Study
The expansion of coca-cocaine markets in the Amazon is not solely attributable to state failure or criminal groups. This paper demonstrates how long-term development projects in the Amazon frequently result in the opening of agricultural frontiers, the attraction of settlers, and the transformation of the ecology. The unintended consequences of these state-development projects are the progressive impoverishment of local agricultural communities, the degradation of soil quality, and the deterioration of land security tenure. In this scenario, coca crops emerge as the most viable option for ensuring livelihoods.
Study
Digitalization is not limited to the legal economy. It also permeates illegal markets, improving the way people exchange goods and services while making detection much more difficult. For example, this research shows that perfectly legal apps are used to sell drugs. The experience of drug sellers and users is quite clear: apps like Telegram make drug market activity easier, faster, and safer. This article was the first to bring this phenomenon to light.
Website
The Swiss platform Stop Piracy provides reliable, fact-based information on counterfeiting and piracy, thereby making an important contribution to raising public awareness. The compact fact sheets are particularly helpful, as they clearly show how to recognise counterfeits and dubious online providers. Anyone who wants to deal with the topic not only theoretically but also practically will find an excellent point of contact here.
Book
If you want to understand how illegal markets work — and not just assume that they are merely the consequence of criminal organizations or failed states — this book offers a fresh perspective on hard-to-research economies. It pays attention to additional elements that constitute economies beyond the law, such as credit, infrastructure, social acceptance, and the meaning of commodities. It is the first serious attempt to conceptualize, classify, and suggest future research directions on illegal markets from a sociological perspective.
Book
As a journalist at the German business magazine WirtschafsWoche, Christof Schürmann has been critically monitoring corporate reporting for many years. He not only looks at general business and financial developments but also addresses related issues of accounting and financial reporting. He shows where there is room for manoeuvre and provides examples of how this can be exploited.
Study
For an additional economic perspective: the OECD study highlights the economic consequences of counterfeiting and piracy in Switzerland. It shows how severely export-oriented industries such as the watch and pharmaceutical industries are affected and provides up-to-date data on trade routes, damage costs and global contexts.
Film
If you want to know how opportunities encourage crime, we recommend the film The Wolf of Wall Street. The film is based on the story of stockbroker Jordan Belfort and is set in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. The scene of the crime is the barely regulated market for so-called penny stocks. The film shows how easy it was to manipulate the market and defraud unsuspecting customers at the time and how low the chance of getting caught was – especially when you lock the financial regulators away in ice-cold offices...
Wall Street stock gurus are making predictions again. Our columnist got into the game with a number he doesn’t believe.
New York Times Business
The deals would end years of efforts by Washington to force ByteDance to sell its US operations.
bbc
Die EU hat sich auf einen Kredit von 90 Milliarden Euro für die Ukraine geeinigt. Der Vorsitzende der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz, Wolfgang Ischinger, kritisiert die Art, wie der Kompromiss zustande kam. Moskau nehme die EU dadurch nicht ernst.Grieß, Thielko
Deutschlandfunk
Andrew Bailey says workers need to be trained to move into jobs that use AI, but adds it might not lead to mass unemployment.
bbc
From robotics to apps like “NerdXing,” senior Julianna Schneider is building technologies to solve problems in her community.
MIT
Andrew Mankus, MIT’s award-winning director of dining, describes why leading with a “students-first mentality” leads to better food offerings for the entire community.
MIT
At MIT, metallurgist Diran Apelian ScD ’73 urges engineers and researchers to rethink design, recycling, and the life cycle of modern materials.
MIT
CSAIL researchers find even “untrainable” neural nets can learn effectively when guided by another network’s built-in biases using their guidance method.
MIT
