This book discusses the relationship between democracy and the financial order from various legal perspectives. Each of the nine contributions adopts a unique perspective on the legal and political challenges brought to the fore by the Global Financial Crisis. This crisis and the ensuing sovereign debt crisis in Europe are only the latest in a long series of financial crises around the globe in recent decades. By their very existence, but also as a result of the (...) political turmoil they have created, these financial crises testify to the well-known tensions between democracy and a market-based economic and financial order. However, what is missing in this debate is an analysis of the role of law for reconciling democracy with a market-based financial order. To fill this lacuna, the book focuses on the controversy surrounding the concept of law, thereby adding another variable to the debate on the relation between democracy and capitalism. Each chapter addresses the concept of law from a particular theoretical angle, be it a full-grown legal theory or an approach in political economy that has a particular view of the law. (shrink)

Consumer driven and globally competitive financial markets are crucial for the future prosperity of the Finnish society (Laitamäki, Lehti and Paasio 1996). The largest transfer of wealth in history is currently taking place as Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) prepare for their retirement and inherit the assets of the previous generation. Due to cognitive limitations and emotional biases these consumers don’t always make rational decisions with financial services. This conceptual study addresses irrational financial consumer behavior and its impact (...) on the Finnish business and society. The study focuses on two research questions: 1) What type of behavioral finance concepts explain irrational consumer behavior? 2) What are the implications of these behaviors for the Finnish business and society? The purpose of this study is to assist individual consumers, business leaders and policy makers in making better financial services related decisions in Finland. The need for better decisions has been illustrated during Finnish and international financial crises including the US sub-prime loan turmoil in 2008. (shrink)

In the present world order unbridled forces of free market capitalism are frequently cited for much of the social injustice, inequity, and disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor. Although history''s verdict in favor of the free markets could hardly be harsher or clearer, it is clear that after the initial wave of triumph, the free market paradigm has developed some cracks in its façade. What marks the trail of such sustained and pronounced move toward free markets in (...) terms of ethics, morality, social welfare and social justice? How does one keep a social score in this seemingly relentless and irreversible move all over the world toward free market capitalism?In this paper we shall attempt to address these and related questions. Drawing on concepts from organization theory and social philosophy and using publicly available financial information, we shall illustrate how, amidst the myriad and mixed noises, some sense of order and signal can be discerned in addressing issues of equity and social justice. Toward this end, first, we provide a broad contrast between two models of financial markets: the command model and the free market model and proceed to examine publicly available financial information and analyze the trends and patterns with graphical representations using publicly available data from Handbook of International Economic Statistics. Next, we explore the implications of financial performance measures for social welfare and social justice and discuss the social perils of free markets using the Mexican and Asian Financial crises as the focal points. Finally, we present a set of recommendations for smoother structural transition. (shrink)

The crises of neo-liberalism, modalities of revolt and adaptability The aim of the article is to locate the current crisis within the history of neo-liberalism with its successive crises. The authors point to the fact that the crisis is the latest in a series of financial and economic crises, to which must be added energy and food crises. The article analyses the social effects of neo-liberalism by way of its return to a logic focused on (...) the production of absolute surplus-value, following the revolt of the financial bourgeoisie against the social State. It concludes with an examination of the effects of the various forms of resistance to neo-liberalism upon the modes of legitimation that are in operation. Focusing in particular on the situation in France, the article argues that the reactions to the crisis, between revolt and resignation, are to be explained by way of the structural effects of neo-liberalism and in terms of the crisis of legitimation now affecting it. (shrink)

Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy (...) of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we austerity for what it is, and what it costs us. (shrink)

The central issue in this paper is the overtaking of neoliberalism by a possible new “social order”, a new phase in the history of capitalism. In contemporary capitalism, the “upper classes”—capitalist classes, the classes of managers and officials—jointly ensure the control of the means of production. Their common hegemony in neoliberalism is supported by the alliance at the top of the social hierarchies, under the leadership of capitalist classes. This hegemony could be continued beyond neoliberalism, though under new forms. A (...) first such potential social order is similar to neoliberalism, which it prolongs, a “third financial hegemony”. (Neoliberalism represented the “second financial hegemony”; the first prevailed before the Great Depression of the 1930s). The other social order can be described as a “neomanagerialism”. While the same alliance would prevail at the top, the leadership would here be that of the managerial class, and would involve much stronger state intervention. (Another opportunity, albeit one which we unfortunately deem unlikely, would be the alliance between popular classes and managers, a “social-managerialism”). A comparison between the United states and China highlights the relevance of neomanagerialism. The strong neomanagerial features of China show the potential efficiency of this social configuration. A turn to neomanagerialism would probably be the only way of preserving what can be saved of U.S. international hegemony. (shrink)

