Tag Archives: United States

Polanyi’s Prescience: Covid-19, Market Utopianism, and the Reality of Society

Posted on October 16, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

by Margaret Somers and Fred Block * One of Karl Polanyi’s fundamental concepts is ‘the reality of society’, a term he uses in The Great Transformation (TGT) (Polanyi 1944/2001) to contest the idealised model of the autonomous self-regulating market. Modern … Continue reading →

Posted in Community members posts | Tagged ‎market‬ ‪‎fundamentalism, COVID-19, healthcare, Karl Polanyi, neoliberalism, state, United States | Leave a comment

The Long Divorce Between the Economy and Financial Markets

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

by Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely* As the coronavirus spread around the world, the global economy entered a recession unprecedented in scale. The World Bank predicts a 5.2 percent economic contraction by the end of this year—the largest downturn … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Community members posts | Tagged financial crisis, financialization, inequality, neoliberalism, United States | 4 Comments

Is the United States the Champion of Global Finance or its Victim? A New Look at the Fed’s Low-inflation Policy

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Oleg Komlik

By Arie Krampf* My article “Monetary Power Reconsidered: The Struggle between the Bundesbank and the Fed over Monetary Leadership”, recently published in International Studies Quarterly, contributes to the burgeoning literature that challenges the US-hegemony hypothesis in the global financial sub-order. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Community members posts, Papers | Tagged Bundesbank, central banking, Fed, Germany, globalization, inflation, monetary policy, neoliberalism, power, United States | 7 Comments

The Growth of Shadow Banking and State-Finance Relations

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Oleg Komlik

by Matthias Thiemann* How can we understand the growth of a system of credit provisioning outside of the realm of bank regulation since the 1970s which linked non-banks and banks in a convoluted system of market-based banking, securitization and wholesale … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Community members posts | Tagged banking, finance, France, Germany, institutions, Netherlands, regulation, United States, varieties of capitalism | Leave a comment

Leonora Barry: a pioneer statistician of women’s labour

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Oleg Komlik

by Eli Cook* Unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, the world of economic quantification was dominated by men in the nineteenth century. In honor of International Women’s Day, here is a story, excerpted from my book The Pricing of Progress, on Leonora Barry, one of … Continue reading →

Posted in Community members posts | Tagged economic history, labor, statistics, United States, women rights, work | Leave a comment

Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States

Posted on September 12, 2017 by Oleg Komlik

by Andrew Kolin* The task at hand is to place the political economy of repression within the contours of U.S. history and sketch in broad terms how, over time, repression is the product of dynamic and fixed relations between capital and … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Community members posts | Tagged capitalism, economic history, labor, state, United States | Leave a comment

Leveling mountains to define Corporate Liability

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Oleg Komlik

In the seminal 1909 case, New York Central R. Co. v. United States, 212 U.S. 481-499, the railroad argued that as a corporation it could not be held criminally liable for the unlawful acts (such as paying prohibited rebates to another company) … Continue reading →

Posted in Oleg Komlik | Tagged corporations, economic history, law, United States | Leave a comment

How 19th century finance and housing associations shaped 20th century housing regimes in Germany and the United States

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Oleg Komlik

Why has Germany become a country of tenants with a housing policy directed at private and public rental construction? On the other hand, why has the United States turned into a homeownership country? In an interesting article, Sebastian Kohl (University … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged comparative political economy, economic history, finance, Germany, housing, institutions, policy, United States, urban policy | 1 Comment

Why is there no labor party in the United States? Look at Canada to find out

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Oleg Komlik

In 1906, a German distinguished (somewhat neglected) economist and sociologist Werner Sombart published Why is there no Socialism in the United States? – a book which will become a famous work on American exceptionalism to this day (along with a pioneering and penetrative Democracy in America, by Alexis de … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged agriculture, Canada, class, comparative political economy, institutional change, labor, policy, politics, Representation (politics), social movements, socialism, Unions, United States | 1 Comment

Economic fortune telling: forecasting to profit

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Oleg Komlik

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”, famously remarked John Kenneth Galbraith. “Professional” fortune tellers and clairvoyant have accompanied mankind, receiving great respect, throughout the ages. Therefore, one can say, it was only a matter … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged economic history, economics, forecasting, knowledge, United States | 1 Comment

Alexis de Tocqueville on democracy, materialism and political economy

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Oleg Komlik

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) was a notable French political scientist and historian, best known for Democracy in America — a perceptive and groundbreaking analysis of the social, political and economic system of the United States. This four-volume book is brimming with … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged Alexis de Tocqueville, democracy, economic history, Economic Sociology, Political economy, United States, wealth | 3 Comments

The middle class and the politics of the rearguard

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

White Collar: The American Middle Classes is a pioneering and major study of the American middle class by a prominent sociologist C. Wright Mills, first published in 1951. In this research Mills analyzes the forming of a new class of the white-collar workers … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged bureaucracy, C. Wright Mills, capitalism, Middle class, politics, United States | 2 Comments

The political origins of the banking regulation and the international cooperation at the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Neither the U.S. Federal Reserve nor the European Central Bank was created as a banking supervisory institution. Each has evolved into its current role, yet for different reasons. In “The Foundations Of Regulatory Convergence And Divergence Between The Federal Reserve And … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged banking system, diffusion, divergence, European Union, global governance, regulation, United States | Leave a comment

Law and labor in the American political economy

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

In 1906, a German distinguished (somewhat neglected) economist and sociologist Werner Sombart published Why is there no Socialism in the United States? – a book which will become a famous work on American exceptionalism in this respect to this day. There are a number of … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged economic history, institutions, law, policy, Political economy, Unions, United States | Leave a comment

Causes of poverty: perceptions, ideas and policy making

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

The former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke recently said the “the greatest forces in Washington are ideas, and people prepared to act on those ideas.” (2013: 5). The following research demonstrates this power of ideas. Much of the research explaining … Continue reading →