Category: International Economics

The marketisation of academia and its adverse effect on intellectual and methodological pluralism

On the monoculture of american international political economy:

“The monoculture we observe today also seems to me to be the product of a competitive academic environment in which we are compelled to live by the mantra of ‘publish or perish’. Eager to make a name for ourselves in an ‘evolutionary struggle for journal space’ we quickly learn that paradigmatic or methodological eclecticism is a luxury for those with tenure and established reputations.”…”We collectively converge, willingly or not, upon a socially constructed conventional wisdom.”

Catherine Weaver (Review of International Political Economy 16:1; 2009, page 1)

Capital inflows and the debt crisis

Compelling alternative hypothesis for the current debt crisis at the streetlightblog. The post argues that southern Europe’s integration to European Monetary Union led to massive capital inflows to those economies. 
This resulted in persistent current account deficits and the eventual sudden stop of capital to those countries, thereby precipitating the crisis.