The Canal Zone

No discipline in the humanities or social sciences today has a convincing theory of the economy. Long preoccupied with honing methods, the core of the discipline of economics has abandoned investigation into what the economy really is. Preoccupied with either…

In Colombia, economic and political power is concentrated in the hands of a few major economic players. From 2000 to 2022, thirteen conglomerates have risen to dominate the sector, shaping profitability, access to credit, and pricing. These conglomerates not only contain…

Across the world, parties governing amid the post-pandemic rise in prices have found themselves punished at the ballot box. While typified solutions revolve around fiscal discipline, many critics are returning to dependency theory to argue that inflation must be understood…

Central banks are back in the spotlight. After more than three decades of low inflation in rich countries, the rise in prices observed between 2021 and 2023 forced academic discussions into the public sphere. Such debates are not restricted to…

Electricity, it has become widely recognized, is the key to surviving the twenty-first century. Not only is it required for air-conditioning during worsening heatwaves, it also is one of the only ways we already know to produce large amounts of…

While the world’s attention was focused on the United States presidential election that would deliver Donald Trump a decisive victory and a second Presidency, Brazil’s municipal elections in October were signalling the political balance for the coming years within the…

Since 1999, the European Union (EU) and Mercosur have been negotiating a bi-regional partnership agreement comprising three pillars: trade, cooperation, and political dialogue. A quarter century later, in December 2024, the parties announced the conclusion of negotiations during the Mercosur…

For over 150 years, mining has constituted a core feature of the South African economy. The seemingly inexhaustible bounty of the earth made the country the wealthiest in the continent and financed one of the most all-encompassing systems of racial…

The world economy has seen a resurgence of industrial policy in recent decades. National development programs are at the center of a variety of polarizing geopolitical axes: carbon emissions, world manufacturing shares, and integration into rival trade and investment blocs.…

During the 1950s and 1960s, 35 percent of workers were unionized, 25 percent of the economy by GDP was price regulated, the corporate tax rate was 53 percent, and the top marginal income tax rate was 94 percent. Inequality fell…