Recent economic and financial crises have exposed mainstream economics to severe criticism, bringing present research and teaching styles into question. Building on a solid and vivid tradition of economic thought, this book challenges conventional thinking in the field of economics. The authors turn to the work of Luigi Pasinetti, who proposed a list of nine methodological and theoretical ideas that characterize the Classical Keynesian School. Drawing inspiration from both Keynes and Sraffa, this school has forged a long-standing and (...) ambitious research programme often advocated as a competing paradigm to mainstream economics. Overall, the Classical Keynesian School provides a comprehensive analytical framework into which most non-mainstream schools of thought can be integrated. In this collection, a group of leading scholars critically assess the nine main ideas that, in Pasinetti's view, characterize the Classical-Keynesian approach, evaluating their relevance for both the history of economics and for present economic research. (shrink)

This book presents a thorough and critical evaluation of the monetary and financial system prevalent in Western economies. Further, it seeks to explain why this system so often leads to financial crises and why they have been dealt with unsatisfactorily in the past. In order to provide answers to these questions, the book investigates the monetary and financial system from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a strong focus on the ethical value choices which throughout history have shaped (...) the monetary and financial legal system. In the closing chapters, the book also advances a detailed proposal for a New Global Monetary Order, one based on altruism, as an alternative to the neoliberal values dominant today. (shrink)

Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of 'Homo Economicus' provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure's significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith's seminal texts - Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations - and Henry Fielding's A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model (...) as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen's Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens' engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway's exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy. (shrink)

This book approaches the question of the relation between financial crises and earnings management from two philosophical perspectives: positivism and critical realism. The results obtained using the positivist approach indicate that financial crises tend to have no consistent effect on earnings quality since managers’ earnings behavior does not differ from the pre-crisis to the crisis period. The author accordingly argues against the existence of a causal law based on a constant conjunction model and concludes that (...) class='Hi'>financial crises cannot be seen as the cause of earnings management. The critical realism perspective, on the other hand, casts light on managers’ reasons for acting like an earnings manager; in conjunction with the more traditional positivist approach, it assists in refuting the idea of financial crises as a generative mechanism for earnings management. The author concludes by exploring other structures at work that might be responsible for earnings management. This book will be of interest to both academics and a wide range of professionals. (shrink)

If we had to identify the most controversial concept today, “happiness” would certainly figure among the main candidates for this role. On the one hand, “happiness” has represented one of the main ethical axes in the history of philosophy – from Greek _eudaimonia_ to Bentham’s “greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” Ethics was almost inextricably connected with the search for happiness, which was already in Greek synonymous for the “good life”. On the other hand, capitalism today, notwithstanding the (...) general apathy and despair due to the permanent crises of the capitalist system (climate change, pandemics, financial crises, etc.), still legitimises itself with, if not guarantees, at least a promise of happiness. Despite different historical contexts which again and again gave meaning to the concept of happiness, a common denominator can still be identified, which today, in the era of late capitalism, has even gained the status of a cornerstone of our hegemonic image of happiness. Happiness is a question of being. The evocation of happiness usually raises the question of whether one is happy or not, what it means to be happy, and how we become so. Happiness is thus inextricably connected to the question of identity: it is the sensual expression of our being, of what we supposedly are. In contrast to this “ontologisation of happiness”, the article tries to show not only that there is a _materialist concept of happiness_, but also that the latter bases itself on the primacy of the verb “having” instead of “being”. From a materialist perspective, happiness is something that we have or encounter, and not something that we are. Two references are crucial in this articulation: first, Benjamin’s formulation of happiness from his last essay “On the concept of history”, and second, the Freudian-Lacanian theory of repetition. (shrink)

In the light of growing political and religious fundamentalism, this open access book defends the idea of freedom as paramount for the attempt to find common ethical ground in the age of globality. The book sets out to examine as yet unexhausted ways to boost the resilience of the principle of liberalism. Critically reviewing the last 200 years of the philosophy of freedom, it revises the principle of liberty in order to revive it. It discusses many different aspects that fall (...) under its three main topics: the metaphysics of freedom, quantitative freedom and qualitative freedom. Open societies worldwide have come under increasing pressure in the last decades. The belief that politics and markets fare best when guided by the principle of liberty presently faces multiple challenges such as terrorism, climate warming, inequality, populism, and financial crises. In the view of its critics, the idea of freedom no longer offers adequate guidance to meet these challenges and should be partially corrected or even entirely replaced by countervailing values. Against the reduction of freedom to the merely quantitative question as to how much liberties individuals call their own, this book draws attention to the qualitative concerns which and whose opportunities society should foster. It argues that, correctly understood, the idea of liberty commits us to defend as well as advance the freedom of each and every world citizen. (shrink)

