Journal of Critical Economics

Introduction to the section.

Lourdes Viladomiu — 2023-12-24

no abstract

Food Regime dynamics.

Philip McMichael — 2023-12-24

The 'food regime' concept distinguishes successive periods of global world-economic hegemony through the lens of food provisioning on a world scale. The late-nineteenth century British-centered food empire, provisioning Europe with grains and meat from the New World, was followed by the US-centered system of provisioning newly emergent Third World countries with cheap food exports to subsidize their development of national industrial sectors. With the subsequent rise of multi-national corporations and global banking, the 'corporate' food regime reorganized the world-economy around global food supply chains embodying the principle of 'comparative advantage.' Each period built on previous world-economic developments to establish a fully global food system. The current moment is undergoing two significant developments: (1) the rise of China as a substantial participant in the world food system via its Food Silk Road Initiative, by which it has established its own system of state-owned enterprises and trade routes to become the world's largest food importer; and (2) the recent 'corporate capture' of the United Nations by the World Economic Forum (WEF) via the 2021 UN Food System Summit. This was organized around replacing intergovernmental (multilateral) dialogue in the UN's Committee on World Food Security with 'multi-stakeholder' governance, privileging private decisions in intensifying industrial (and now digitized) agriculture in a process of 'de-territorialization' of farming. The recent pandemic revealed the fragility of global supply chains, disclosing (and enhancing) the wisdom of agro-ecological farming methods -- in both replenishing natural processes to combat climate emergency, and securing territorial food sovereignty, embodied in the vitality of robust nested food markets.

Examining food systems: a research framework at a national level.

Noelia Parajuá Carpintero — 2023-12-24

There is wide consensus on the urgency to transform current food systems to be more sustainable and fairer. The aim of this article is to advance understandings of the functioning of national food systems and identify levers of change that could enable such transformation. Departing from food regimes—which address global food relations throughout the contemporary history of capitalism—and combining it with the approaches of social metabolism and surplus/reproduction, we propose a research framework to study food systems at the national scale, and in particular their role in the reproduction processes of the capitalist system. We use a national scale as unit of analysis because of the relevant roles the state holds on food systems. The resulting research framework consist of six dimensions, which encompass thirty elements in total, linked through six key cross-cutting connections. By doing so, we contribute to expand on food regime by overcoming some of its main limitations: remaining at the world scale and its level of abstraction. In addition, we expand the political economy of food systems and link it to political ecology.

The corporate food regime and the fight against hunger

Efren Areskurrinaga Mirandona — 2023-12-24

The goals set by the United Nations in the fight against hunger were not met in 2015, nor will they be met in 2030, if everything continues as before. This article argues that this is because the measures proposed to achieve them do not call into question the corporate food regime in which they are applied, the result of neoliberal globalization. For both trade liberalization and financial deregulation represent obstacles that greatly hinder their success. Therefore, it argues that, as long as global corporate power is not seriously undermined, it will be difficult to achieve the second Sustainable Development Goal: zero hunger. The alternative proposed is to advance along the path of food sovereignty and agroecology.

A sustainable, resilient and desirable food system.

Lucía Diez Sanjuán — 2023-12-24

Analyses of resilience and sustainability of the food system abound, especially in the field of ecological economics, but many of these works start from conceptions of resilience and sustainability as desirable characteristics of the food system, not paying enough attention to the inherently normative nature of these concepts particularly when applied to the analysis of socio-ecological systems. From the perspective of systems thinking, the present work starts from the idea that sustainability and resilience are desirable characteristics only if they are linked to processes and systems whose functioning is desirable, but they are not beneficial characteristics when they are associated with harmful processes. Therefore, it is essential to analyse which are the implications of the normative dimension of sustainability and resilience of the food system, and what kind of changes or transformations are necessary to achieve a food system that is not only sustainable and resilient but also desirable. The paradigm of food sovereignty has, in this sense, an important potential as a framework for the transformation towards a sustainable, resilient, and desirable food system, since it starts from the recognition of the complexity of the food system and its dynamic and multi-scalar functioning, incorporating ecological, economic, political, social and cultural dimensions, and opening the way to an inter- and transdisciplinary approach for the study and transformation of the global food system.

Analysis of the evolution of agri-food systems in Western Europe (1986-2020): ISSSA, a synthetic indicator of sovereignty and sustainability.

Marc Rivas López — 2023-12-24

Over the last 30 years, agri-food systems have experienced a set of transformations that are not only relevant in themselves, but also highlight new challenges, new debates, new research approaches and, therefore, new methodologies that allow us to approach the old and new realities. In order to analyze these transformations from new perspectives, in previous works an alternative system of evaluation of the changes experienced by agri-food systems was developed based on the identification of the evaluable principles that define the concept of food sovereignty. This article takes another step in this direction. For the synthetic presentation of the proposed multifactorial analysis, the ISSSA has been constructed: Index of Sustainability and Sovereignty of Agri-food Systems. This indicator is calculated for 7 countries representative of three large geographical areas that would make up Western Europe, with Spain and Italy for Mediterranean Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom, for Central-Atlantic Europe, with France between these first two regions, and Denmark and Sweden for Scandinavia, with the aim of analyzing the transformations experienced by their agri-food systems between 1986 and 2020. The analytical exercise carried out allows us to confirm that there has been a progressive loss of sovereignty and sustainability in all the regions analyzed.

