A critique of financial neoliberalism: a perspective combining multidisciplinary methods and commodity markets

The era of financialization bas been marked by a huge increase in the size of the financial sector. The economic justifications for this expansion arise from the prevailing neo-liberal ideology; they are based on arguments like leading role of markets, economic efficiency, reallocation and spreading of risk. Given these reasons, financialization can be viewed as a form of neoliberalism and then we can use the term financial neoliberalism (Palley in Financialization: the economics of finance capital domination. Springer, 2016) to denote it. This commentary paper hopes to complement this view by highlighting the usefulness of recent “multidisciplinary” methods (i.e., methods which do not fall within the usual economic discipline). We focus first on the definition of financialization process, second on its implications on the commodity markets, and third and finally on the importance of the role of multidisciplinary methods, applied to these markets, capable of highlighting the contradictions of the neoliberalism framework, in such a way, we hope, to promote further research.

Financializing the soul: Christian microfinance and economic missionization in Colombia

Microfinance is the vanguard of financialization today. This is especially true in Colombia, where microfinance rivals any other type of formal credit. Entangled with Colombia’s micro-financialization is the phenomenon of microfinance corporations in joint ventures with Christian organizations that broker their microfinance programs. These faith-based corporations temper the surge in microfinance with ascetic discipline and the infusion of an entrepreneurial spirit. Economic discipline, say the microfinanciers, is required for what is referred to as ‘financial literacy’ and ‘financial inclusion’ programs that instil a distinctly Christian corporate order. This article, based on 2 years of sustained fieldwork in Colombia, focuses on one such microfinance program run by a transnational Christian credit organization. With microfinance, souls are disciplined through debts and ideals of an ascetic prosperity. In the end, the article concludes that there is a Christian morality to financialized capitalism that is exercised at the level of the interior soul.

The Anti-Blanchard model and structural change in Latin America: An analysis of Chile, Argentina and Mexico

This paper was born with the purpose of encouraging academic debate within the economic discipline that has been dominated by a purely orthodox or mainstream approach. One of the most innovative books in the expository-pedagogical part and its content is represented by the Anti-Blanchard macroeconomics by Emiliano Brancaccio. Beyond the analysis of the two contrasting models, the Anti-Blanchard model is used to study the situation in several Latin American countries. In particular, the structural change happened in those countries since the stronger wave of increasing neoliberal policies seem to fit particularly well in the explanation of the Anti-Blanchard model.

QUALITY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION AT TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

The quality management program of economic education at a technological university allows to formulate methods for improving the quality of teaching non-core economic discipline, which is adapted to the specifics of an educational institution with a technical orientation. The article describes the features of teaching non-core disciplines, identifies the purpose of the program taking into account the identified features, and also considers the tasks that need to be solved to improve the quality of economic education. In particular, the adjustment of the substantive and methodological parts of the training program for the needs of students, the introduction of students' knowledge control based on statistical methods, as well as the integration of economic discipline in the general process and training paradigm, its direct relation with the future professional activity of students.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION AND LOCAL POWER IN SPAIN: RECENT REFORMS AND DEBATES. LESSONS FOR AND FROM CHINA

In Spain, as in China, local administration concentrates a number of problems. This is a level of financially weak government. In addition, this fragility is increased, because the municipalities manage numerous services to citizens. Since 2008, the outbreak of the economic crisis caused many difficulties to municipalities, which borrowed. The central government has responded in 2013 with a local reform, which seeks to control the spending of municipalities. Faced with this attempt, municipalities have responded by introducing more economic discipline. Undoubtedly, some of these Spanish lessons may be important for the experience of China, where economic problems of local power are similar.

Defining the boundaries of an economic discipline: A content-related approach (The case of accounting)

The paper is devoted to modeling the subject field of academic discipline basing on the case of accounting. It is shown that interdisciplinary approach, interpretative and critical studies, constructivist paradigm are now popular in accounting studies. In addition to traditional financial and organizational aspects, accounting, in the new interdisciplinary framework, is also studied as a socio-economic institution.

History and Economics

This introductory chapter takes a brief look into the life and career of Arthur Cecil Pigou, as an economist and as a historical figure. Pigou lived through at least two periods of radical transition in the economic discipline. During the first, in the early 1900s, he was a pioneer, a new breed of economist who helped usher out the age of political economy and usher in that of economic science. As this new discipline spread throughout Britain, Europe, and the United States, Pigou's work was adopted as part of the new orthodoxy of economic thought that increasingly was leveraged by national governments. But in the subsequent period of transformation in the 1930s, Pigou found himself in an entirely different position. During this time, though he was an established “giant” of his field, the contours of his discipline were swiftly becoming unfamiliar to him.

The Gujarat Pogrom

This chapter talks about how middle-class Ahmedabadis either simply denied the massacres at Gulbarg Society and Naroda Patiya, or they explained everything by the reciprocal logic of anger (krodh), riot (tofan), and reaction (pratikriya). Most middle-class residents of the city speak pejoratively about the quality of life in the mill areas of east Ahmedabad, and they invoked these notions when accounting for the violence there. They routinely refer to a lack of economic discipline and ethic cultivation as explanations for social neglect and destitution. People also frequently used ambiguous expressions, such as je thayu te joyu (what has happened, that I have seen), in their depictions. In contrast to this ambiguity, there was often clarity of details narrated in an air of unself-conscious fascination, which leads to the conclusion that most of the details were from secondhand accounts and not personally witnessed.