We live in a world of breaking news, where at almost any moment our everyday routine can be interrupted by a faraway event. Events are central to the way that individuals and societies experience life. Even life’s inevitable moments—birth, death, love, and war—are almost always a surprise. Inspired by the cataclysmic events of September 11, Robin Wagner-Pacifici presents here a tour de force, an analysis of how events erupt and take off from the ground of ongoing, everyday life, and how (...) they then move across time and landscape. What Is an Event? ranges across several disciplines, systematically analyzing the ways that events emerge, take shape, gain momentum, flow, and even get bogged down. As an exploration of how events are constructed out of ruptures, it provides a mechanism for understanding eventful forms and flows, from the micro-level of individual life events to the macro-level of historical revolutions, contemporary terrorist attacks, and financial crises. Wagner-Pacifici takes a close look at a number of cases, both real and imagined, through the reports, personal narratives, paintings, iconic images, political posters, sculptures, and novels they generate and through which they live on. What is ultimately at stake for individuals and societies in events, Wagner-Pacifici argues, are identities, loyalties, social relationships, and our very experiences of time and space. What Is an Event? provides a way for us all—as social and political beings living through events, and as analysts reflecting upon them—to better understand what is at stake in the formations and flows of the events that mark and shape our lives. (shrink)

Soon after the 2008 financial crisis, Gillian Tett, an anthropologist and the US Managing Editor of the Financial Times, suggested that regulators’ and practitioners’ inability to anticipate and respond to deep problems in the financial industry could be traced back to what she called “silo thinking,” wherein experts in one area know nothing about the methods and research of other areas. As she put it, “the essential challenges for investors today…”—and, we might add, for regulators and academics—is (...) “to understand the micro-details of the silos, and see how all the macro-pieces add up”.In years since, many researchers in many fields have sought to identify causes of the... (shrink)

This article argues that the key crisis that has overtaken today’s global economy is the classical capitalist crisis of over-accumulation. Reaganism and structural adjustment were efforts to overcome this crisis in the 1980s, with little success, followed by globalization in the 1990s. The Clinton administration embraced globalization as the “Grand Strategy” of the United States, its two key prongs being the accelerated integration of markets and production by transnational corporations and the creation of a multilateral system of global governance, the (...) pillars of which were the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The goal of creating a functionally integrated global economy, however, stalled, and the multilateral system began to unravel,thanks among other things to the multiple crises created by the globalization of finance, which was the main trend of the period. In response partly to these crises, partly to increasing competition with traditionally subservient centre economies, and partly to political resistance in the South, Washington under the Bush administration has retreated from the globalist project, adopting a nationalist strategy consisting of disciplining the South through unilateralist military adventures, reverting to methods of primitive accumulation in exploiting the developing world, and making other centre economies bear the brunt of global adjustments necessitated by the crisis of over-accumulation. (shrink)

The history of Credit Rating Agencies [CRAs], commonly called Rating Agencies, has a long and distinguished trajectory marked by influence, reputation and power. Due to the ability of this field to instigate significant changes in market regulations and actions of economic actors, this subject is extensively debated within the literature. In economic sociology, while some studies have focused on perceptions of performativity and market devices to understand how the calculability of its methods influences the economy, others, along relational lines of (...) sociology, aim to understand them through a more complex constructive process. In this study, we attempt to fill a gap by exploring the complementarity between two theoretical approaches to sociology: theory of fields and performativity. Thus, we mobilize theory of fields to understand the inter-field relationship between the State and CRAs. Specifically, this paper sets out to i) analyze the co-constitution of the state and market fields with the field of CRAs; ii) describe the existing regulation and situate the CRAs and their classification devices in the broader history of the State and the market; iii) analyze how the legitimation of the CRAs by the State generates broader social contexts that assist in the performative work of the CRAs. Based on historical documentary research, we analyze some of the main milestones and regulatory events in the field of CRAs. This research reaffirms the assumption that even after credibility crises, the State is the most significant predictor of legitimacy, power, and influence that CRAs hold to date. The legitimacy of this power and influence has yet to be exhausted because the reputation of CRAs is rooted in the reputation of the State itself. This happens because the State provides essential actions (such as regulations) for the existence of the financial market. Thus, results suggest that the State, through regulatory measures, can engage several other fields to promote the legitimacy of performative work of the CRAs, whose purpose is to provide calculation tools to shape markets. (shrink)

During the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the currentCovid-19 debacle, central banks acted quickly, boldly, and effectively. The paper argues that they did so thanks to the lessons learned from the past financial crises, which provided them with opportunities to reconsider their previous beliefs. A case in point is the banking crisis in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s that taught central banks to act rapidly and decisively in order to prevent an (...) initial liquidity crisis from escalating into a solvency crisis leading to bankruptcies of banks with potentially disastrous consequences for the entire economy. The paper revisits the consequences of the currency crises of the 1990s, which transformed exchange rate regimes across the world: the EMS one of 1992–1993 that accelerated the launch of the euro, and the Asian one of 1997–1998 resulted in the proliferation of floating exchange rates in emerging economies. (shrink)

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most important (...) cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