About the 'Nobel' prize in economics 2023: Claudia Goldin, the feminist frontier of orthodox economics.

Lina Gálvez Muñoz — 2023-12-24

Claudia Goldin has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics. The third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics and the third winner in Economic History, Goldin's research has focused on understanding gender inequalities in the design and evolution of labour markets. Her most important scientific contributions can be summarized in two areas. On the one hand, her studies on the long-term female labor force participation rate and the impact of specific historical events. On the other hand, Goldin has extensively explored how to better understand the career and family choices of female university graduates.

Andreu Escrivà; Contra la sostenibilidad (2023).

Jordi Roca Jusmet — 2023-12-24

no abstract available

Buendía García, Luis (ed.); El papel del estado en la economía. análisis y perspectivas para el siglo XXI (2023).

Carlos Sánchez Mato — 2023-12-24

no abstract

Piketty, Thomas; Breve historia sobre la igualdad (2021)

Juan Carlos Palacios Cívico — 2023-12-24

no abstract

Michael Pettis y Matthew C. Klein; Las guerras comerciales son guerras de clase (2023)

Albert Recio Andreu — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Sandoval Cabrera, Seyka Verónica (Ed.); El desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas y la economía digital. Herramientas teórico-conceptuales desde la perspectiva de Karl Marx (2023)

Angélica Maza Albores — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Peter Dietsch, François Claveau y Clément Fontan; Les banques centrales servent-elles nos intérêts? (2019).

Eguzki Urteaga — 2023-12-24

No abstract

Results, delays and challenges in economic psychology.

Pere Mir Artigues — 2023-12-24

The article deals with the state of the art of economic psychology, also known as behavioural economics. After a brief review of the foundations of economic decision theory and the two main research programs, it discusses the consolidated results of the discipline (especially the effectiveness of heuristics), the aspects that need to be improved (such as the definition of the contexts most favourable to the various heuristics) and the remaining challenges, especially the incorporation of uncertainty.

Balance of payments structure and dynamics in Latin American countries since 1990.

Gustavo Burachik — 2023-12-24

The paper presents an overview of the balance of payments of a group of Latin American countries during the period 1990/2021. Balance of payment accounts and items are grouped and rearranged according to their role as a source or expense of foreign currency. On this basis, the first goal is to show the structure of foreign currency income and expenditure, in the long term, that is, for the three decades covered in the study. The data allows to discriminate the role of capital inflows and outflows, and income payments to foreign capital. The second goal is to investigate the evolution of foreign currency availability over time. Particular attention is paid to balance of payment crisis episodes. The methodology used allows an empirically based discussion of some of the main theoretical hypotheses about the balance of payments behavior in Latin America. Two main results are obtained. The first is that the inflow and outflow of foreign currency involved in capital movements has a greater incidence than trade imbalances as an origin of balance of payment crises. The second is that these capital movements do not represent a positive net contribution of foreign currency for the recipient economies in the long term.

Political Economy of Health and the management of the pandemic in Spain.

Sergio Pena Dopico — 2023-12-24

Capital, as with other essential functions of the production and reproduction of the workforce, has historically maintained a contradictory relationship with the health of workers. The intensification of work and the precarization of employment, which give rise to the increase in the so-called absolute surplus value, affect the wear and tear of the labor force and limit its possibilities of reproduction. The improvement of working conditions and public health, which can contribute to the increase in relative surplus value, cease to do so when labor power becomes too cheap and superfluous. The institutionalization of occupational health and safety regulations, as well as the subsidiaries public health services at the beginning of the 20th century, have been two key regulatory devices in the West for these ambivalences and contradictions. Contradictions that have intensified with the development of expanded capital accumulation, globalization, and the inter- and intra-national polarization of the collective worker. The objective of this article is to address the health management of the pandemic as a privileged scenario to analyze these devices and their effects: starting from the most basic determinations of the political economy of health, it proposes to analyze the different health devices implemented in the pandemic and how these have served to deferentially distribute the exposure and protection to the COVID of different groups based on their role in the productive and reproductive system.

Economía en enseñanza secundaria: ¿qué, cómo y para qué enseñar? Pensando una propuesta didáctica heterodoxa.

Pablo Vallejo Preste — 2023-12-24

no abstract

Herman Daly (1938-2022): un referente de la economía ecológica.

Jordi Roca Jusmet — 2023-12-24

no abstract

Crecimiento antieconómico: en la teoría, en la realidad, en la historia y en relación con la globalización.

Herman E. Daly — 2023-12-24

there is no abstract