Socio-economic inequality: essence, cyclicality of the dynamics

The article considers socio-economic inequality as a social phenomenon inherent in all historical forms of society, which is characterized by the exploitation of wide circles of population by the elite. It is generated by the basic economic law of each historical form of antagonistic society and is expressed in the periodic aggravation of class contradictions. The most important component of social inequality in capitalist society is economic inequality. There is a relationship between the economic growth and inequality of income that S. Kuznets was one of the first to prove. P. Sorokin, justifying the hypothesis of the cyclicality of fluctuations in the average level of welfare and income within a certain society, appealed to the existence of "small business cycles", and explained by the existence of Kondratiev waves the tendency towards the increase in the average level of income and welfare, manifested in the second half of XIX century in some countries. The author analyzes the close relationship between the dynamics of inequality and social processes, whose driving force is violence – "four horsemen of the equalization": the war with mass mobilization, the transformational revolution, the decay of the state and the lethal pandemic, – as established by W. Scheidel; it is the "four horsemen of the equalization" that reduce the gap between rich and poor, that is, the social inequality is temporarily smoothed destructively. It has been established that during large-scale wars, revolutions, the destruction of states there is a permission of cyclically exacerbating contradictions of social development, which generate the deployment of long-term socio-economic cycles (cycles of changing the forms of society; hegemony establishment cycles in the world-system, long political cycles, Kondratiev waves, etc.). Therefore, the changes in the levels of socio-economic inequality generated by these "horsemen of the equalization" are also cyclic.

Economic world: logic

The article examines logical aspects of the economic universe through the lens of its key elements – resources, institutions and interconnections between them. It is emphasized that starting from the New Times one of the main issuesof economic science has been the study of logic, the historical tendency of movement of two key factors (resources): capital and labour. At this stage logical preconditions of the analysis of natural, financial, technological resources acquire considerable significance. The logic of capital and labour is investigated in the context of economic heritage of A. Smith, K. Marx, R. Luxemburg, representatives of the Cambridge school, modern authors (T. Piketty). Starting from ХІХ century, the correlation between capital value and labour value in the national income has been considered the main integral indicator reflecting the state and logic of labour. The logic of natural resources is most fully exemplified by the concept of sustainable economic development, which reflects the content and types of interrelations between the society and the natural environment both at present and in future. At the same time access, distribution and use of resources should take place on the basis of the expenditures-income principle and continue for each generation in a logical and fair way. The logic of technological resources is revealed primarily through the lens of industrial revolutions. Logical dimensions of financial resources have been represented in the works of J.S. Mill, J. Schumpeter and Ch. Kindleberger. Ch. Darwin’s theory of evolution is the basis of institutional logic. Traditions, customs, their evolution, influence on an individual’s behaviour and the philosophy of American pragmatism were the foundation of logic of Veblen’s institutionalism. The logic of relations between resources and institutions is based on the works of B. Russell, A. Whitehead and R. Carnap. Interactionof resources and institutions has been researched in the light of using resources by different generations of human communities and was called ‘the logic of the play between generations’.

Employment recovery policy in the post-pandemic period: the international context

The shocking consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the need to ensure the resilience of societies in the face of new epidemiological challenges. An integral element of the resilience system is the efficiency, balance and sustainability of national labor markets and the employment sector as a whole, which has had a devastating effect on the “coronavirus”. The purpose of the study is to identify global post-pandemic destructions in the field of employment, determine the main ways and factors of its recovery, as well as the resource potential of international management structures necessary to accelerate this process. Used statistical and analytical approaches, as well as methods of systemic, comparative and graphical analysis. Analyzed modern international approaches to the formation of employment recovery policy aimed at overcoming the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for the world of work, public welfare and social justice. The resource potential of new UN and ILO initiatives to stabilize employment and accelerate the pace of its recovery on a global scale has been revealed. The key factors of the global dynamics of employment recovery have been identified, including: anti-malignant vaccination; fiscal stimulus; labor productivity; work migration; the level of development of national social protection systems and labor market institutions, digitalization, as well as involvement of countries in integration processes. The results of the study prove that in the formation of modern state policy aimed at accelerating the post-pandemic recovery of the economy and society, the key factors of employment recovery, as well as the corresponding strategic initiatives of international institutions, should be taken into account.

