{"title":"The entrepreneurial scholar: A new mindset for academia and beyond By Ilana M Horwitz. Princeton University Press. 2025. pp. 208. £84.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-0691240886. £16.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978-0691240893. £16.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-0691240909","authors":"Graham Jones","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12716","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"358-360"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Libertarian literary and media criticism: Essays in memory of Paul A. Cantor Edited by Jo Ann Cavallo. Palgrave Macmillan. 2025. pp. 317. £139.99 (hbk). ISBN: 978-3031810015. £111.60 (Kindle ed). ISBN: 978-3031810022","authors":"Thomas Baumert","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12715","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"363-365"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sociology and classical liberalism in dialogue: Freedom is something we do together. Edited by Fabio Rojas and Charlotta Stern. Lexington Books. 2024. pp. 236. £85.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1666961331. £35.00 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1666961348","authors":"Megi Cara","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12713","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"353-355"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"By Matt Goodwin. Bad education: Why our universities are broken and how we can fix them. Bantam. 2025. pp. 245. £20.00 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1787635241. £10.99 (pbk). ISBN: 978-0552178549. £8.99 (ebk). ISBN: 978-1473595408.","authors":"J R Shackleton","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12712","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"361-362"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The act of voting: Another challenge for behavioural economics","authors":"Panagiotis Karadimas","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12698","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Behavioural economists propose the ‘aspiration-based adaptive rule’ (ABAR) model in which a trial-and-error heuristic is developed to explain voter turnout. However, several problems appear. First, the model links propensity to vote with expected pay-offs that are in turn based on the extent to which the pay-offs of previous actions of voting exceeded the agents' aspirations. But this leads to an infinite regress to previous actions of voting, which has the consequence of leaving unexplained why people bother to vote in the first place. Second, the ABAR model is tautological for even if the model derives testable statistical distributions, the theoretical premises from which these predictions are derived are inevitably confirmed. As a result, the same premises can be used to explain both voting and abstention, and capture theoretically all possibilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"277-288"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The legacy of cypherpunk in the modern economy","authors":"Kris Kaleta","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12704","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores how the cypherpunk movement – advocating privacy, digital sovereignty, and digital decentralisation – shaped modern economic paradigms, particularly cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance. Originating in the late twentieth century, its principles laid the groundwork for blockchain technologies and challenged state-centric monetary systems. The analysis connects cypherpunk ideology to historical debates on money and governance, evaluating its implications for the contemporary institutional framework. By tracing the evolution of these ideas, the study underscores their enduring influence on twenty-first century economic practices, illustrating how decentralised systems redefine agency and accountability in economic interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"244-260"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The politics of lockdown policies: Evidence from Brazilian states","authors":"João Pedro Bastos, Vincent Miozzi","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12702","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We introduce a novel state-level measure of <i>lockdown regulatory freedom</i> to study the severity of lockdowns for Brazilian states and its determinants. Our main results show that lockdown policies were not consistently determined by any health-related variable, such as the number of doctors, hospital beds, the share of the population with private health insurance, or the share of the population 65 years of age and older or Covid-19 cases and deaths. Indeed, the only variable consistently related to lockdown policies in all specifications and robustness checks was the state's share of votes for the right-wing candidate. A one standard deviation increase in the share of votes for the right-wing candidate is associated with a 0.6–0.87 standard deviation increase in lockdown stringency. Our results highlight the importance of political economy considerations in explaining the incentives of policymakers when designing health policies.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"175-202"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The factors behind the depreciation of the yen: Why Japan needs a policy shift","authors":"Hideki Nishigaki","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12701","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article analyses the factors underlying the recent depreciation of the yen. Using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, I find that approximately half of the decline in the yen's exchange rate against the dollar from the end of 2020 to mid-2024 can be attributed to portfolio balance effects. Income disparity and interest rate differentials between the US and Japan have also contributed to the yen's weakening. This suggests the need for a shift in Japan's economic policy, which should focus on expanding domestic demand and easing pressure on the yen's depreciation.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"224-243"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of banking development in economic growth: Quantity versus quality","authors":"Guangdong Xu","doi":"10.1111/ecaf.12699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12699","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article surveys the literature on the relationship between banking development and economic growth, with particular attention given to the role of the efficiency (quality) dimension of banking development. Overlooking banking efficiency in explaining economic growth may lead to serious omitted variable bias. However, incorporating banking efficiency into growth models has proved to be a challenging task. There is no agreement in the literature on how to define, measure, and evaluate banking efficiency. In addition, most studies focus on transformation efficiency inside banks and overlook efficiency in the process of credit allocation.</p>","PeriodicalId":44825,"journal":{"name":"ECONOMIC AFFAIRS","volume":"45 2","pages":"261-276"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}