Aim. Since the 2008 crisis, an increasing number of economists and commentators have been calling for fundamental reform of our monetary system and financial architecture. In particular, banks have been heavily criticised, and policy proposals include the demand to abolish banking. Such calls for monetary reform are not new. in 19th  century England, a policy debate among economists and policy-makers fell into two main camps, the so-called Currency and the Banking Schools. The former argues for centralisation of money issuance, the latter for decentralised money creation. Theses and methods. We show that present debates on reforming the monetary system, including introducing central bank digital currencies and a drastic shrinkage (if not elimination) of commercial banking, continue this familiar dichotomy, of which the protagonists seem unaware. in addition to pointing out that present-day debates about monetary reform merely restate the centuries-old positions of the Currency and Banking School protagonists, we argue that it is high time to resolve the dichotomy between the two schools. We do this by presenting and explaining an empirically successful compromise between the extreme positions of the two schools of thought that achieves the goals of both. Results. It consists of the successful decentralised banking structure of countries such as Germany, whose banks are mostly not-for-profit enterprises in public and/or local hands that lend mainly for productive business investment, while a central bank exists that can avoid crises by monitoring aggregate bank lending for non-GDP (asset) transactions. Conclusion. We believe this constitutes an important contribution to the present debate about the potential reform of national and international financial architectures.

Aim. The article substantiates the assumption of the emergence of a new form of money – digital quasimoney, as a means of payments and settlements. Method. The author discussed the role of the currency of the payment system as a national payment unit that has the property of conversion in national and international payment  systems. it  reveals  specific  examples  of  its  appearance  by  multiplying  private  currencies (cryptocurrencies) and their mutual conversion with the national digital currency at a fixed rate. Results. The author presented a theoretical explanation of the two-tier monetary system. Conclusion. Particularly, the author concluded that it leads to additional emission of money into intra-economic circulation, mobilizing the transformation of inventories and personal savings into investments, and makes it possible to strengthen protection from external funding restrictions.

This paper models the dynamics of technological change through the competitive interaction of two  firms. The duopolists strive to outperform each other by exploiting the two fundamental Schumpeterian forces of economic development: innovation and imitation. Method. By extending over a number of periods a technological “limit-pricing model” (whereby the “learning-by-doing effect” is the source of the barrier to entry) and assuming that the two firms compete following one another in the role of innovator and imitator. As result, it is possible to trace out the paths followed by the market shares of both producers and to derive endogenously a unit cost curve characterizing the industry in the long run. Conclusion. A further merit of the model presented herein is its representation of a “micro-macro transition phase” — viz., the passage from individual practice to industrial standard — through a simplified but, nonetheless, realistic depiction of behavioural routines.

Aim and subject. This article presents an overview of important developments in the Russian syndicated loans market. This market has become an essential source of funding for corporations, financial institutions, and projects aimed at the growth of the Russian economy. Method. The latest market data, legislative developments, and the main stages of executing a syndicated loan transaction are reviewed. Results. Loan structures utilized in the market are analyzed, including bridge loans, revolving credit facilities, term loans, pre-export finance facilities and project finance loans. Conclusion. The comparison of “local” and “international” syndicated loans is proposed, together with an overview of sustainable syndicated loans and technological developments affecting the loan market.

Aim and subject. This piece argues that the philosophical bedrock of conventional social science, including political economy, is a collection of over-aestheticized platitudes (viz., “the great books of the West”), whose common thread is, for the most part, a utilitarian and tritely moralistic appreciation of the human condition and human behaviour in general. in the search for an alternative poetic phenomenology, it is here proposed that the fiction of Leonardo Sciаscia (1921–1989) might be a more promising platform. Method. Social scientists would be better off taking their literary cues from the Sicilian writer, whose insights on the physiology of power are here, as a result, subdivided and analyzed in the following sections: the elevation of “Sicily” to a standard categorization of modern societies; a typological description of woman and men; the facelessness of Mass-Man; the functionalism of the Mafia; society and power, Justice; fictional narrative; and theology. Conclusion. Economists are interested in the work of Leonardо Sciascia when studying the problems of the incoming criminalization of the economy and the curtailment of the state (for example, in terms of issuing money), as well as the further merging of economic elites (oligarchy) with state power (plutocracy).