La financiarisation du marché est associée à un déficit démocratique, à un accroissement des inégalités et à un contexte mondial d’incertitude et de crises. Dans le présent article, nous revisitons les vues d’Adam Smith au xviiie siècle sur ces sujets, au-delà de sa caricature néolibérale. Nous suggérons que le père de l’économie moderne, sur qui l’on fonde l’idéologie de la « main invisible » en économie et le « laissez-faire » pour les entreprises, recommandait en fait l’instauration de régulations (...) strictes des banques et de la finance. Après avoir présenté les régulations que Smith a proposées en son temps, nous tirons de son œuvre plusieurs suggestions de réforme pour les secteurs bancaire et financier, contribuant ainsi au débat actuel sur ces questions, tout en l’enracinant dans son contexte historique. (shrink)

Recent financial events, especially the subprime and the sovereign debts crises, have revived debate on debts, the necessity of debt repayment and the eventuality of debt cancellations. A milestone in this debate was reached by David Graeber’s Debt (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2011), but despite the richness of this essay, many normative questions remain unanswered. Should debt always be repaid? Who should repay it? Should government deficits be allowed or even encouraged? Alexander Douglas’ recent book aims to provide an (...) answer to all these questions. The main endeavour of the book lies in applied philosophy, that is in finding general principles able to answer such questions and to reconcile our possibly conflicting intuitions about debt and credit. However, the analysis is largely nourished by history, linguistics and economics, which makes the book highly original and multidisciplinary. The author’s general thesis is that. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a discussion of scholarly ‘crisis of modernity’ discourses that have developed in the field of social philosophy. Re-visiting past and present discourses can be illuminating in at least three ways: it can reveal the broader picture of the present financialized and technologized world and the rise of financial technologies; it can provide scholars with new vocabularies, concepts, and metaphors to comprehend present-day phenomena and developments; and it can reveal the variety of (...) commitments that are possible, today, too. This article starts with a discussion of the original ‘crisis of modernity’ discourses, in which the clashing arguments of Comte and Tocqueville are featured, and a discussion of a second ‘crisis of modernity’ that developed in the context of the ‘Great Depression.’ A third ‘crisis of modernity’ discourse emerged in the wake of the financial crises of the 1970s. Such crises are still ongoing and discussed within the boundaries of the third ‘crisis of modernity’ discourse. How financial technologies do and do not fit within this third discourse is discussed in the remainder of this article. (shrink)

In _The World Computer_ Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commodification generates information itself. Out of the omnipresent calculus imposed by commodification, information emerges historically as a new money form. Investigating its subsequent financialization of daily life and colonization of semiotics, Beller situates the development of myriad systems for quantifying the value of people, objects, and affects as endemic to racial capitalism and computation. Built on oppression and genocide, capital and its technical result as computation manifest as racial (...) formations, as do the machines and software of social mediation that feed racial capitalism and run on social difference. Algorithms, derived from for-profit management strategies, conscript all forms of expression—language, image, music, communication—into the calculus of capital such that even protest may turn a profit. Computational media function for the purpose of extraction rather than ameliorating global crises, and financialize every expressive act, converting each utterance into a wager. Repairing this ecology of exploitation, Beller contends, requires decolonizing information and money, and the scripting of futures wagered by the cultural legacies and claims of those in struggle. (shrink)

This article discusses the way the ancient Greeks dealt with public and private debts, focusing on one specific aspect: debt cancellation. On the one hand, ancient Greeks were aware of the risks entailed in debt relief as a tool for fuelling civic strife: sources describe it as a demagogic or even criminal action often in association with the political agenda of tyrants. On the other hand, however, Greeks knew well also the benefic effects of debt cancellation in coping with (...) class='Hi'>financial and political crisis. In late accounts of archaic history, debt relief is the solution to civic strife and the foundation act of political order. Some public decrees of the Hellenistic period attest debt relief as a communal decision of the polis, dictated by the necessity of preventing or solving ongoing or imminent crises. This second meaning and purpose of debt cancellation should perhaps urge us to reconsider from a different perspective the “politics of debt” in today’s Europe. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Ethics at the centre of global and local challenges. For much of the history of the Journal of Business Ethics, ethics was seen within the academy as a peripheral aspect of business. However, in (...) recent years, the stakes have risen dramatically, with global and local worlds destabilized by financial crisis, climate change, internet technologies and artificial intelligence, and global health crises. The authors of these commentaries address these grand challenges by placing business ethics at their centre. What if all grand challenges were framed as grand ethical challenges? Tanusree Jain, Arno Kourula and Suhaib Riaz posit that an ethical lens allows for a humble response, in which those with greater capacity take greater responsibility but remain inclusive and cognizant of different voices and experiences. Focussing on business ethics in connection to the grand challenge of environmental emergencies, Steffen Böhm introduces the deceptively simple yet radical position that business is nature, and nature is business. His quick but profound side-step from arguments against human–nature dualism to an ontological undoing of the business–nature dichotomy should have all business ethics scholars rethinking their “business and society” assumptions. Also, singularly concerned with the climate emergency, Boudewijn de Bruin posits a scenario where, 40 years from now, our field will be evaluated by its ability to have helped humanity emerge from this emergency. He contends that Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell illustrates how human rights take centre stage in climate change litigation, and how business ethics enters the courtroom. From a consumer ethics perspective, Deirdre Shaw, Michal Carrington and Louise Hassan argue that ecologically sustainable and socially just marketplace systems demand cultural change, a reconsideration of future interpretations of “consumer society”, a challenge to the dominant “growth logic” and stimulation of alternative ways to address our consumption needs. Still concerned with global issues, but turning attention to social inequalities, Nelarine Cornelius links the capability approach to global and corporate governance, arguing that CA will continue to lie at the foundation of human development policy, and, increasingly, CSR and corporate governance. Continuing debate on the grand challenges associated with justice and equality, Laurence Romani identifies a significant shift in the centrality of business ethics in debates on managing differences, positing that dialogue between diversity management and international management can ground future debate in business ethics. Finally, the essay concludes with a commentary by Charlotte Karam and Michelle Greenwood on the possibilities of feminist-inspired theories, methods, and positionality for many spheres of business ethics, not least stakeholder theory, to broaden and deepen its capacity for nuance, responsiveness, and transformation. In the words of our commentators, grand challenges must be addressed urgently, and the Journal of Business Ethics should be at the forefront of tackling them. (shrink)

