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Claudio Napoleoni e la critica del presente
Get PDFThis paper revisits Claudio Napoleoni’s critical legacy by engaging closely with Riccardo Bellofiore’s recent monograph and the broader corpus of Napoleoni’s writings. After arguing for Napoleoni’s status as a “contemporary classic,” it reconstructs his model of “pure” versus “historical” capitalism, showing how he locates rent extraction, alienation, and unproductive consumption at the heart of Italian economic dynamics. Building on his anthropological dialectic, the paper highlights Napoleoni’s vision of human emancipation as liberation “from” and “of” work—a shift from an economistic to a time autonomy paradigm. It then interrogates his ongoing self critique and methodological “back and forth,” which prevented theoretical closure but fueled an open ended critical practice. Turning to Bellofiore’s reinterpretation of Marx’s critique of political economy, the study questions the implicit use of counterfactuals in his comparative method and examines his meta theory of crisis centered on the falling rate of profit and its counter tendencies. Finally, the paper illustrates how integrating non Marxist social science—especially recent contributions on discretionary time, institutional design, and democratic enterprise governance—can enrich and update Napoleoni’s radical questions. In so doing, it proposes a truly interdisciplinary critique of present day capitalism
Seeding Growth: Unlocking the Potential of Agricultural Commodity Exchanges in Sub-Saharan Africa
Get PDFThe establishment of commodity exchanges offers significant advantages for low-income, agriculturally dependent countries seeking to enhance export performance. A notable example is the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), which contributed to a substantial increase in coffee exports, benefiting producers through expanded export volumes and diversified market access. Similarly, in May 2025, Côte d’Ivoire launched West Africa’s first agricultural commodities exchange, supported by the Regional Stock Exchange (BRVM)—the common securities market for the eight member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). Initially, this exchange lists cashew nuts, kola nuts, and maize, with plans to expand trading to cocoa and approximately twenty additional commodities in the future. Africa currently hosts 38 stock exchanges across 29 national capital markets, 22 of which are members of the African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA). Among these, 12 countries facilitate agricultural commodity trading: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda. Commodity exchanges in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) play a pivotal role in strengthening market structures by improving market access, mitigating price volatility, and integrating smallholder farmers into formal economic systems. Despite structural challenges—such as infrastructural deficits and capacity-building needs—these platforms demonstrate considerable potential for fostering sustainable agricultural development in the region. Empirical evidence suggests that while market capitalization negatively impacts agricultural growth, the value of traded stocks exerts a positive influence. Consequently, governments in African emerging economies should prioritize capital market expansion to stimulate growth through agricultural value addition. Policy frameworks that bolster investor confidence via institutional strengthening and stock market development are essential. However, it is equally critical to recognize the potential for cross-market risk transmission, given the continent’s heavy reliance on commodities and the interdependence between stock market performance and macroeconomic stability. Risk transmission arises when information dissemination is delayed or incomplete, leading to contagion effects where adverse market sentiment spreads irrespective of local conditions. Notably, commodity prices and exchange rate fluctuations exhibit bidirectional risk transmission with SSA stock markets, particularly over the long term. Thus, shifts in these variables can significantly influence stock market volatility in the region
Bank non-performing loans research around the world
Get PDFThis article presents a literature review of the post-2020 bank non-performing loans (NPLs) research around the world and suggests directions for future research. Using the thematic and bibliometric literature review methodologies, we find that significant NPL research has emerged from the European, Asian, and African regions while fewer research has emerged from the Asia-Pacific, North America, Latin America and Caribbean regions as well as from SAARC and OECD countries. The new NPL determinants in the recent literature are corporate governance, fintech, financial inclusion, country risks, regulatory quality, political risks, shadow banking activity, the COVID-19 pandemic, public/external debt, country risks, real house prices, and the independence of the central bank. The common regional NPL determinants are corruption, GDP, debt, loan growth, inflation, capital adequacy ratio, lending rate, competition, the regulatory environment, and GDP growth. The common theories used in the recent literature to explain the behavior of NPL are agency theory, stakeholder theory, information asymmetry theory, and moral hazard theory while the common empirical methodologies used are the panel regression and system GMM regression methods. The implication is that financial regulators, bank supervisors and banking scholars should pay attention to the new emerging determinants of NPL. They should also understand the effect of NPL on financial/banking stability so that safeguards can be put in place to minimise the adverse effect of non-performing loans. More research is needed to provide insights into this area
Financial Ratio Analysis: A literature Review Working Paper
Get PDFFinancial ratio analysis remains an indispensable tool in corporate finance for assessing firm performance, comparing industry benchmarks, and informing strategic decision-making. This literature review critically examines the evolution and application of financial ratios, highlighting both their enduring relevance and inherent limitations. Drawing on recent works, including Gazilas (2024) and studies by Covar (2024, 2025), Ferreira et al. (2025), and Shvekens (2024, 2025), this paper explores how ratios have been applied to evaluate organizational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, sector-specific dynamics, and broader socio-economic impacts. While traditional ratio analysis offers standardized, comparable metrics, its backward-looking nature and sensitivity to data inconsistencies can limit predictive accuracy. Emerging research emphasizes integrating ratio analysis with panel data methods, big data, ESG metrics, and scenario planning to enhance its utility in turbulent environments. The review concludes that future studies should expand geographic and sectoral coverage, adopt hybrid analytical frameworks, and leverage technological advancements to maintain ratio analysis as a vital element of strategic financial assessment in an increasingly complex global economy
Order of Play in Sequential Network Formation