Institutional mechanisms for overcoming the contradictions between globalization and localization

Information technology and the formation of the global market have led to such destructive a complication of the environment, which generates global imbalances, the negative effects of conflict, reducing the level of institutionalization of the world economy, narrowing the time horizon of rational choice. This stimulates the search for alternatives to excessive complexity and conflict of development. The way out of this situation is localization based on the reproduction of identities. The desired effect of localization is the institutional provision of a more balanced distribution of resources / benefits of globalization, on the one hand, and the distribution of its risks and uncertainties, on the other. Identity is seen as the extreme level of structure of society, which is responsible for the integrity of social behavior of subjects as elements of the system. The acceptable level of complexity of the global system is achieved in the ways of optimal localization. The basis of such localization is the recognition of the positive meaning of the identity factor, which generates different risk assessments, different time horizons of decision-making and different criteria for effective participation in globalization. The institutional mechanisms for the smart-localization of global development are economic sovereignty, institutional protection of the national producer, and social protection of the population. As a result, the global system has a choice of options to respond to challenges from uncertainty and threats. Globalization as unification and standardization is a more risky path because it limits variability and prevents the use of alternative cost estimation methods.

Socialization and its success in the model of achieving the development of the social world

The article presents the results of the analysis of disproportion on the materials characterizing the economy and society of Ukraine, which allowed us to conclude about the formation of a trap of modernization, due to which transformational changes did not achieve the desired result. As a phenomenon, it is due to the relevant processes in society due to its lag in mastering the accumulation of exogenous in the absence of endogenous nature of the experience of the subject of modernization. To resolve contradictions and overcome the gap, it is necessary to implement a model of social life, which will reduce the disproportion. The author’s model of social world development is proposed, which is based on the interaction between the dialectical nature of such fundamental social processes as internalization, exteriorization, subjectivation, objectification, innovation, participating in the reformatting and development of the social world. Socialization is considered both as a process of the comprehension of objective reality by consciousness, and as a process of comprehension of dynamics and structure of development of the surrounding social world. The common and different processes of transformation of the Middle Ages and modernity according to the social criterion are presented and the role of socialization and social innovations in the long-term reformatting of the social world is shown. In the case of their success in social construction, there should really be a symmetry between objective and subjective reality. The socialization of the subject and the social innovation generated by it in understanding the development of the social world as a necessary condition for the success of its transformation in the long run are considered. The sufficient conditions are the necessary socialization of the object, objective reality, economic relations, capital, and the way of interaction between subject and object. This spectrum will be the subject of further research by the author.

Shortageflation 3.0: War economy – State socialism – Pandemic crisis

The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted governments and central banks to take unorthodox measures aimed at protecting the standard of living of people and sustaining the production and service activities of companies. The policy of aggressively rising the supply of money has entailed a significant increase in the budget deficit and public debt. It is important to consider the extent of its impact on the escalation of inflation processes and to formulate suggestions regarding the economic policy. Inflation is already higher than the official indicators show it, because it is partly suppressed. The increase in the general price level does not fully reflect the actual inflation rate. We are dealing with shortageflation – the simultaneous occurrence of price inflation and repressed inflation accompanied by shortages. It is methodologically interesting to compare this current phenomenon, 3.0, with the suppression of inflation in the war economy, 1.0, and in the economies of state socialism, 2.0. Such comparisons highlight not only the similarities of these processes but also differences resulting from the specificity of responses of households and businesses. This article discusses five channels of unloading excessive savings, indicating the most beneficial ones from the point of view of sustainable economic development in the post-pandemic future. It is particularly important to prompt the conversion of compulsory savings into voluntary savings and at the same time to stimulate the transformation of the inflationary monetary reserves into the effective demand expanding the use of existing production capacities and investments creating new capacities.

The system of objective economic laws in the realities of systematic-subjective economic lawlessness

The article reveals the differences of systemic action of the laws of the social form of material world from the action of the laws determining the motion of the four natural forms of matter. The author shows the difference between the consequences of violating natural and social laws. The meaningful understanding of the category "economic law" is deepened and the general list of the system of objective economic laws is specified. The author structurizes the main classification groups of laws, which are united based on the most typical features. According to the criteria of system weight, as well as essential content and spatio-temporal coordinates of the regulatory action, four block-type groups of laws are distinguished. The author singles out differentiated subgroups of laws, which are united by six system-specific features. The article shows the destructive nature of "scientific" dogmas of financial-and-debt "liberal-monetarism". Revealed the encouraging motivation that determines the dominant behavior of the current global monopoly capital, which is aimed at destroying the systemic action of the mechanisms of the laws of market economy. In particular, the author shows the ways of destruction of the mechanism of action of the law of value and laws of money circulation which provide the equivalent character of commodity production and exchange. Displayed specific manifestations of systemic and subjective lawlessness prevailing in the system of monetary and financial-debt relations at the global and national-state levels. The author assesses the consequences of financial and credit expansion for countries with different development levels in the capitalist mode of production leading to suffocation of national economies by the international monopolies by forming an unbearable burden of servicing foreign borrowings and withdrawal of invaluable land and other natural resources into private ownership of global corporate-monopolistic creditors.

