Digital Commons Network^™

Green Runs: Colorado Cannabis Sales During Ski Season, Joshua H. Hess, Isabellle Bassock

Faculty Publications

This study examines the impact of ski tourism on Colorado’s retail marijuana (RMJ) sales, leveraging county-level sales data and ski resort characteristics. Using a two-way fixed effects model, we analyze seasonal variations in RMJ sales across counties with differing ski resort acreages. Our findings indicate that ski resort counties experience significant increases in RMJ sales during peak ski months (December–March), with the most prominent effects observed in counties with the largest ski resorts. The largest ski resort county– Summit County– sees an estimated seasonal increase of $4.35 million in RMJ sales. We estimate the isolated extra-state ski tourism effects and …

Strategic Decision-Making For Greenomina Decarbonization Efforts At Pt Pertamina (Persero), Fransisca Fitriastuti, Yos Sunitiyoso

BISNIS & BIROKRASI: Jurnal Ilmu Administrasi dan Organisasi

This study explores the strategic decision-making process in implementing Greenomina, a digital transformation platform developed by PT Pertamina (Persero), a reputable state-owned energy company in Indonesia, to support decarbonization initiatives through carbon emission tracking and management. The analysis draws upon two frameworks: the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and the Digital Transformation Canvas (DTC). Greenomina primarily targets Scope 3 emissions, or indirect emissions from business travel and activities, by enabling employees to measure, document, and offset their carbon footprints. This study employed a qualitative approach, combining in-depth interviews and document analysis. The findings highlight key components of a successful digital business …

Business Communication Barriers In An Export-Oriented Company: A Case Study Of Pt. Xyz, Sartika Ekadyasa, Arius Krypton

Jurnal Administrasi Bisnis Terapan

This study examines business communication barriers faced by PT. XYZ, an export-oriented company engaged in international business cooperation. Using a qualitative case study approach, data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, documentation, and literature review. The findings indicate that business communication is influenced by multiple interrelated barriers, including socio-anthro-psychological, technical, and ecological factors, which affect communication effectiveness during coordination, negotiation, and relationship management with foreign business partners. These barriers shape the quality of mutual understanding, trust, and operational efficiency in cross-border interactions. The study highlights the importance of integrated communication strategies that address social, cultural, psychological, technical, and environmental dimensions …

The Trek With Telos: A Rememberance Ofpaul Piccone (January 19, 1940—July 12,2004), Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Two Wars, Two Movements: Iraq In Light Of Vietnam, Tom Wells

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

From Participatory Democracy To Digital Democracy, Mark Kann

Fast Capitalism

Tom Hayden posted on his website, http://www.tomhayden.com, an article he coauthored with Dick Flacks to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Port Huron Statement. The two SDS founders concluded, “Perhaps the most important legacy of the Port Huron Statement is the fact that it introduced the concept of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice.” The concept of participatory democracy encompassed values such as equality, decentralization, and consensus decision-making. It provided direction for “all those trying to create a world where each person has a voice in the decisions affecting his or her life.” [1] In this article, I suggest …

Abject Futures: The (Re)Negotiation Of Nafta And The Canadian Power Elite, Dean Ray

Fast Capitalism

This paper draws upon the critical political economy tradition in Canada to examine the renegotiation of NAFTA and the class interests at work in the final agreement. It draws on a range of ethnographic and media sources in its argumentation. The paper provides a comprehensive review of Canadian Political Economy before it turns to the negotiation and the actions of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. It is argued that Freeland was adept at appearance management and manipulating media presentations of herself to make the negotiation seem more laboured then it was. In the end, the agreement protected Canada's crown jewel, …

Neoliberalism, Nafta, And Dehumanization: The Case Of Femicides In Ciudad Juárez, Denisa Krasna, Sagar Deva

Fast Capitalism

The overarching focus of this paper is on the way in which the neoliberalism inherent in the international institutional order produces dehumanisation in the third world and the way in which this dehumanisation manifests itself in direct loss of human life through exploitation and even murder. This paper is split into two main parts, the first of which gives a theoretical and general overview of how neoliberalism has both dominated and dehumanised the international institutional order and the second part of the paper gives a more in-depth case study of this phenomena, focusing on how NAFTA has engendered femicides in …

Twenty-Five Years And Still Recovering: A Brief Reflection On Nafta's Impact On Southside, Virginia, Sandra Via

Fast Capitalism

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a detrimental effect on Southside, Virginia. Southside, Virginia, particularly Martinsville, VA and Henry County, VA served as a hub for the furniture and textile industries, such as Bassett Furniture and Bassett-Walker Apparel, in the United States. After NAFTA's implementation, these companies eliminated jobs and moved manufacturing overseas to China or across the border to Mexico where they could exploit low wage workers. Neglecting the social responsibility that these corporations had to the workers that had built their companies and made their products world renown, manufacturers closed their doors leaving workers without …

Introduction: The Contradictions Of Opposition To Free Trade, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

David Arditi is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. His research addresses the impact of digital technology on society and culture with a specific focus on music. Arditi is author of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the digital era. Arditi serves as Editor of Fast Capitalism. In 2016, he developed MusicDetour, a local music archive available for everyone to stream free music.

