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The purpose of this paper is to offer an explanation of the predominance of austerity policies in Europe based on distinct crisis narratives and their underlying market metaphors in public speeches and addresses of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a broader audience of economic decision-makers.

The author uses discourse and metaphor analysis of speeches and addresses of Angela Merkel in the aftermath of the crisis applying cognitive metaphor theory in combination with a corpus linguistic approach.

Dominant conceptual metaphors in Merkel’s crisis narrative subordinate policy-making to superior “market mechanisms”, which are attributed with human and natural characteristics. Moral focus of crisis narrative of “living-beyond-ones-means” forces austerity policies.

The analysis is restricted to public speeches of Merkel, whereas the impact on public discourses was not analyzed.

The paper offers an explanation for the prevalence of neoliberal policies in the Eurozone and the uneven balances of political power in public economic discourses.

Study of the role of “market metaphors” in crisis narratives of influential political leaders as well as an analysis of the impact of discursive manifestations and conceptual market metaphors for economic crisis policies.

Since 2008, Greece has been spiralling down an economic and socio-political crisis. Over the past decade, it has endured massive riots, consecutive elections, a debilitating public debt, and endless rescue plans by the EU and other international bodies. The crisis sparked an intense interest in the Greek public discourse, which is often accused of being dominated by populist rhetoric. This interest appears to be accompanied predominantly by a certain leitmotif: instead of appreciating the assistance offered, the Greek people resent it and taking refuge in populist rhetoric, further undermining the country’s stability. This echoes the age-old argument that ‘the people are an irrational mob acting impulsively, a lamentable state that should be cured or disciplined.’ Could the shaming, the appeal to sober morality – branding all other discourses as populist and dangerous – be the fashionable response of a cosmopolitan elite, high-profile pundits and institutions to the problems of global capitalism? The debate raged in the public sphere and in the streets of Athens. On multiple occasions, the crisis was used as a trope in the European public sphere to justify socio-political changes, austerity measures and disciplinary actions. The emerging schema juxtaposed populist/anti-populist discourses, reducing discourses and identities to black and white. This chapter reads discursive constructions of the Greek crisis, by-stepping the populist/anti-populist divide. Using analysis based on affect theory and the philosophy of emotions, it investigates the various uses of resentment as part of affective engineering and as an instrument of collective identification, in an environment of multiple overlapping crises in Europe.

It could be argued that the sign of ‘maturity’ of an academic paradigm is when it moves to some kind of integration with existing theories or re-engages with elements which may initially have been perceived as ‘dangerous’ or antithetical to the original demarcation of the area. As with the re-integration of feminism and reproduction, and disability and embodiment, so perhaps also for the social study of childhood and family research. The necessary political emphasis on the agency and voice of the child in the emerging social study of childhood research may well have been overstating the case (Seymour & McNamee, 2012) and ignoring significant structural and generational impediments in children’s relationships and interactions particularly in domestic spaces. To redress this, as occurred with feminist and disability studies, a contemporary standpoint is required which merges an emancipatory agentic approach to the subject of study with conceptual developments from the previously separated substantive area. This chapter will outline the development of the return of children ‘back into the families’ which has occurred in the last decade. It will show how approaches using family practices, personal lives, family display and generagency can be combined with privileging children’s perspectives and voices at home.

Measurement of diminishing or divergent cross section dispersion in a panel plays an important role in the assessment of convergence or divergence over time in key economic indicators. Econometric methods, known as weak σ-convergence tests, have recently been developed (Kong, Phillips, & Sul, 2019) to evaluate such trends in dispersion in panel data using simple linear trend regressions. To achieve generality in applications, these tests rely on heteroskedastic and autocorrelation consistent (HAC) variance estimates. The present chapter examines the behavior of these convergence tests when heteroskedastic and autocorrelation robust (HAR) variance estimates using fixed-b methods are employed instead of HAC estimates. Asymptotic theory for both HAC and HAR convergence tests is derived and numerical simulations are used to assess performance in null (no convergence) and alternative (convergence) cases. While the use of HAR statistics tends to reduce size distortion, as has been found in earlier analytic and numerical research, use of HAR estimates in nonparametric standardization leads to significant power differences asymptotically, which are reflected in finite sample performance in numerical exercises. The explanation is that weak σ-convergence tests rely on intentionally misspecified linear trend regression formulations of unknown trend decay functions that model convergence behavior rather than regressions with correctly specified trend decay functions. Some new results on the use of HAR inference with trending regressors are derived and an empirical application to assess diminishing variation in US State unemployment rates is included.

