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In this study, the authors use a country-level database covering 63 economies over the period 2014–2019 and employ a wide range of proxies to discuss new technological trends in finance, particularly in the banking sector. The authors also distinguish alternative technology-based business models that directly compete with banks [financial technology (fintech) and giant technology (bigtech) credit providers]. The results suggest that banks’ increased focus on technological innovation, as measured by market value and number of patents, is a possible response to the emerging technology-based nonbank competition, particularly from fintech and bigtech firms. Additionally, the results indicate that the emergence of financial innovation contributes negatively to the average value of bank patent, indicating significant competitive pressure on banks in the technological race. Thus, banks are countering the challenge of fintech and bigtech competition in the financial market by increasing their technology projects and patenting activities. These trends are crucial and may change the stability and sustainability perspectives of banks.

Field theory is one of the most visible approaches in the new political sociology of science, and Fligstein & McAdam’s (F&M) Theory of Fields is the most visible recent attempt to further it. This paper evaluates F&M’s theory of field transformation by comparing it with Berman’s (2012a) field-based explanation of the changes in the field of US academic science. While F&M’s general framework is quite useful, their explanation, which focuses on struggles between incumbents and challengers over whose conception of the field should dominate, does not map neatly onto the changes in academic science, which saw no such field-level struggles. This suggests that tools are also needed for explaining new settlements that do not result from intentional efforts to establish them. In particular, the case of US academic science shows that local innovations with practices based on alternative conceptions of the field can lead to field-level change. Attention to the interaction between local practice innovations and larger environments provides insights into how change ripples across fields, as well as the ongoing contention and dynamism within even relatively stable fields.

In this chapter, we argue for an essential dualism in the U.S. economy; there are simultaneously institutional sources of dynamism and institutional patterns that portend a process of decay and decline. This dualism corresponds to a growing divide between innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises and big corporations – both financial and nonfinancial – that are increasingly predatory in their business strategies. Surprisingly, firms on both sides of the divide are increasingly dependent on government. The small- and medium-sized firms rely heavily on government science and technology programs to help them innovate. The large firms need government to protect their position. Whether dynamism or decay will prove to be stronger, we think, is contingent on political choices that will be made over the next ten years. This contingency, in turn, makes it easier to understand the highly polarized nature of partisan politics in the United States today.

This paper views the housing and credit bubble 2001–2008 as a sequence starting with a financial innovation in 2001 followed by the superimposition of other financial innovations leading to the prevalence of uncertainty in Knight's sense and ending in the last quarter of 2008 with both market failure and regulation failure. To the extent that financial innovations were an important factor in the development of the bubble, the most obvious question is whether anything can be done to prevent destabilizing innovations from entering the market. The paper outlines a policy proposal to keep pace with financial innovation and strike a balance between innovation and financial stability.

This chapter seeks to look at the most important trends in international relations and global affairs spurred by the coronavirus crisis, and its long-term repercussions. In this analysis the author adapts the current biopolitical scholarship to such disciplines as security studies, foreign policy analysis, international relations and regional studies, and world politics and globalization. The chapter starts with discussing the biopolitics of the coronavirus crisis from a security perspective that requires a juxtaposition of COVID-19 emergency with some other securitized biopolitical events and experiences such as the war on terror and the refugee crisis. When it comes to the global level, the analysis includes the new roles of global organizations and their contribution to the fight against COVID-19. Another perspective is grounded in the discussions on the idea of “the international” and the reverberations of COVID-19 for the entire system of inter-state/inter-governmental/trans-national relations, including its regional dimensions. From the viewpoint of national foreign policies, the pandemic can be viewed as a global calamity producing new forms of diplomatic activity that significantly re-actualize and expand the concepts of biodiplomacy and health diplomacy.

The paper adopts an organizational perspective to explore the conditions of possibility of the recent re-emergence of overt class-based discourse on one hand, epitomized by the ‘We are the 99%’ movement, and the rise on the other hand of a populist, nativist and sometimes overtly fascist right. It is argued that these phenomena, reflecting the increasingly crisis-prone character of global capitalism, the growing gap between rich and poor and a generalized sense of insecurity, are rooted in the dismantling of socially embedded organizations through processes often described as ‘financialization’, driven by the taken-for-granted dominance of neoliberal ideology. The paper explores the rise to dominance of the neoliberal ‘thought style’ and its inherent logic in underpinning the dismantling and restructuring of capitalist organization. Its focus is upon transnational value chain capitalism which has rebalanced power relations in favour of a small elite that is able to operate and realize wealth in ways that defy and often succeed in escaping the regulation of nation states.

In this chapter, we approach and examine the issue of innovation as applied to family and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cyprus, using, for research purposes, a structured questionnaire addressed to the particular type of business through mapping and grouping of the sample. The analysis concerns the periods 2015–2017, which are interesting due to the economic conditions that prevailed in the market in general. In this chapter, innovation is analyzed at both the policy level of the European Union and the institutional level. In particular, we examine the institutional dimensions of innovation in SMEs in Cyprus, such as, for example, the issue of financing, as well as the barriers often encountered by the companies in implementing innovative products, services or solutions. The chapter ends with interesting conclusions and an attempt to discuss future research extensions in the field of the institutional analysis of innovation.

Both consumer and corporate credit ratings agencies played a major role in the US subprime mortgage crisis. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion deployed a formalized scoring system to assess individuals in mortgage origination, mortgage pools then were assessed for securitization by Moody's, S&P, and Fitch relying on expert judgment aided by formal models. What can we learn about the limits of formalization from the crisis? We discuss five problems responsible for the rating failures – reactivity, endogeneity, learning, correlated outcomes, and conflict of interest – and compare the way consumer and corporate rating agencies tackled these difficulties. We conclude with some policy lessons.