0000000000116569
AUTHOR
Marc Pilkington
Corporate tax cuts and business-friendly policies in the UK - A review of electoral arguments during the 2015 legislative campaign
The stance toward big business was a heated topic during Britain’s 2015 legislative campaign that led to the triumphal, albeit slightly unexpected, reelection of David Cameron, as Prime Minister. More profoundly, it raises the issue of the economic impact of corporate tax cuts and the nature of business-friendly policies in the UK. Firstly, we investigate the electoral arguments on both sides of the political spectrum. These discussions are framed within the overarching approach known as supply-side economics, which has been prevalent in English-speaking countries since the neoliberal revolution in the late 1970s. Secondly, we put forward the idea that widening inequalities, as suggested re…
Economics as a polymorphic discursive construct: heterodoxy and pluralism
PurposeWhat do economists talk about? This seemingly innocent interrogation conceals a broader and innovative research programme, with the potential to renew the reflection on heterodox economics in a post‐crisis scenario. The aim of this paper is to show that convergence between language for specific purposes and economics is possible, so as to single out the genesis and the emergence of critical economic discourse.Design/methodology/approachAfter underlining the necessary collaboration between language and subject‐matter specialists, the paper addresses the question of the problematic use of economics textbooks in English‐speaking countries. Then, it deals with the fascinating question of…
An Indo-French Virtual University Project
Indo-French cooperation has existed for several decades, and has flourished in the recent period, with a number of flagship programmes and cross-border schemes in science, technology and management. Virtual universities refer to both conventional campus-based (hybrid and brick-and-mortar) universities offering online courses, and purely virtual universities with all their activities delivered online via the Internet. A virtual university is involved as a direct provider of learning opportunities and uses the Internet to deliver its programmes and courses while receiving tuition support. We propose in this ultimate chapter an innovative architecture for an Indo-French knowledge management sy…
Where Did the Money Go? Endogenous Money Creation for International Fraudulent Purposes - The Case of the 2015 Moldovan Banking Scandal
On Monday 4 May 2015, the speaker of Parliament of the Republic of Moldova published the Kroll report on his Internet blog after thousands of people rallied on Sunday 3 May in the capital, Chisinau, to protest against endemic corruption in the country, and demand recovery of the missing billions in the Ilan Shor group scandal. The Kroll report aims at investigating the apparent theft of nearly one-fifth of the country's annual GDP. In a spectacular lender-of-last resort move, the Moldovan central bank was forced to issue some 16 billion lei ($870 million) in emergency loans to keep the economy afloat. The Kroll report focuses on three commercial banks that account for a third of the country…
Economic Theorizing, Discursive Analysis and Pluralism in the Classroom - Evidence from Postgraduate Teaching in a French University
Can students examine the discursive strategies employed by economists so that the former think critically about the underlying theoretical forces described by the latter? Are economic processes ontologically dependent on the narratives used by economists to account for real phenomena? In this article, we draw both on Wheat's mapping techniques to homogenise theoretical economic discourse and on Pilkington's attempt to combine economics with language for specific purposes. We show that informed and fruitful discussions in the classroom necessitate the use of a new median pluralistic discourse that is yet to be elaborated upon, both by university and secondary school teachers. Finally, in ord…
Why France and India? The Convergence Hypothesis
The cross-fertilization of insights derived from French and Indian intellectual history has ignited a pluridisciplinary reflection on the role played by these two countries in the fabric of the knowledge-based economy in the twenty-first century. On the one hand, the Age of Enlightenment in Western Europe in the eighteenth century, brought forward an autonomous position for knowledge in human societies, and, on the other hand, it was once predicted that India’s future would be built in her classrooms (Education Commission). Finally, we lay the ground for the characterization of a triple knowledge-based convergence between the two higher-education systems on academic, economic and institutio…
Tourism for Development in the Republic of Moldova
Can globalization be socially inclusive through new 2.0 digital initiatives? This is the thought-provoking question we ask in this article, with a special focus on the Republic of Moldova. Part 1 begins with a reflection on the intersection between globalization, development studies and the current Moldovan context. Part 2 is devoted to the promising field of emergent tourism, and more particularly, tourism 2.0, a blossoming concept that we try to uncover. Part 3 presents a concrete application with the example of Moldova Tours 2.0, a digital initiative in the field of tourism 2.0 in the Republic of Moldova. Various aspects of this project are highlighted and analyzed.