This book outlines the characteristics and implications of a potential geography of uncertainty. In doing so, it analyses this concept in reference to both the origins of uncertainty in Early Modern Age as well as the current geopolitical situation. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach to uncertainty, drawing on global perspectives and literature to define its meanings and characteristics. In order to develop a thorough and precise understanding of the geography of uncertainty a broad perspective is adopted, that includes other (...) forms of knowledge in which the concept of uncertainty is firmly established. As such the book creates temporal links, that may occasionally be far off from one another, to present a geographical perspective of uncertainty. It provides an interpretation of the phenomenon of globalization in a new way, relating it to the first European openness to global spaces, the Early Modern Age, and identifying the transition from the medieval world to the Modern Age as the first manifestation of uncertainty in geography. Uncertainty is more prevalent than ever in today's geopolitical, economic, financial, and social reality, as well as the ongoing emergencies and crises. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the geography of Early Modernity by referring to geopolitical scenarios, literature, and philosophy, to target the historical roots and the prevailing configuration of the geography of uncertainty. It will appeal to scholars and students of human and political geography, politics, philosophy, international relations, economics, and history. (shrink)

This Article draws lessons from Italian history as to how the state may possibly intervene in economic crises without jeopardizing the economy or affecting competition. It first describes how and why Italy got to the point in the 1930s where the government had to save the financial system. That was accomplished by setting up a public financial holding company, which became the majority shareholder of banks and companies in the telecommunications, steel, shipping, engineering, and energy industries, among (...) others. The so-called IRI formula has long been considered a model both in the European Union and outside it, with many countries setting up similar companies. Initially, the IRI performed well in Italy and acted as a market player. In the 1960s, however, its performance deteriorated under pressure from political parties. This degeneration combined with pressure from the European Union prompted Italy to gradually privatize the state-owned companies, a process that ended only recently. Ironically, the pendulum is now swinging back. In preparation for the next crisis, Italy is currently planning to go “back to the state.” The Article presents different ways of public intervention in the economy and offers suggestions for future reforms. (shrink)

Journalism and Science: the Importance of Marx’s Practice of Journalism for his Critique of Political Economy. Already in his lifetime, Marx earned himself a reputation, even fame, as a leading financial and economic journalist. From 1850 to 1868, he wrote nearly a hundred newspaper articles dealing with all sorts of economic and financial topics. His work as an economic journalist is closely related to his ongoing work on the “critique of political economy”: A lot of the material he (...) collected and studied for his articles was used for his economic manuscripts as well. Many of the topics mentioned but not systematically treated in his many (unfinished) manuscripts pertaining to CAPITAL have been analyzed in his newspaper articles. Some of them are brilliant little essays on crises, on financial markets, on the capitalist world economy. The close links between Marx’ journalism and his work on the critique of political economy are exemplified with respect to several topics: the impact of factory legislation, world market, world trade and colonialism (imperialism), monetary theory and monetary politics (bank legislation), the theory and history of crises and cycles and – last but not least – public finance (and its critique). (shrink)

