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Cambodia is one of the first two countries that adopted a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in October 2020. The design of the CBDC, called the Bakong, is a bit unique. We find a few design flaws that could potentially damage the central bank and then the Cambodian economy as a whole. We show some key statistics from our own survey in 2022 to support our arguments. The Bakong is offered in two currencies, the Khmer Riel (KHR) and the US dollar (USD), as Cambodia has been highly dollarized. We discuss theoretical predictions for the CBDC based on three kinds of substitutes: paper money, bank deposits, and foreign currencies. The third one is specific to the Bakong. Unlike a typical local currency CBDC, the USD Bakong may substitute for the KHR more. Moreover, it has been announced that the retail Bakong is legally not a liability of the central bank, but from the viewpoint of the underlying technology and economics, it is a central bank liability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the intricate tapestry of environmental discourse, the field of political ecology emerges as a powerful lens through which we scrutinise the interplay of power, nature and society. This paper stages a dialogue with Paul Robbins to examine environmental justice, the decolonisation of political ecology, colonialism, sovereignty, climate change and capitalism. The dialogue challenges the conventional narratives of sovereignty and underscores the imperative of genuine decolonisation—beyond metaphorical interpretations—calling for the restitution of land and authority to Indigenous Peoples and other historically marginalised communities. The dialogue highlights the importance of moving away from capitalist systems that exacerbate environmental degradation. The dialogue calls for decolonising political ecology by including diverse perspectives, methodologies and ontologies and underlines the importance of control over productive resources. It emphasises that addressing the impacts of colonialism requires recognising and honouring the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and suggests that political ecology can contribute to decolonisation by focusing on sovereignty and supporting legal and institutional frameworks that empower marginalised communities. The paper discusses the way forward and the future trajectory of political ecology by suggesting that future research in political ecology should focus on diverse economies, embrace emerging technologies and rework academic institutions to value knowledge co‐production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into urban real estate and the verticalisation of road corridors. The paper identifies four processes of land transformation driving this real estate market expansion: commodification; speculation; autoconstruction; and assetisation. Adopting a multi‐scalar conjunctural approach, it argues that rentier capitalism in this context is spatialised through the dramatic extension of real estate frontiers along the route of peri‐urban road corridors. Development along these corridors assumes a “grey” character that defies conventional formal–informal distinctions, enabling the extraction of large rentier profits and encouraging the further proliferation of frontier spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper progresses research on resistance in the context of financialisation by drawing on various social reproduction legacies. I explore how social reproduction theory offers conceptual and methodological tools that can deepen research on de‐financialisation and resistance against predatory finance. Expanding upon relational approaches to social reproduction, this paper frames “the financialisation of social reproduction” as the dialectics between the reproduction of financialised capitalism and the regeneration of life. This supports a perspective on resistance through the identification and analysis of the interplay between the objective and subjective limits to the financial extraction from life. I examine how methodologies like “counter‐topographies” can demystify financialisation while supporting the cultivation of alternative geographies of finance. Through “financial counter‐topographies”, I explore how global reproductive entanglements contradictorily fragment working‐class interests across space while creating conditions to envision and cultivate de‐alienated financial landscapes. This approach seeks possibilities for collective action and international collaborations beyond financialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss how the earthquake risk is exploited by 'disaster capitalism', in order to convert Istanbul to a massive construction site. The shock of the 1999 Marmara Earthquake has been effectively used by the neoliberal market and government as 'a shock therapy' to implement a construction‐led development model for Turkey and to favour the construction sector by introducing new incentives, exceptional rights and interventions, which otherwise might be challenged. The current Turkish government justify the ongoing massive urban transformation and new mass housing projects as an improvement of the housing stock to make residential buildings stronger and more resilient to earthquakes. However, areas actually under earthquake risk do not match the areas that are officially declared under disaster risk by the government. The Disaster Law #6306 that granted the government the absolute right to expropriate land based on the justification of 'protecting residents against earthquakes and other natural disasters' was applied in a selective way to seize valuable land in Istanbul. In the paper I explore how the disaster was quickly converted to an opportunity for economic growth. To do that I introduce stories of three different neighbourhoods in Istanbul, namely Moda, Tozkoparan and Fikirtepe, each of which experience the ongoing massive urban transformation differently based on the land value of the neighbourhoods, class position of the residents, and residents' capacity to organise in order to protect their rights. I describe, how disaster capitalism is lived and experienced differently in these three neighbourhoods. Although the massive construction projects are indifferent to life's sustainability, those projects are justified as interventions in terms of public health and safety through making housing resilient to earthquakes. I critically discuss how in each case biopolitics presents disaster capitalism's massive urban transformation projects as a manifestation of liveliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the point that our current political‐economic‐climate conjuncture demands new engagements at the dynamic interface of climate capitalism. Using two cases of climate capitalist responses to climate challenges, I demonstrate the reparative potentials that emerge from the tensions and ambiguities that typify that conjuncture. In the first case, I examine financialised climate infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia, that promises to protect the city from flooding while