Octavian-Dragomir Jora

Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies | ASE · Department of International Economic Relations

After the decades-long global momentum toward constitutional democracy, we have seen its reversal in recent years as institutional and constitutional constraints on government have been weakened, and human rights have been afforded less protection. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic exigencies have put constitutional democracy to yet another tes...

Planet Earth, with its plethora of natural (im)balances, has a venerable age of 4.54 billion years; the (industrial) imprint placed by the human species on it, considered to be not negligible, counts of just little over two centuries; while the digital/IT&C/virtual existence of man, in what we call cyberspace, is reduced to just a few decades. An a...

The present paper is a defense of the free-market economy/capitalism as a proper institutional setting for both producing and preserving cultural goods. We argue that culture is best served by a framework in which economic agents can evaluate their cultural consumption and production in a market order based on private property rights and monetary p...

The European Union (EU) remains one of the leading-edge jurisdictions on the planet in legislating and enforcing the circular economy, a token of its forthright environmental awareness. Still, given that the level of economic development across the EU member states is heterogenous, this concern, however generous it may be, looks too beyond “their”...

The Visio Journal No. 5 features four papers exploring the economic implications of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic for the citizens, workers, households, businesses, state budgets, and economies.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a praised and promoted business behavior nowadays, widely understood as the entrepreneurs’ and managers’ attempts to make amends for some of the excesses that their economic activities bring about, for instance with regard to environmental negative externalities or to public ecological assets under-provision...

This paper is an interdisciplinary analysis of the benefits and limits of political competition. We start from the economic theory of monopoly and extend its implications on matters concerning political action. If the state is defined as the institution that holds the monopoly on coercion over a given territory, are the democratic selection process...

In the highly-digitalized modern world of the 21st century, the citizens, private sector and government alike face a growing challenge of securing cyberspace. Cyber threats and attacks pose as one of the newest and ever-growing security issues. On the one hand, faced with swiftly developing technologies, digitalization of communication and spread o...

The concept of cultural heritage covers the tangible and intangible things bequeathed from the past generations along with a spiritual signification, beyond any other serviceableness. Anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and aesthetes are the critical reviewers of the field, while legalists and economists contribute with their own concerns:...

The scope of this paper is to explore if the free market and its corollaries - private property and the freedom to trade both nationally and internationally - are compatible with the conservation, search and optimal use of heritage goods. Our argument starts from the fact that culture is not a free-floating wraith but a set of tangible and intangib...

The "circular economy" package put forward by the European Commission in 2015 is an ambitious plan in the area of environmental protection. The aim of this legal framework is to replace what is nowadays referred to as the "linear economy", in which people consume and throw away, with an economic system which supposedly reuses all its available reso...

In spite of the apparent general consensus, both economic theory in abstracto and the political practice in the realm of competition are looked upon from (too) many perspectives. Far from being convergent or even complementary, the "theories" and "policies" are rather contradictory and conflicting "in" and "between" them. Nominally subsumed to the...

The adagio “Chinese Characteristics”, put next to “Socialism” or “Capitalism”, aims at both the originality, the uniqueness of post-1978 China’s societal transformation process, as well as at the inner, intimate struggle of ideas accompanying it. Along with the debates on whether we are witnessing a success story or just another epic misapprehensio...

Mature capitalism and market economy realities become intelligible also by scrutinizing their "prodigal children": modern business corporations. But these are not some undivided entities. Beyond the place in the global division of labour, they are fiefs of in-built specialization among the corporate governance stakeholders, each of them representin...

This paper intends to draw the attention on the very subtle consequences of the corruption in the operational field, the deviation from the institutional arrangement in use. We will not insist for example on the subject according to which "the public domain", as expression of the "joint property", but also of the "tragedy of the commons" may be con...

