Suchergebnisse

This collection highlights a key metaphor in contemporary discourse about economy and society. The contributors explore how references to reality and the real economy are linked both to the utopias of collective well-being, supported by real monies and good economies, and the dystopias of financial bubbles and busts, in which people's own lives "crash" along with the reality of their economies.

An ambitious anthropology of economy, this volume questions how assemblages of vernacular and scientific realizations and enactments of the economy are linked to ideas of truth and moral value; how these multiple and shifting realities become present and entangle with historically and socially situated lives; and how the formal realizations of the concept of the "real" in the governance of economies engage with the experiential lives of ordinary people.

"A provocative new theory of "the economy," its history, and its politics that better unites history and economics. What is the economy, really? Is it a "market sector," a "general equilibrium," the "gross domestic product"? Economics today has become so preoccupied with methods that economists risk losing sight of the economy itself. Meanwhile, other disciplines, although often intent on criticizing the methods of economics, have failed to articulate an alternative vision of the economy. Before the ascent of postwar neoclassical economics, fierce debates raged, as many different visions of the economy circulated and competed with one another. In The Real Economy, Jonathan Levy returns to the spirit of this earlier era, which, in all its contentiousness, gave birth to the discipline of economics. Drawing inspiration particularly from Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes, Levy proposes a theory of the economy that is open to rich empirical and historical scrutiny, covering topics that include the emergence of capitalism, the notion of radical uncertainty, the meaning of demand, the primal desire for money, the history of corporations, and contemporary globalization. Writing for anyone interested in the study of the economy, Levy provides an invaluable provocation for a broader debate in the social sciences and humanities concerning what "the economy" is."

The year 2014 saw the worst recession in the Belarusian economy in the last 15 years. Back in 2011, another year hit by the crisis, Belarusian business was able to make up for the losses caused by the drop in purchasing power domestically by boosting sales in Russia and Ukraine; however, this option is unavailable now, because in 2014, crisis developments in Belarus and those two countries synchronized. The policy of the Belarusian government to curb the depreciation of the ruble amid devaluation moves in the key export markets affected the profitability of export supplies and the financial status of many domestic companies, especially those controlled by the state. The country's major GDP generating enterprises – MAZ, MTZ, BelAZ, Gomselmash – reported massive losses in 2014. Growth was recorded in the potash sector and oil processing, which accounted for the bulk of budget revenues. Belarusian food-processing companies benefited from the sanctions imposed by Russia; however, the embargo was enforced only for 12 months, whereas growth in the food-processing sector is limited by internal (reductions in pig stock) and external (ban on pork import from the EU, non-tariff restrictions by Russian regulators) factors. In the service sector, road carriers suffered the most from the sanctions and the food embargo. The IT sector, which managed to attract major strategic investors from Japan, the United States, South Korea, and Russia, reported growth in 2014.