enriching city elites, but against which diverse social movements and collectives have organised. The second case is about a cooperative energy provider in Australia, operating on the terrain of a neoliberalised electricity market and climate change, and working towards multifaceted repair by collectivising and redistributing surplus and modelling democratic engagement. Those involved in these vastly different cases both pursue repair and reparations through climate capitalist projects by reckoning with historical and present climate debts while constructing forward‐looking programs. As such, they chart the first steps towards reparative climate futures. This paper identifies the political and socioecological potentials from two key climate capitalist projects: flood protection infrastructures in Jakarta and cooperative energy in Australia. From this, it builds a framework of repair and reparations for engaging with climate capitalism and argues that the emerging tensions and ambiguities facilitate steps towards reparative climate futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the role of the 1948 currency and economic reform in West Germany for growth and social cohesion in Germany and Europe. It describes the theoretical foundation by Walter Eucken and the implementation and defense of the new economic order by Ludwig Erhard. The paper stresses the positive impact of the market economy on growth and welfare in Germany and Europe. Then, it is shown that Eucken's constituting principles of the market economy were gradually eroded after euro introduction in course of crises, with the negative repercussions on growth and equality being explained. The policy conclusion is that only the reconstitution of price stability in the euro area can prevent a further decline of welfare in Europe. The 1948 economic reforms provide an important blueprint for the necessary reform process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper foregrounds the centrality of reproductive politics in constituting the spaces of migrant activism. Addressing social reproductive issues as racial issues, it exposes how "premature death" and questions of survival shape migrants' lives throughout the uneven geographies of racial capitalism. Drawing on the political experiences of the "No Evictions Network"—a migrant and activist‐led group campaigning for asylum seekers' rights in Glasgow (Scotland)—the paper suggests the concept of "political reproduction", grasping the interchange between care, trust, empowerment, political subjectivation, and the overcoming of barriers towards political action that take place within spaces of migrant activism. Building upon migrant voices and Black and Brown histories of organising, the paper explores the racialised, gendered, and classed character of reproductive activist labour in these spaces, evidencing the ways the notion of "political reproduction" breaks racialised and gendered constructions of political work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Peoples are gaining renewed attention within both policy and academia, as examples of “resilience” and of non‐humanist, non‐modern ways of relating to nature, which might, it is hoped, provide tools to withstand the socio‐ecological crises associated with “the Anthropocene”. This paper argues that such representations obscure both their own colonial foundations and the ongoing forms of racialised dispossession and ecocide faced by Indigenous Peoples today. Instead, we conceptualise indigeneity and nature as deeply entangled categories that are co‐produced with capitalist modernity. Engaging anti‐colonial and Marxist scholarship, and drawing on our long‐term research with Indigenous movements in Bolivia and Colombia, we highlight how discursive and material assemblages of indigeneity and nature are dialectically linked to capitalist processes of dispossession and subaltern efforts to contest these. We further highlight how romanticised accounts of non‐modern nature‐cultures are unsettled by the violent world‐making of colonial capitalism and the unequal burdens placed on Indigenous territories and bodies. We use an ethnographic vignette from the Bolivian Chaco to illustrate the messy everyday ways in which real Indigenous people navigate, contest, endure, and make do amidst the contradictory processes of racialisation, dispossession, and conditional recognition that characterise their positioning within colonial capitalism. In doing so, we show how thinking from the sacrifice zones of extractive capitalism unsettles contemporary debates on decolonising nature in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of "spirit of capitalism" on stationary welfare and stability properties of a one‐sector Ramsey economy, where the demand of money is motivated by a cash‐in‐advance constraint on consumption expenditures. Preferences are defined over consumption and capital stock. There is a monetary authority that follows either a money growth pegging rule or an interest rate pegging rule. When a money growth pegging rule is introduced, a unique steady state emerges. A slight desire for status is a sufficient condition for an increase in the money growth rate to exert a local stabilizing effect and to improve stationary welfare. When an interest rate pegging rule is introduced, two steady states may emerge: a "liquidity trap" and an "interior" steady state. Both steady states are locally determinate. Moreover, we show that a slight desire for status is also a sufficient condition to ensure that the stationary welfare at "interior" steady state is higher than the one of the "liquidity trap". It follows that an increase in the policy rate is, then, an efficient way to exit the "liquidity trap" steady state. Under similar conditions, a higher policy rate increases the stationary welfare at the "interior" steady state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the growing connections between the Persian Gulf states and the heavily militarised Israeli innovation ecosystem. The Gulf actors now play an increasing role in support of Israel as a globally expanding 'Start‐up Nation', and are involved in transforming Palestinian land into a regional frontier of technology in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli‐Gulf cooperation and its impact on Palestinians, however, has not been thoroughly researched. Drawing from fieldwork among Palestinian and Israeli innovation elites, we map these growing connections between Gulf state actors and Israel and analyse how the occupied Palestinian territories are further enmeshed in complex networks of financial capitalist and settler colonial security interests. Theoretically, the paper advances the critique of the contemporary settler colonial frontier, venturing beyond its usual Eurocentric and binary geographies. We conclude that 'innovation' is both (a) the terrain of expanding structures of Israeli colonisation and (b) the site of productive ambivalences and novel forms of resistance in an evolving regional and global reality. This article explores the growing connections between the Persian Gulf states and the heavily militarised Israeli