In the corporative realm of the organization of firms, endemic to modern capitalist economy, a common allegation is that "limited liability", State historically allowed for political or fiscal reasons, would (though asymmetrically) incite stockholders and managers to overconfidence in their characteristic profit-driven endeavours. It is asserted th...

The issue of monetary disintegration gains an increasing place in the interest of political economists and policy makers alike. Until recently, the process through which two states that previously shared a common currency decide to abandon it and choose national currencies instead was a marginal and accidental event in history. It was met in the ca...

Moral hazard defines the situation when the rightful owners of scarce resources are hampered by their entrusted agents from allocating these resources as they see fit, the later ones speculating not only the ubiquitous asymmetry of information, but the limitations, as coming from various state regulations, that impede the free and as complete as po...

In the present paper, we identify the corporation in its ultimate, proprietary meaning (as an expression of an aggregate of resources owned by shareholders and used according to their allocating-entrepreneurial vision), homogenizing, in some way, the entrepreneurial-capitalistic-managerial "interests" from within itself and, this time, treating the...

Sub această tematică, OECONOMICA a decis să lanseze o discuţie pe care o considerăm a fi deopotrivă şi de o eternă actualitate, precum şi de un ordin conceptual superior dezbaterilor mai convenţionale astăzi şi găzduite de ştiinţa economiei (le avem în vedere pe cele numite uzual „practice”, respectiv, „teoretice”): un dialog epistemologic.­

This paper starts from the faith and conviction that the intellectual adventured in the social sciences who is not supported by a logically consistent and naturally realistic (political) “philosophy”, a logically consistent and naturally realistic “ethics”, will enter “unarmed” the arena of scientific knowledge, while he will enter, if interested,...

In this paper we will briefly comment on the political philosophy (that is, considering the relationship among various types of normative judgments – as those of moral, ethic, legal nature) and on the political economy (that is a critique of interventionist policies, in a means-ends dialectics) of the regulatory setup orchestrated by public authori...

In our four parts intended study, we will try to give a brief account on three of the pivotal perspectives on property as developed and operated by maybe the most coherent and self consistent liberal school of economics and law: the Austrian School (AS).

A proven fact though is that an “economic crisis” is also an “intellectual crisis” in the economists tribe. For almost a century economists didn’t manage to reach a consensus on the final cause and perfect answer to such economic troubles. Mainstreamers say there is neither bubble nor boom-bust cycles, just complex states of the economy, due to aty...

The fallibility of the “efficiency” concept as developed by the neoclassical economists (in a non-personal and non-subjective perspective) laid the foundations for an allegedly objective and value-free – but, de facto, a meaningless, nonrealistic and arbitrary – perspective on law-as-a-social-wealth-maximizer-device. The acquis of the Austrian Scho...

The analyses carried out both at the centre (Brussels) and at the destination (member states) (ab)use of the principle that in public expenditure terms “spent money means well-spent money” and consider that absorption capacity equals economic performance (equated quite disputably with disparity reduction). The aggregate Keynesian perspective provid...

This paper aims to shed light on the following issues: country-specific/country cluster-specific approaches to competitiveness; alternative routes to competitiveness, relying either on national strategies or business endeavour or both; instrument types – institutions and policies – as well as orientation to improve national competitiveness; perform...

Prezenta lucrare argumenteaza ca procesul de integrare al Romaniei in Uniunea Europeana a modificat in mod fundamental natura si instrumentele interventionismului public. Dincolo de preluarea acquis-ului comunitar, respectiv a cadrului legislativ de ansamblu, integrarea a modificat si mecanismele specifice de guvernanta, de la structura institution...

At the beginning of the 80’s one South American dictator had discovered economic freedom, while Europe’s democracies were refining the Bismarckian objective of intergeneration dependency. Enlightened by the economist José Piñera, an unknown figure at the time, he had realized that pensions were supposed to be responsible savings and not a discretio...