The world is beset by what seem to be an interminable set of problems. Many of these, increasingly, are transnational, which is to say, that they transcend the borders of individual nations. Issues such as climate change and apparent global warming are fiercely debated, with many arguing that without a change in the way in which human beings abuse the environment, we are all doomed. The crisis surrounding the destruction of the nuclear reactor in Fukuyama, Japan as a result of (...) the devastation wrought by the massive earthquake and tsunami points to human powerlessness in the face of the forces of nature. It also points to the need to show respect for those same forces. Other crises, such as the global financial crisis, also have had a profound impact on human lives. While it is difficult to quantify, the global financial crisis has undoubtedly been responsible for many deaths also, as aid money decreases and projects which may have helped solve housing shortages, provided sanitation and clean water are unable to proceed. There is a need to reconfigure capitalism so that it serves the common good, rather than the self indulgent needs of venal speculators. Glaring inequalities in the distribution of the common wealth of countries are just as evil in the United States, China, India, Australia and the United Kingdom, to name a few of the G20 nations, as they are anywhere else. The recent wave of protest throughout the Middle East which saw the ousting of the Libyan dictator, Gaddafi and the Egyptian president Mubarak, should not be seen as simply a sign of the inherent instability in those countries, but as a sign that oppressive policies wherever they are met will eventually result in the overthrow of corrupt regimes.The situation in Syria is, of course, particularly parlous and points to the need for stronger international law. This paper argues that philosophy has a serious role to play in thinking about global issues and, using the example of global ethics, shows how it is central in the explication of the values that underpin proposed solutions to global problems. Though cultures are different, it is proposed, recent history shows that human beings share common values and purpose. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel by Caroline EdwardsMark SchmittCaroline Edwards. Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 277 pp. Paperback, ISBN 9781108712392.The development of the novel as a literary form is closely linked to the representational mode of realism and how it can convey the human experience of time. That the novel distinguishes itself substantially from earlier forms of literature in how it (...) attempts to capture temporality through means of literary realism has been acknowledged ever since Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel (1957). As such, the novel form underwent dramatic changes throughout the periods of modernity and postmodernity, with modernist and postmodernist techniques of representation mirroring shifts in the temporal experience. But how can the contemporary novel—a category itself loaded with implication and definitional problems—of the twenty-first century confront the particular representational challenges of its time? This is the question that Caroline Edwards addresses in her study Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel. Edwards is concerned with the wider repercussions of the post-postmodernist notion of the Fukuyaman thesis of the “end of history” and the profound challenges to this thesis in the face of the post-9/11 unfolding of the twenty-first century. The temporal experience of this century is marked by what Edwards calls “non-contemporaneity,” that is, a “political, and even ontological uncertainty” (9). In the context of contemporary literature, the resulting “temporal disjointedness that marks our experience in the twenty-first century” has “given rise to different expressions of the unevenness of the contemporary, at the level of novelistic structure, prose style, generic sampling and non-mimetic interventions into otherwise realist narratives and juxtaposed timescales” (9). The notion of non-contemporaneity is drawn from Ernst Bloch’s concept of Ungleichzeitigkeit, which Edwards considers to be “productive to thinking about the complexity of [End Page 595] utopian times and the different kinds of pasts and futures that circulate within our own present moment of contemporaneity, which is inescapably non-contemporaneous with itself ” (30). Edwards considers this noncontemporaneity as a prevalent temporal register in contemporary British fiction that speak to the crises of temporality associated with a range of political, social, and economic events and processes that have marked the first decades of the twenty-first century. The seemingly natural unfolding of the “the linear progressive time of neoliberalism” (8), what Mark Fisher has called “capitalist realism,” has increasingly been put into question, not least due to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (158). Similarly, Edwards identifies the 2016 Brexit referendum as symptomatic of a nationalism that must, following Michael Gardiner, always appear to be “out of time” (8). Such crises are thus indicative of anachronistic unevenness and conflicting temporalities. Consequently, a literary fiction that wants to adequately represent these struggles with temporality cannot confine itself to the pitfalls of literary realism, but it would be equally ill-suited by resorting to postmodernist metafiction and irony. Rather, as Edwards contends, the twenty-first-century fictions that she discusses attempt to complicate realist modes by using disruptive and experimental narrative techniques that amount to “non-mimetic experiments with narrative voice and structure” and “delinearised” temporalities (4). With this approach, Edwards argues, these texts interrogate the present as unstable.The four main chapters of Edwards’s book proceed by first establishing the dominant philosophical and theoretical concepts underlying her hypothesis. Chapter 2 (“Reading Fictions of the Not Yet”) is a theoretical and methodological chapter and offers an in-depth engagement with theories of temporality and narratology. Edwards’s aim here is to advocate for an updating of conventional narratology to account for the multilayered narrative experiments with time since modernism and especially in contemporary fiction. Her approach to theorization and analysis is inspired by Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (2010) in the decision to focus on close readings of a small number of primary texts and read them as texts or aesthetic artifacts that develop “theories of their own” (29). The chapter offers an in-depth engagement with Bloch’s philosophy of utopianism and his concept of Ungleichzeitigkeit.Another cornerstone for Edwards’s theory and method is the work of... (shrink)