innovation ecosystem. The Gulf actors now play an increasing role in support of Israel as a globally expanding 'Start‐up Nation', and are involved in transforming Palestinian land into regional frontiers of technology in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Drawing from fieldwork among Palestinian and Israeli innovation elites, we map these growing connections between Gulf state actors and Israel and analyse how the occupied Palestinian territories are further enmeshed in complex networks of financial capitalist and settler colonial security interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the nature of bank money on two complementary levels. The first level deals with theoretical considerations. Here, the departure point is Social Positioning Theory, which provides a framework to investigate the nature of money. Within the theory, the paper situates bank money in credit‐debt relations, that are themselves integral part of a wider productive‐consumptive nexus of the economy. In this perspective, bank money is the relation, accounting economic positions of participating members, resulting from their economic activities realized within the context of the overall society. The second level uses the methods of Oral History and Memory Studies and, through semi‐structured interviews, provides empirical material illustrating ideas about the nature of money in a specific historical form. The article thus explores the contrasting experiences of banking in the context of a centrally planned economy and banking in the transformation to a market economy. These two contrasting episodes are illustrative because of the significant change in the form of bank money, which brings to light various aspects of its nature. Moreover, the article utilizes interviews that present the lived experience of bankers with years of involvement in the sector, enriching the perspective on the issue under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the prevailing view of the negative impact of collective bargaining decentralisation on trade unions in liberal market economies. It uses quantitative and in‐depth company cases from four major sectors in Ireland, to explain how unions have effectively established bargaining coordination following the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the ideological foundations of contemporary capitalism and its organizational models in Brazil. Our analysis considers three positions present in the literature: the thesis of the new spirit of capitalism; the literature about financialization and the shareholder value model; and the configuration of a managerial mode of domination. A content analysis was conducted to investigate normative business content from Brazilian "top voices" on the LinkedIn network. A total of 180 influential texts from 32 authors composed our corpus and were assessed based on an abductive approach that had as references the economies of worth model and a related framework for assessing the dynamic configuration of capitalism justifications. Results support the idea that contemporary capitalism is characterized in ideological terms by the fluidity of normative references restricting the market logic, configuring a complex or managerial mode of domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating the contribution of enslaved workers to output and growth in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century is a crucial building block to better understand the contours of nineteenth‐century US economic history, and more generally, the connection between slavery and capitalism. Existing estimates only present a partial picture and are potentially problematic. In this paper, we use data on enslaved person valuations to calculate the contribution made by enslaved workers to regional and national gross national product (GNP) in 1839 and 1859 and to the growth in per capita output in the 20 years before the Civil War. We find that in the United States, enslaved workers were responsible for somewhere between 12.49 per cent and 18.0 per cent of the increase in output per capita between 1839 and 1859. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the ideological foundations of contemporary capitalism and its organizational models in Brazil. Our analysis considers three positions present in the literature: the thesis of the new spirit of capitalism; the literature about financialization and the shareholder value model; and the configuration of a managerial mode of domination. A content analysis was conducted to investigate normative business content from Brazilian “top voices” on the LinkedIn network. A total of 180 influential texts from 32 authors composed our corpus and were assessed based on an abductive approach that had as references the economies of worth model and a related framework for assessing the dynamic configuration of capitalism justifications. Results support the idea that contemporary capitalism is characterized in ideological terms by the fluidity of normative references restricting the market logic, configuring a complex or managerial mode of domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenwashing is a well‐understood concept, describing the use of false or misleading claims and symbolism to give an impression of a company or organisation's commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. While many environmental groups use the concept widely to criticise the 'optics' strategies of organisations wanting to improve their image while maintaining a business‐as‐usual approach, it has largely been ignored in Geography and related disciplines. This paper argues that we need to take greenwashing seriously. It develops a broad concept of greenwashing, suggesting that the processes of obscuring social and ecological relations via greenwashing are central to the (dis)functioning of contemporary capitalism. A critical theory of greenwashing, therefore, is not simply about challenging 'bad actors', but is an essential part of a wider critique of 'green' capitalism and Sustainable Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global price increases have reached their highest levels in recent times. Finding the reasons for the price increase is very important for economic stabilization. In this paper, it has been estimated that exorbitant price increases may be related to a free market economy. For this purpose, unlike other studies, a comparative analysis of the impact of the free market economy on prices was conducted. The study covers the period 1990–2020, and using the U.S. economy, which is a free market economy, the relationship between property rights, the size of government in the economy, and prices were examined using the autoregressive distributed lag model. The results show that the free market model has a positive effect on the price increase, while the size of the government's economy does not affect the price increase in the same direction. This study aims to provide a different perspective to policymakers in the fight against price instability, which is one of the most important problems facing the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]