Adoptarea euro intr-un stat membru al Uniunii Europene este grevata de necesitatea respectarii, intre altele, poate chiar in primul rand, a unor criterii de natura bugetar-fiscala care, implicit, limiteaza spatiul de manevra al guvernelor nationale. Cel putin in ultimii patru ani, indisciplina sistematica in domeniu a devenit un modus vivendi peric...

Un academic – fie el denumit astfel din raţiuni de patalama apostilată de autorităţi tutelare sau doar dotat cu o trăire intelectuală cumva mai auto-disciplinată, fie el închipuit de sine ori de alţii ca “realist” sau ca “umanior”, fie el cu “pedigree” în spiritul vremurilor şi curentelor teoretico-ideologice dominante sau, dimpotrivă, vreun dizide...

În momente precum cele din prezent, de înciudare ori, dimpotrivă, de smerenie pentru comunitatea economistă, ŒCONOMICA îşi propune să urnească o discuţie, fără aroganţa pretenţiei pionieratului sau unicităţii, pe care, cu titlu cumva euristic, am putea-o sintetiza ca „problema continuum-ului sau discontinuum-ului normativ-pozitiv în analitica econo...

In our four parts intended study, we will try to give a brief account on three of the pivotal perspectives on property as developed and operated by maybe the most coherent and self consistent liberal school of economics and law: the Austrian School (AS).

Există o deferenţă contraproductivă (cumva peste cea necesară, ce ar ţine de civilitate) prin care economiştii de la poalele Olimpului ghildei noastre se opresc la a cita cu nesaţ elaborate teoretice doar pentru că acestea au primit avizul de calitate al “democraţiei academice semizeie”. Definim “Olimpul” ca suma elitelor încununate cu cea mai înal...

In our four parts intended study, we will try to give a brief account on three of the pivotal perspectives on property as developed and operated by maybe the most coherent and self consistent liberal school of economics and law: the Austrian School (AS).

Liberalizare suplimentară sau neo-dirijism selectiv? Întrebarea rămâne identică şi atunci când se caută vinovaţii pentru stările de supărătoare alternanţă avânt-declin (boom-bust) din economie, şi atunci când se caută remediile, recuperarea, relansarea. În prezentul crizei economice globale, ideea însăşi de „tranziţie”, una care a făcut şcoală pe l...

Economia lumii, singularul unui plural încă eterogen (economiile lumii), în ciuda tendinţei istorice de a (re)apropia naţiunile (una încă schizoidă din pricina obsesiei guvernămintelor de a obţine deschiderea celorlalţi pe fondul reziduului de intervenţionism / protecţionism asupra alor lor), este, cu atât mai mult în prezent, agora discuţiei şi di...

Dacă universul zis fizic, de deasupra sau dedesubtul cuantelor, se lasă cu greu pătruns, din motive ce ţin de putinţa de a bate către infinitul mare sau cel mic, lumea relaţiilor interumane, în ciuda scării „tocmai bune” de investigaţie, ar fi rămas cea mai frustrantă parte ne-deplin cunoscută a realităţii „observabile”. S-au trecut – deducând, ind...

Ciclul crizei? În primul rând, economia e în eroare de alocare, generalizată de optimismul neştiinţei şi al hazardului moral instituţionalizat (unii au luat credite imobiliare “otrăvite din neglijenţă” (şi acordarea, şi luarea!), “sofisticatorii” au sub-subfacturat riscul din aceeaşi neglijenţă, creând derivate cu “chirpici” activ-bază!), statele a...

In our four parts intended study, we will try to give a brief account on three of the pivotal perspectives on property as developed and operated by maybe the most coherent and self consistent liberal school of economics and law: the Austrian School (AS).

The fallibility of the "efficiency " concept as developed by the neoclassical economists (in a non-personal and non-subjective perspective) laid the foundations for an allegedly objective and value-free - but, de facto, a meaningless, non- realistic and arbitrary - perspective on law-as-a-social-wealth-maximizer-device. The acquis of the Austrian S...