Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Abelardo Pithod, usual collaborator of our journal, presents a portrait of the work and biography of the personalist philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977), disciple of the phenomenological philosophers Husserl, Reinach and Scheler. In 1914 he converted to Catholicism, being his permanent ideal of life a deep searching for mankind’s transformation in Christ. The nature and value of human and religious love are two of his work’s most meaningful themes.

When analyzing the current state of the Argentine economy, politicians, journalists and economists use GDP growth as the main and sometimes most important variable to keep in mind. While that is correct in a first analysis, to remain in that primary level is consideredshortsighted by the author. Researchers such as Bourguignon (2004) have shown that a somewhat more comprehensive approach to analyzing the effectiveness of GDP growth in a society is to consider jointly the level of income inequality and poverty levels of society. According to the author, the growth of income, like income inequality and poverty levels of society are closely related.

Editorial

This paper attempts to contribute to the understanding of the ways people’s beliefs about the market economy shapes economic freedom. The paper integrates the notion of culture as ‘spirits of markets’ into the cross-country quantitative literature on culture and institutions by modelling it as a multi-dimensional system of beliefs about the market economy. It proposes that it is the consistency of beliefs, not the beliefs themselves, that may be ‘embedded’ in culture, and therefore the consistency of beliefs may be considered as a determinant of economic freedom. With more consistently distributed beliefs a consistent increase in economic freedom will create more ‘ideological losers” in the electorate, which creates a political entrepreneurial possibility to compensate them. As such compensation usually takes the form of a reduction in economic freedom, the implication is that those areas of economic freedom that are affected by this compensation will reflect less freedom in otherwise free countries. These proposition is supported by some statistical analyses with the areas of economic freedom as dependent variables and the measures of (in)consistency of market beliefs form the World Values Survey (European Values Study) as dependent ones.

The northwest of Argentina (NOA) is a region of the country that, throughout the years, has not defined a local identity. Its culture is the result of the superposition and the movement of the different groups of inhabitants that have lived in the territory. Therefore, the NOA presents itself as a space defined by diversity. Gaspar Risco, a recognized intellectual from Tucumán, explains that the different cultures occupied the territory by means of juxtapositionand not through dialogue with the preceding culture. The article also considers the interaction that the NOA has had with the rest of the country. Finally, the author calls upon a transformation of this region, oriented to the conformation of a unifying “us”, as a resultof intercultural dialogue.

Correspondence exchange between the Pope Benedict XVI and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown on the eve of the G20 Summit

Taking into account the provisions of the Catholic Social Teaching regarding the linkage between economic activity and moral behavior, one can see how the financial system as administrator of the country’s financial resources is necessarily close to the notion of commongood. However, access to the financial system is restricted to only a privileged few. As regards this, the author refers to microfinance as an alternative when facing the current global situation.

The Spanish university professor Josep M. Bricall analyses in this article the situation of education and research in the university, emphasizing its place in society and its issues. The current technological and market contexts modify and organize education and the objectives of the students that choose an education in the university. It is required to produce, use and divulge knowledge at the same time, establishing new relationships between the university and its context. Bricall offers a positive view of these changes, presenting the new circumstances as new opportunities and enriching challenges.

Book Review

Book Review