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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Unexpected Prosperity: How Spain Escaped the Middle Income Trap

Beyond the Anna Karenina principle in economic development

By Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez

The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina–All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way–is popular among development practitioners, who often offer their own version as follows: All rich economies are alike; each poor economy is poor in its own way. This idea, which we can call the Anna Karenina principle of economic development, is meant as a recognition of the value of context and local knowledge.

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Before the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is another tragic setback in our efforts at building a sustainable future

By Martin Gutmann and Dan Gorman

To say that wars cause disruption and hardship is stating the painfully obvious. Regardless of attempts—real or professed—at limiting civilian casualties, military conflict always unleashes suffering on the civilian population. History also shows us that the disruptive effect of war also runs deeper and far beyond the geographic limits of fighting with far-reaching consequences for sustainability.

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Corporate Governance in Contention

Shared governance—not shareholder governance

By Ciaran Driver

The intellectual basis for shareholder control of firms is that what is good for shareholders is good for everyone. In turn that is rationalized by the claim that only shareholders bear risks that are not compensated by contracts.

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A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering

How research abstracts succeed and fail

By David H. Foster

The abstract of a research article has a simple remit: to faithfully summarize the reported research. After the title, it’s the most read section of the article. Crucially, it makes the case to the reader for reading the article in full. Alas, not all abstracts succeed.

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Understanding Deviance in a World of Standards

Why do companies deviate from standards and what shall we do about it?

By Andrea Fried

Standards appear as legal or quasi-legal rules and relate to a variety of topics, including product or service quality, information security, environmental performance, health and safety in the workplace, and many more. Much has been written, or rather suspected, about corporate cultures of companies where standards were broken terribly.

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The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast

What is public debt? [podcast]

By Steven Filippi and Christine Scalora

What do you think of when you hear the term “public debt?” If you’re familiar with the phrase, you might think about elected officials debating budgets and how to pay for goods and services. Or maybe it’s a vague concept you don’t fully understand.  

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9780190936792

Keeping the peace: property and community

By Bart Wilson

When we think about the origins of property, we naturally, like Jean-Jacque Rousseau, think of land, of “the first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him.”

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Economic Policy

The importance of international coordination of environmental policies

By Itzhak Ben-David, Yeejin Jang, Stefanie Kleimeier, and Michael Viehs

The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on 6 July 2021 for tighter international coordination on carbon environmental policies. So why can’t individual countries implement their own environmental policies in an effective fashion so that global warming will be slowed down?

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SHAPE

SHAPE and societal recovery from crises

By SHAPE team

The SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) initiative advocates for the value of the social sciences, humanities, and arts subject areas in helping us to understand the world in which we live and find solutions to global issues. As societies around the world respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, research from SHAPE disciplines has the potential to illuminate how societies process and recover from various social crises.

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From the rise to the maturation of the platform economy

By camille carlton, dafna bearson, john zysman, and martin kenney

Today, digital platform firms are among the most valuable and powerful firms in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement of social and economic activity online, embedding platforms further into our lives.

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