In the new issue of economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, development experts and economic sociologists join editor Mariana Heredia to explore development in the 21st century across Latin America and beyond. From discussions of competing notions of development to development in the context of antitrust and competition policy, finance, informality, and productive planning, each contributor to the new issue revisits the topic from their own perspective.

Drawing on twenty-two interviews with debt managers and market participants, and documentary material, Arjen van der Heide analyses the rise to prominence of MTS (Mercato dei Titoli di Stato), an electronic platform for trading government bonds that has become a key feature of Europe’s government bond market infrastructure. It traces the emergence of MTS in Italy, its rapid diffusion through Europe and its limited (or even non-existent) success in gaining market share in Germany and the UK.

Andreas Maschke uses quantitative and qualitative text analyses to examine the discourse on the German current account surplus in seven national newspapers. The results show that the German surpluses are a controversial topic in the various newspapers.  Surprisingly, the newspapers published relatively few articles openly defending the German surpluses after 2014. The article discusses this finding and places it in the current literature on growth models in comparative political economy.

This year’s Scholar in Residence is Basak Kus, Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, who joins the MPIfG in March for a four-month stay. Kus teaches and writes about the interplay between the state, capitalism, and democracy, particularly in the United States, and how governments respond to crises and risks across fields such as finance, climate change, and national security.
The first lecture will take place on May 28. The next ones will follow on June 4 and 18.