As the year draws to a close, what are the economic takeaways? Global rate of exploitation increases The first big news: Marx is right. Some of us always knew it, but this year Tomás Rotta and Ris
Author: Dmitry Pozhidaev
In memoriam Walt Rostow
Walt Whitman Rostow died 20 years ago. His was a life of turns and twists, incredible career achievements and falls. Coming from the humble background of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, he did h
The uneasy balance of Western colonialism in Africa (Walter Rodney vs. Paul Bairoch)
This is not a real review; rather this is a homage to two great, but very different books, written 20 years apart: Walter Rodney’s How West Underdeveloped Africa published in 1972 and Paul Bairoc
What does Africa’s post-colonial history teach us about the war in Ukraine?
I should immediately apologize to the readers for the deliberately provocative and (somewhat) misleading title of this review. This is a review of Martin Welz’s book “Africa Since Decolonizatio
Historical optimism of Thomas Piketty
It is said that the critical difference between children’s literature and literature for adults is the former’s innate optimism. Dealing with real life situations requires life experience (and
Who Lost What?
Who Lost Russia is a revised and updated edition of a book that was originally published in 2017 and was prompted, as its author Peter Conradi informs us, by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014
How sanctions reshape the world against US interests
(Backfire by Agathe Demarais) How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests (the subtitle of Agathe Demaris’s book called Backfire) summarizes the author’s analysis of (primarily) US san
The great poet and the great economist
Alexander Pushkin, the great Russian poet was born in 1799, 23 years after the great British economist Adam Smith published his The Wealth of Nations and 9 years after the latter’s death. So, wha
Long-run economic trends: Secular decline in terms of trade?
Introduction In the absence of the definite answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything (not counting the number 42 from Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Ga
United Nations Cost Minimization Problem
Professor Branko Milanovic has recently published an essay called Does the United Nations still exist? In this emotional piece, Milanovic accuses the United Nations of failing in its role of a coll