The prime objective of this study is to discuss the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis concerning Pakistan and globally across South Asian developing countries. It also demonstrates those economic indicators through which the economic performance of the countries is influenced considering the prospective global economic costs of COVID-19 under different scenarios. The study systematically reviewed the literature on historical pandemic crises and the most recent Covid-19 fallout economic disorder in South Asian countries. Considering the history of human civilization, (...) there are varied instances of severe epidemics that are caused by numerous viruses. It is observed that the prevailing outbreak of COVID-19 has eventually affected large scale manufacturing, service sectors and arose supply side constraint to an extent. On the contrary, GDP and consumption declined sharply. Furthermore, sudden loss of service sector jobs and the rise in food prices have created an economic crisis for developing countries of South Asia. The study attempts to discuss the policy responses given by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, The State Bank of Pakistan, and the Ministry of finance, Pakistan encountered due to the deteriorating international environment, fiscal stress, and difficulties in financial liquidity markets and provides relevant policies for the better prospect of Pakistan's economy after comparing it with other South Asian countries affected by this pandemic vulnerabilities. (shrink)

Until the end of the early 1970s, from a history of economic thought perspective, the mainstream in economics was pluralist, but once neoclassical economics became totally dominant it claimed the mainstream as its own. Since then, alternative views and schools of economics increasingly became minorities in the discipline and were considered heterodox. This book is in honour of John Edward King who has an impressive publication record in the area of economic theory with specific interest in how economic thought in (...) the past shapes current economic theory and enforces certain paths of economic policy and economic development. This book is divided into five themes based on King s interests. The first theme looks at the challenge in trying to reclaim pluralism in economics. The second faces head-on the direct collision of mainstream economics with history of economic thought and heterodox economics. The third addresses classical economic ideas, their central influence in the past and how they can still primarily guide modern pluralist economics. The fourth examines Post Keynesian and Kaleckian economics with a view to providing a more coherent and extensive branch of heterodox economics. The final theme critiques the policy of neoliberalism that has entrenched itself in capitalist economies which have led to financial, industrial, labour, and behavioural/consumerist crises. This text aims to provide a clear path for pluralism to serve the economics discipline as its standard bearer, and to no longer be merely a heterodox challenge to the mainstream. This book is of interest to those who study history of economic thought, political economy and heterodox economics. ". (shrink)

The early twenty-first century will be remembered as a time of constant crisis. These crises have created repeated global states of emergency, revealing gaps, and inadequacies in social protection systems worldwide. Alongside these crises, and as a response to them, social protection has grown into a paradigm of global governance. This development is also noticeable in the practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. At the heart of all social protection policies is the protection of (...) vulnerable groups. Crises create new vulnerabilities and deteriorate the situation of those already vulnerable. The article explores the social protection endorsement of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how crises have fueled their social protection endorsement, making protection of vulnerable groups a central outspoken policy preference. The article asks whether the policies adopted in response to the pandemic confirm their social protection commitment and what challenges remain. (shrink)

For over a decade now we live under an economic crisis, its metastases, and its effects. Since the turn of the century, we live under recurring security crises and state attempts to prevent them. This article examines the temporal horizons of the strategies the neoliberal state employs to combat the spectre of crisis in its two quintessential fields of action: the economy and security. It notes a pronounced contrast: whereas security strategy is pre-emptive, economic strategy is reactive. These two (...) opposite strategies aim to the same result: to cancel the future. Security strategy seeks to pre-emptively neutralise the possibility of non-liberal politics, canceling the possibility of political change. By not intervening proactively, economic strategy seeks to guarantee that the economy will remain as it is, averting economic change. This attempt of the state to cancel the future is symptomatic of a malaise affecting the capitalist class. Having fully conquered social resistance, the capitalist class tries to render the moment of its triumph permanent, fixing society in an eternal present. For the first time in its history, the capitalist class has neither vision nor appetite for the future. This signals its hegemonic implosion. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious (...) way, those institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

In a crisis, managers are confronted with a dilemma between their ethical responsibility to respond to victims and their fiduciary responsibility to protect shareholder value. In this study, we use a unique and comprehensive dataset of 223 non-financial crises between 1983 and 2013 to investigate how corporate apologies affect stock prices. Our empirical evidence shows that the stock price response from apologizing depends on the firm’s level of responsibility for the crisis. We find that to protect shareholder value, (...) management needs to match its formal response strategy with the degree of its responsibility for the crisis. Further, failing to match the proper response is harmful to shareholders: Both apologizing when the firm is not directly responsible for the crisis and failing to apologize when the firm is directly responsible reduce shareholder wealth. However, apologizing for a crisis when the firm is directly responsible mitigates losses to shareholder value that arise because of the crisis, as does refraining from apologizing when the firm is not directly responsible. (shrink)

Financial crises have become an all-too-common occurrence over the past twenty years, largely as a result of changes in finance brought about by increasing internationalization and integration. As domestic financial systems and economies become more interlinked, weaknesses can significantly impact not only individual economies but also markets, financial intermediaries and economies around the world. This volume addresses the twin objectives of financial development in the context of financial stability and the role of law in (...) supporting both. Financial stability (frequently seen as the avoidance of financial crisis) has become an objective of the international financial architecture as well as individual economies and central banks. At the same time, financial development is now seen to play an important role in economic growth. In both financial stability and financial development, law and related institutions have a central role. (shrink)

