as expressed in their word zhigoneshi, conveys a picture of life as a series of collaborative, cooperative relationships, which the Kogi understand as axiomatic to all living processes, including human societies. This is evident in relation to their vertical mountain economy and in their view of exchange. Consequently, for the Kogi, materials, knowledge and thought are not simply connected but are also fundamentally entwined. This approach does not simply describe ecological dependencies; it also holds that economic and biological life existentially inform each other and therefore cannot be separated, even in thought. Chiming with the reality of cellular symbiotic practices at the very origins of life (as articulated by Margulis), zhigoneshi rejects the notion of the self-interested in pursuit of accumulation and profit, as employed by capitalist economic methods, in favor of actions that understand connectivity and ensure balance and harmony are maintained. Using numerous cultural examples, we illustrate how many alternative ideas of economy continue to inform current exchange practices out from the market and suggest that these examples provide a useful understanding of post-capitalist possibilities in the Anthropocene.

Neoliberalism with Scandinavian characteristics: The slow formation of neoliberal common sense in Denmark

This article describes the ascension of neoliberal economic ideas in the macroeconomic establishment in Denmark. Based on a systematic analysis of documents from the Danish government and the Economic Council from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the article traces the development of the economic ideas and policy instrument that dominate the analytical process of the Danish macroeconomic establishment. The article applies a Gramscian-inspired framework to track the gradual and uneven process under which neoliberal economic ideas became common sense in the Danish context. This framework challenges some of the assumptions of the ideational focus of much constructivist literature, and offers an alternative analysis focused on the legitimating role of economic ideas. As much of the ideational change took place after policy adaptions to international economic developments, the Danish case provides little support for the theory of the causal power of ideas. Rather, it seems as though economic models and ideas are imported as ‘after the fact’ legitimations of changes in policy.

Between practical and liberal statecraft: Guo Songtao and his political and economic ideas

ABSTRACT “Liberalism” has served often as an analytical concept in Chinese intellectual history. In this paper, I use this term to refer to the thinking of a group of “open-minded” and unorthodox thinkers who espoused progressive and/or radical opinions about institutional reforms for nineteenth century China. To a certain extent, these reformers’ political thinking had features similar to some that are found in J. S. Mill’s liberalism – namely, political participation, popular initiative, free enterprise, religious toleration, individualism, and commitment to long-term moral ideals.

El carácter dialógico-imaginativo de la creatividad y la innovación en Adam Smith

Adam Smith’s emphasis on the increase in productivity brought about by the division of labour in the Wealth of Nations led his general conception of the dynamics of economic growth to be associated almost exclusively with the productive specialization of labour and the free expansion of competitive markets. In this article we will try to show another perspective on Smithian economic growth. This perspective focuses on two fundamental aspects: on the one hand, the importance of imagination in creative-innovative processes, and, on the other, the dialogical basis of division of labour. In this way, we propose that an integral reading of Smith’s work is relevant, not only to reach a more complete understanding of the author’s own economic ideas, but also to provide interesting suggestions for thinking about the dynamics of growth and development today.

İbn Haldun’un İktisadi Kalkınma Anlayışını İnşa Eden İktisadi Faktörler

İslam Medeniyetinin öncü düşünürlerinden biri olan İbn Haldun, sosyal bilimler alanında yaptığı katkılarla yaşadığı coğrafyanın sınırlarını aşmış, çağının ötesine geçmiş ve evrensel bir karaktere sahip olmuştur. İbn Haldun, tarih, tarih felsefesi başta olmak üzere birçok disiplinin öncüsü olarak kabul edilmiştir. Bu bağlamda, İbn Haldun’un ekonomiye dair tespitleri ve görüşleri, günümüzde ana akım iktisatta yer alan birçok düşüncenin temelini oluşturmaktadır. İbn Haldun’un kalkınma anlayışını kurumsal yapılar ve iktisadi faktörler olmak üzere iki ana başlıkta incelemek mümkündür. Yapılan çalışmada İbn Haldun’un kalkınma anlayışını inşa eden iktisadi faktörler anlatılmaya çalışılmıştır. Emek, işbölümü, kamu harcamaları, düşük vergilendirme, nüfus politikası ve iklim yapısının iktisadi kalkınma üzerindeki etkisi İbn Haldun’un Mukaddime adlı eseri çerçevesinde sunulmaya çalışılmıştır. Söz konusu düşünceler, çağdaş kavramlar/bakış açısı ile değerlendirilmeye tabi tutulduğunda, günümüz iktisadi problemlere çözüm sağlama noktasında yeterli potansiyele sahip olduğu görülecektir.

The circular economy in the water sector: Elements, processes, recommendations

Subject. We study the main processes, characterizing the circular economy in the water sector. Objectives. The purpose is to research issues related to circular economy, including the water reuse, to develop proposals for the formation of a roadmap for the transition to a circular economy model. Methods. The study employs analytical and logical methods, theoretical insights into the analysis of processes related to the circular economy, and practical works of countries on the formation of a roadmap for transition to a circular economy model. Results. The paper concludes on strengths and weaknesses, the potential and possible threats of water reuse in the implementation of the circular economy concept. It identifies obstacles hindering the dissemination of principles of the circular economy in Russia, in particular, the practices for reuse of water resources. We present proposals to develop a roadmap for successful implementation of the circular economy concept. Conclusions. The proposals can provide a basis for forming an idea of a closed-loop economy in a country or region. They can be used at the stage of transition to a circular economy at the national and regional levels, to achieve sustainable development goals.