Get PDFResearch in anthropology and neuroscience has shown that people have a cognitive limit on the number of stable relationships they can maintain. In this spirit, we consider a network formation game in which the cost of link formation is increasing in the agent's degree. In this class of games, as opposed to commonly studied games with a fixed cost of link formation, the order in which agents form the network (order of play) determines its final structure. In particular, we find that only certain orders of play can explain the formation of circle and complete bipartite networks. We also find that there is multiplicity of equilibria only when marginal costs of link formation are intermediate. Our results show as well that some orders of play are better than others for predicting the equilibrium structure when it is not unique, and that playing last is usually harmful
Governance, productivity and economic development
Get PDFThis paper explores the interplay between transfer policies, R&D, corruption, and economic development using a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and a government. The government collects taxes, redistributes fiscal revenues, and undertakes public investment (in R&D, infrastructure, etc.). Corruption is modeled as a fraction of tax revenues that is siphoned off and removed from the economy. We first establish the existence of a political-economic equilibrium. Then, using an analytically tractable framework with two private agents, we examine the effects of corruption and evaluate the impact of various policies, including redistribution and innovation-led strategies
The Macroeconomic Fragility of Critical Mineral Markets
Get PDFThis paper applies the macroeconomic fragility framework for studying the effects of supply chain
disruptions, proposed by Acemoglu and Tahbaz-Salehi (2024), to critical minerals markets. A key
prediction of the macroeconomic fragility framework is that equilibrium supply chains are inherently fragile,
meaning that even small shocks can trigger cascading supply chain breakdowns that can significantly
magnify the discontinuous response of aggregate supply to shocks, leading to higher volatility and prices
of critical minerals. We highlight the important role that the non-technical risk premium plays in magnifying
global supply chain shocks in the specific case of critical minerals. Using a mixed-frequency Structural
VAR model with agnostic sign restrictions and newly constructed data on non-technical risk premiums, we
estimate the impact of supply chain disruption, the non-technical risk premium and their interaction on the
prices and volatility of six critical minerals. We find that global supply chain disruptions, magnified by non-technical risk premiums, significantly increase critical mineral prices and price volatility for all six critical
minerals studied, indicating inefficient outcomes which we interpret as macroeconomic fragility in critical
minerals markets. We also show that stockpiling has the potential to reduce macroeconomic fragility in
critical mineral markets
Economic possibilities for our grandchildren reloaded
Get PDFNearly one hundred years ago, John M. Keynes envisioned a future where material concerns would fade, allowing individuals to focus on leisure and well-being. Similar expectations were common in Keynes' days, when industrial progress promised to yield productivity gains, which would increase wages and lift workers out of poverty. Freed from material constraints, individuals would devote more attention to personal interests, relationships, and quality of life. One hundred years later, history proved that Keynes was right about economic growth, but individuals remain focused on material concerns at the expense of quality of life and of the environment. Why did economic activity deliver affluent, but socially and environmentally unsustainable societies? What possibilities are there for our future, the one of our grandchildren? In this article, we first review the evidence on the unsustainability of the current economic model. We discuss the role of economic growth for well-being, providing new evidence on defensive consumption, and illustrating a new explanation of unsustainability. We then discuss Neo-humanism, an evidence-based narrative to promote sustainable quality of life, ensures thriving lives in socially and environmentally sustainable societies. A shift towards sustainable quality of life is possible thanks to the insights from decades of research in this field
L’aide publique au développement face aux chocs externes : quel rôle pour la résilience économique des pays de l’UEMOA ?
Get PDFThis study examines the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA) on economic
resilience in WAEMU countries, aiming to identify critical dependency thresholds beyond
which aid effects become significantly positive or negative, while analyzing specific channels
through which ODA influences growth and shock absorption capacity. The methodology
employs two complementary approaches applied to a panel of eight WAEMU countries over
the period 2000-2022: the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model to capture the
non-linear relationship between ODA and economic growth, and the Fully Modified Ordinary
Least Squares (FMOLS) approach to identify transmission channels while correcting for
endogeneity bias. Results confirm the existence of a robust non-linear relationship with
convergent critical thresholds: 7.86% of GDP using the PSTR model and an optimal range of
8-10% of GDP with the FMOLS approach, below which aid effects are negative and beyond
which diminishing returns appear. Channel analysis reveals that governance constitutes the
most powerful determinant of economic resilience with an impact four times greater than
investment and eight times greater than direct ODA, while crises reduce growth by 0.68
percentage points and increase inflation by over 3 points, confirming the region's strong
structural vulnerability. These findings imply that aid effectiveness fundamentally depends on
respecting optimal thresholds and prioritizing institutional strengthening, requiring a redesign
of allocation strategies that favor governance and capacity-building programs, while
maintaining aid flows within the critical range of 8-10% of GDP and diversifying financing
sources to reduce external dependence and strengthen resilience against future shocks
Reduction analysis of hierarchical spatial economy: Trade strategy around Brexit
Get PDFThis paper investigates how international trade competition influences cross-country migration by using a general equilibrium model of economic geography. We employ a global--local system to represent local places grouped into countries, which collectively form a global network. Through the place-to-country reduction analysis proposed herein, the governing equation at the place level are reduced to a country-level equation that efficiently describes each country’s trade environment. We model and analyze international trade competition---including trade liberalization and protectionism---among the UK, France, and Germany, using the Helpman (1998) model. The recommended strategies for the UK and the EU include
reducing domestic transportation costs, while tariffs and retaliatory tariffs act as a double-edged sword, potentially enhancing or undermining their trade positions