In this topical book, Boudewijn de Bruin examines the ethical 'blind spots' that lay at the heart of the global financial crisis. He argues that the most important moral problem in finance is not the 'greed is good' culture, but rather the epistemic shortcomings of bankers, clients, rating agencies and regulators. Drawing on insights from economics, psychology and philosophy, de Bruin develops a novel theory of epistemic virtue and applies it to racist and sexist lending practices, subprime mortgages, CEO (...) hubris, the Madoff scandal, professionalism in accountancy and regulatory outsourcing of epistemic responsibility. With its multidisciplinary reach, Ethics and the Global Financial Crisis will appeal to scholars working in philosophy, business ethics, economics, psychology and the sociology of finance. The many concrete examples and case studies mean that this book will also prove useful to policy-makers and regulators. (shrink)

Product-harm crises can trigger product recalls or product discards, which is very likely to cause secondary pollution to the environment. Also, these crises may harm customers’ health and threaten firms’ survival. To foster low-carbon economy and green development in such complex systems, this paper studies the internal mechanism of the product crisis and its impact on the firm value. It proposes a two-stage model to avoid the endogeneity of product-harm crises. In the first stage, this paper assesses (...) the effect of firms’ leverage on their capacity to produce higher quality products. In the second stage, this paper conducts the impact of these crises on stock prices. Then, it depicts the financial effects of product-harm crises over time, and analyzes the differences of such effects based on brand equity. Results show that book leverage can positively impact firms’ capacity to produce high-quality products. In addition, the market’s response to product-harm crises is significant at 1% level, and with the increase in severity, the market reaction is more prominent. Furthermore, its negative effect is persistent for a firm experiencing a severe crisis. Luckily, brand equity can mitigate this negative impact. These findings provide some ways to improve product performance and firm value in the green context. (shrink)

Modern religions are confronted by three crises: the scientific evolution, the historical revolution, and the pluralistic revolution. The development of each of these diverse revolutions in Western intellectual history has posed serious challenges to traditional conceptions of religious authority. This paper seeks to briefly elucidate the nature of each of these revolutions and their significance for religious traditions. While the specific challenges posed are separate, the revolutions share common traits. Additionally, it is not enough for a religious tradition to (...) deal with only one of the crises; to proceed into the next stage of religious reflection, it must deal with them all. (shrink)

Medical professionals are expected to act in the interest of patients, the public, and the pursuit of medical knowledge. Their disinterested pursuit offers them credibility and authority. But what happens when doctors' supposed impartiality comes under fire? Medicine and Morality considers the ways in which moral and scientific norms in Canadian medicine have emerged and evolved over time. Critics of biomedicine tend to discuss conflict of interest as a contemporary phenomenon - namely in relation to the damaging influence of the (...) pharmaceutical industry on medical practice and research. But Helen Kang examines three moments in the history of the medical profession in Canada, spanning more than 150 years, when doctors' moral and scientific authority was questioned. Kang shows that, in these moments of crisis, the profession was compelled to re-examine its priorities, strategize in order to regain credibility, and redefine what it means to be a good doctor. Medicine and Morality reveals that professional medicine defines integrity, objectivity, accountability, neutrality, and other ideals according to its social, political, historical, and economic struggles with the state, the media, and even the public. In other words, moral and scientific standards in medicine are determined in direct relation to, not in spite of, conflict of interest. (shrink)

The Global Financial Crisis is acknowledged to be the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, and one that is unique in its underlying causes, its scope, and its wider social, political and economic implications. This volume explores some of the ethical issues that it has raised.

Based on the research of currency crisis pressure index, bank crisis pressure index, and asset bubble crisis pressure index, this paper introduces an external shock pressure index reflecting the impact of global economic changes on economy and synthesizes systemic financial crisis pressure based on the above four pressure indexes; then, all the alternative early warning indicators and the systemic risk pressure index constructed in this paper were tested for Granger causality. We build financial systemic risk pressure indexes, including (...) currency crisis pressure banking crisis pressure index, bubble crisis pressure index, and external shock pressure index to predict financial crises. Finally, four indicators that have a significant impact on the systemic financial crisis pressure index were selected, namely, the stock price index change rate, industrial added value growth rate, domestic and foreign real deposit interest rate differential, and foreign direct investment as a percentage of GDP. A dynamic Logit model with lagging binary variables is constructed, and compared with the traditional static Logit line, the actual dynamic fitting effect is better than the static Logit model. The dynamic Logit model is used to predict the early warning status of systemic financial crisis in 2020, and the forecast of various early warning indicators is realized by the ARIMA model. The final prediction results show that the probability of a systemic financial crisis in China in 2020 is extremely low, almost zero. This is in line with the overall improvement in the international economic situation in 2020 and the steady growth of the domestic economy. (shrink)