The Indian Scenario
The architecture of the Indian higher-education system is not a simple one, with the legacy of the British Empire, the distinction between deemed and non-deemed universities, aided and non-aided colleges, rural and urban institutions. The youth of the Indian population arguably constitutes the most decisive asset in the knowledge economy. The mass-scale of Indian higher-education as well as the increasingly significant role of the private sector, are posing new challenges to regulatory bodies. The supply of graduates assumes great importance in twenty-first-century India. The enhancement and the modernization of the Indian higher-education system have been redefined as a national priority, …
Global trends in higher education: an unexpected convergence between France and India
International audience; We propose to examine an unexpected convergence between the higher education systems of two heterogeneous countries, namely France and India. After a brief comparative survey, we address the issue of the commodification of higher education in order to determine whether the latter evolution has been acknowledged, encouraged or opposed by governments. The modern setting in which higher education institutions operate is partly determined by GATS rules that govern international trade in higher education services, notably through the enhancement of new modes of delivery such as e-learning and distance education. We then extend our reflection to bridge the gap between Fran…
A review of Devenir Soi by Jacques Attali: through the lenses of liberalism and Buddhism
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret Attali’s worldview through the lenses of liberalism and Buddhism by mobilizing the relevant literature, beyond the mere book review. This paper is an essay based on the book “Devenir Soi” by Jacques Attali, published in France in 2014. These analytical grids were chosen, because freedom and self-realization are two themes that pervade the book. Design/methodology/approach – After presenting the book structure, the objective and the methodological approach, we uncover Attali’s interrogation, namely how to free oneself from the omnipresence of evil, the withering away of the State and growing xenophobic populist self-entitlement. We make …
Education, Growth and Development
The link between higher-education investment and growth is more relevant when a country’s economy is no longer based on imitation, and begins to rely instead, on innovation as the main engine for growth. The knowledge triangle – research, education and innovation – was a core factor in European efforts to meet the Lisbon strategy and its stated objective that knowledge should help the European economy become the most dynamic knowledge-based one in the world. The failure of the Lisbon strategy was later conducive to a new ambitious scheme, namely Horizon 2020. Human capital, when transposed to educational matters, helps put forward an assessment of the relevance of the neo-Schumpeterian view…
The French Higher Education Landscape
The French higher education system is characterized by its recent move towards the Bologna process with the autonomy granted to university and the adoption of the 3-5-8 (Bachelor, Master, PhD) architecture, and its enduring dualism between public universities and Grandes Ecoles with heated discussions concerning the efficiency of the system and the existence of possible research synergies between the two parallel systems. Public universities are currently undergoing a vast transformation process with the creation of the COMUE and clusters of competiveness. A SWOT analysis hints at the urgent need for French higher education institutions to adapt to the demands of internationalization and gl…
Crisis perception in financial media discourse:a concrete application using the Minskian/mainstream opposition
Purpose– The purpose of this article is to highlight the need for renewed collaborative efforts between linguists and economists to develop a multidisciplinary approach to discourse studies to single out, in the case at hand, how financial media discourse might reflect either a prevailing mainstream or a Minskian conceptual apparatus in financial crisis related papers.Design/methodology/approach– The paper conducts exploratory research by focusing on semantic analysis, so as to indicate how the latter might possibly indicate a shift in the prevailing framework in contemporary financial media discourse. After a clear exposition of a theoretical dichotomy between the Minskian and mainstream a…
Does Patriotic Vigilance Make Any Sense in the Transnational Arena? A Cosmopolitan Alternative to the Globalization Paradox
We address the issue of the relevance in the transnational arena of the concept of patriotic vigilance, as expressed by French Minister Arnaud Montebourg in 2014. Firstly, we examine the globalization paradox with its underpinnings in the literature and its illustration through the recent Alstom saga. Secondly, we review the idea of a paradigm shift in world monetary affairs signaled by the recent crisis. Finally, drawing on Kant’s ideas on cosmopolitism, we sketch out an alternative to the globalization paradox.