Herman Mark Schwartzis Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the author of In the Dominions of Debt, States vs. Markets, and Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble . He has edited several volumes and published numerous articles on economic development in the nineteenth century, the development of the global economy since 1500, the marketization of the welfare state, and the causes and consequences of the US housing bubble. A record of his publications can be found here.

February 25, 2023

Reviews

Money as Empire?

On Perry Mehrling’s “Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System”

Money makes the world go round, or as Karl Marx put it, Geldgespräche, Quatsch-Spaziergänge. How does this work at the global or international level? Perry Mehrling’s elegantly written biography of the MIT economist Charles Poor Kindleberger illuminates the relationship between…

January 4, 2023

Analysis

The Nokia Risk

Small countries, big firms, and the end of the fifth Schumpetarian wave

In the early 2000s, Finland was the darling of industrial and employment policy analysts everywhere. This small country with a population of 5.5 million and a GDP roughly equal to the state of Oregon experienced what looked like a high…

November 4, 2021

Analysis

Manufacturing Stagnation

Intellectual property, industrial organization, and economic growth

$5.3 trillion of US federal government stimulus and relief spending have returned the economy to its pre-Covid growth trajectory. But that growth trajectory was hardly robust—either before or after the 2008 financial crisis. Nor was the slow decay of GDP…

July 16, 2020

Analysis

The Dollar and Empire

How the US dollar shapes geopolitical power

What does the US dollar’s continued dominance in the global monetary and financial systems mean for geo-economic and geo-political power?