Decentralized issues in bitcoin blockchain and Nakamoto monetary rule

The paper is devoted to studying the bitcoin blockchain as a new global phenomenon in monetary economics, which requires comprehending from the economic theory view - a self-regulating system of decentralized emission without participation of a central monetary authority. Mathematical modelling is the instrument of this studying. The author has analyzed the Bitcoin system parameters that determine dynamics of a self-regulating emission mechanism. This mechanism operates in a peer-to-peer computer network and provides a smooth increasing of the "money supply" with a gradually decreasing rate of growth. The limit of this growth is determined by maximal volume 21 million BTC. Self-regulation is implemented through negative feedback between changes of control parameters (the target interval for the hash function values and the Bitcoin Difficulty level) and the speed of mining process. Control parameters depend on the real speed deviations from the target value. This mechanism provides a stable mining speed and determines annual rate of emission. The author suggests a spline-function for describing the annual rate of the cryptocurrency emission in accordance with the Proof-of-Work protocol in the Bitcoin blockchain algorithm. This spline-function gives possibility to find a monetary rule for annual rate of emission. The author in the paper proposes to call this monetary rule by the name of the Bitcoin system inventor - Nakamoto Monetary Rule. The Nakamoto Monetary Rule could be seen as the first example of a programmable monetary rule of the decentralized emission algorithm on the basis of blockchain technology. Central banks could use a similar approach, with the necessary modifications, to develop their programmable monetary rules for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) emission based on DLT or blockchain technology

Impact of institutional environment on financial development: a literary review

This literary review is focused on outlining approaches to institutional environment and financial development nexus, described in modern Western literature. Its existence is necessitated by the insufficient use of such sources in domestic studies on the subject, which results in inconsistencies in categorical apparatus, methodic approaches and of acquired results. The review is limited to practical Western studies with sufficient statistical apparatus and is concentrated on their choice of representative variables, expected and factual interrelations between said variables and on plausibility of their results. Based on the reviewed literature, it was possible to come up with a number of conclusions, such as: lack of general theoretical model of institutional-financial development nexus behind reviewed regression models; insufficiency of narrowly defined financial depth index to represent financial development as a whole, and need to compliment it with financial institutions’ operational effectiveness indicators, as well as other financial system components’ resource potential indicators, and recipients’ access to financial resources indicators; limitation of currently available institutional development indicators to two sets, both of which are expert-defined aggregated indicators; existence of substantial difference in factors of institutional development influencing financial system in developed and underdeveloped countries. Also, some of the further research perspectives are outlined, such as examining institutional-financial development nexus using PCA-aggregated extended financial development indicators, and researching institutional-financial development nexus using data envelopment analysis based on the statistical data on developed countries.

The correlation of globalization and localization of economic processes in the context of growing global risks

The article analyses changes in the correlation between globalization and localization of economic processes in the context of increasing global instability, growing geopolitical rivalry and the emergence and spread of new global risks of technological, ecological and biological origin. The study proves that the growth of global risks leads to a modification of Maslow's hierarchy of needs towards a relative accentuation of security needs - with diverse consequences in terms of the territorial organization of economic activity and mobility. It substantiates that the expansion of global processes can lead to excessive levels of concentration and homogenization of economic processes, suppression of forms of self-organization at the local level, and creating risks of disrupting the stability of local socio-economic structures. An important consequence is the transformation of the globalization process due to a significant intensification of regional and local factors. This trend determines the formation of glocalization as a two-dimensional process in which globalization and localization trends are combined. The author postulates that the balance between the processes of globalization and localization can shift in favor of the latter due to: the exacerbation of the global competition for resources and markets in the context of cardinal technological and structural shifts in the world economy; increasing international instability amid geopolitical confrontation between old and new centers of global power; insufficient effectiveness of global responses to climate change and pandemics; risks of the digital virtual environment leading to increased national and regional regulation and fragmentation of the global digital environment; and the impact of technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the direction of strengthening localization trends in relation to global value chains.