The aim of the study is to determine the key development stages of small entrepreneurship in Belarus depending on the impact of reformative activity of authorities on socio-innovative activity of entrepreneurs. Also we seek to determine the projective behavioral strategies of entrepreneurs in the context of contradictory socio-economic processes in Belarus.

Historico-sociological approach to the development of small entrepreneurship in Belarus is based on the analysis of books, articles, official documents and official statistics available mostly in the Russian and Belarusian languages. Expert survey is used as the most effective method of survey to predict further development of small entrepreneurship. Within the framework of the activity-structure concept, (T. Zaslavskaya) combination of both approaches allows presenting quantitative and qualitative changes in business structures in order to coordinate socio-economic progress.

In Belarusian transition economy the reformative activity of the authorities is absolutely dependent on politico-administrative influence. That is why the behavioral strategies of entrepreneurs are formed as reaction-adaptive behavior under mounting pressure of state policy.

The results are primarily applicable for post-Soviet republics and countries with transition economy.

This paper implies that in post-Soviet economies like Belarus socio-economic integration of entrepreneurs is overly dependent on politico-administrative activity of the authorities.

This study includes two approaches: historico-sociological and expert survey as a forecasting method. This sociological approach gives the opportunity to characterise the continuity in behavioral strategies of entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to contribute to entrepreneurship theorising by highlighting the salience of feminine caring positions in creating novel entrepreneurial roles and investigating how these roles contribute to community resilience. Using a critical feminist economics lens, alternative conceptualisations of the economy are expanded upon to reveal how an economic externality influences entrepreneurial discourse, gender roles and community resilience.

In this interpretive approach, empirical evidence is drawn from six months of intensive ethnographic research with 20 tourism handicraft micro-entrepreneurs in Crete and Epirus, Greece, in 2012 and hence in the context of a macroeconomic crisis. Ethnographic interviewing and participant observation are used as the methods to achieve the research objectives.

Thematic analysis is used to investigate how gender roles and entrepreneurial roles interact and how this interaction influences community resilience to an economic crisis. Using the critical theory to critique neoclassical economics interpretations of entrepreneurship, it becomes evident that politico-economic structures perpetuating feminised responsibility for social reproduction configure feminine entrepreneurial roles, and these roles have a positive effect on increasing community resilience. By conceptualising entrepreneurial involvement as being primarily for community gain, participants highlight how feminine entrepreneurial discourse differs from the neoclassical economics entrepreneurial discourse of entrepreneurial involvement being primarily for individual gain.

This paper contributes to theoretical advancements on the role of gender in entrepreneurship and community resilience by investigating the entrepreneurs’ gendered responses to an exogenous shock. Providing insight into the role gender has in entrepreneurial adaptation and sustainable business practices means that new policies to combat social exclusion and promote rural development can be formulated.

The theoretical interplay between gender and entrepreneurship is investigated from a novel angle, that of critical feminist economics. The relationship between feminised interpretations of entrepreneurship and community resilience is brought to light, providing a unique insight into entrepreneurial resilience.

This chapter discusses the evolution of German views on public debt 1850–1920, referring to three strands of secondary literature: (1) German retrospectives on public finance, (2) the historical literature with a public choice perspective, and (3) contributions to public/constitutional law, mainly referring to Lorenz von Stein. The skeptic view of public debt endorsed by authors of the second half of the period is shown to be related to politico-economic issues of state agency combined with new state functions, rather than to the rejection of Dietzel’s Proto-Keynesian macroeconomic reasoning.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.