Neoliberal Fascism As The Endpoint Of Casino Capitalism, Henry Giroux

Fast Capitalism

This article explores neoliberal fascism as a distinctive political formation within the current historical moment. In doing so, it first analyzes neoliberalism as a project that has since the 1970s destroyed all the commanding institutions of democracy while consolidating power in the hands of a financial elite. In addition, it analyzes neoliberalism as a movement, that produces and legitimates massive economic inequality and suffering, privatizes public goods, dismantles essential government agencies, and individualizes all social problems. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism creates the conditions for right wing extremists to mobilize the anger of white disenfranchised working class populations by both appealing …

The Modern-World System: Europe Or Asia? Fernand Braudel & André Gunder Frank, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University

Charles Lemert is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University and will soon publish: Americans Thinking America; The Bottom Turtle: Silence and Society; and. with Immanuel Wallerstein: Living Progressively in a Transitional Time.

The Solace Of The Sojourn: Towards A Praxis-Oriented Phenomenological Methodology And Ethics Of Deep Travel In Martin Heidegger's Sojourns

Fast Capitalism

This article focuses on Martin Heidegger's little read travel journal, Sojourns (1962), and explores how it yields surprisingly fruitful insights into our contemporary era of neoliberal globalization via its implicit exploration of the complex interconnections between travel, phenomenology, and ethics. Specifically, I posit that Sojourns contains an implicit praxis-oriented phenomenological methodology and ethics of global travel that together gesture towards a coherent practice of "deep travel," which American literature scholar Cinzia Schiavini aptly defines as "a vertical movement in a closed space which starts from the surface of the land and goes backward in time, searching for the hidden social …

Bound To Capitalism: The Pursuit Of Profit And Pleasure In Digital Pornography, Jennifer Miller

Fast Capitalism

This paper explores digital pornography dialectically through a case study of Kink.com, an online BDSM subscription service. It considers the tension between discourses of authenticity that seek to obscure profit motive and shifts in content prompted by market considerations.

Author Biography

Jennifer Miller, University of Texas at Arlington

Jennifer Miller is an interdisciplinary scholar and cultural theorist who researches children's picture books. She has published in the Journal of Homosexuality, the edited collection Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between, and is currently working on a book length project under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.

Max Weber's Odyssey: The Wild West, The Frontier, And The Capitalist Spirit, David Norman Smith

Fast Capitalism

This article examines one aspect of Weber's thinking with respect to the United States: his view of frontier regions as new horizons for capitalism. This was not an incidental or side issue for Weber, whose famed analysis of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was only half-finished when he traveled through the United States in 1904. Nor is Weber's outlook on this topic immaterial for contemporary historians, many of whom now affirm quasi-Weberian views under such rubrics as "the New Western" history. A full account of Weber's notion of the frontier would exceed the limits of a journal …

Divining Domination: Steve Bannon As A Political Mystagogue, Tony Allen Feldmann

Fast Capitalism

Right-wing commentators (on tv, radio, newspapers, documentaries, or the internet) are often considered a source of misinformation and radicalization in American politics. Understanding the role of such commentators in the political sphere has taken on new significance since the election of Trump, who regularly takes talking points as well as political advice from prominent figures in right-wing media. The purpose of these political "shock jocks" also extends beyond mere political commentary: They offer their audience a framework for understanding the world. This framework contains certain reified perceptions of society and history. Durkheim and those working in his tradition have long …

Sociopoetics In The Works Of Shakespeare, Thomas Bechtold

Fast Capitalism

This study is meant to develop an immanent critique following the dialogism of socio-poetics in the literary criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin. Socio-poetics in the reception and composition of Shakespeare's works reflect the first intimations of social and political transformation to a modern nationalized society from a premodern feudal society. This study explores Shakespeare's use of metaphor through his dramatizations and characterizations at the dawn of modernity and the decline of feudalism: identifying contradictions and tensions that intimate this transformation in English society and language, and, providing an approach to this globalizing language that partakes in simultaneous modes of confabulation and …

The Sorrows Of Modern Subjectivity: Capital, Infinity Disease, And Werther's Hysterical Neurois, Christopher Altamura

Fast Capitalism

In this article I analyze Werther, the protagonist of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. I argue that Werther and his sorrows must be understood within the context of the unique configuration of alienation(s) present in modern societies, characterized by the sui generis combination of capital, egoism and anomie, and asceticism. Further, I argue the sociologically alienating conditions of modern societies create neurotic subjects of repression who lack compensatory symbols of moral worth, which drives them to pursue equivalent signification via fantasy. Finally, I argue that Werther represents an extreme case of hysterical neurosis emanating from …

Portfolio Performance Evaluation Benchmark: A Note

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Jones and Swaleheen (2014, this journal) examine the performance of an equity portfolio in a student managed investment fund and document the outperformance of the portfolio relative to the S&P 500 index on an absolute basis. We show that the apparent outperformance of the portfolio is due to using the index without its dividend component. Once we use the S&P 500 total return as the benchmark, the outperformance of the equity portfolio disappears. We explain why the S&P 500 total return should be used in this case, and propose and justify two alternative proxies for the S&P 500 total return.

Gender-Based Trading: Evidence From A Classroom Experiment

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Is there a difference in the trading behavior of men and women? The question stems from research suggesting that men tend to be more overconfident than women, trade more and earn lower portfolio returns. Moreover, men appear to be less risk-averse than women. We present evidence from a student investment market simulation, Stock-Trak©, conducted in an upper division college finance course

Using Sports To Teach Finance And Economics

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Sustaining student interest in economics and finance is often a challenging task. One way to generate interest is through the use of examples that are interesting and relevant to the students. Sports provide many examples of finance and economics principles. In this paper, we provide seven sports examples that can be used to demonstrate various topics in and out of the classroom. These examples can be used either to introduce material or to assist more advanced students in gaining a deeper understanding of the subject matter. The examples have the additional benefit of providing memorable allegories to the business world.

A Note On Animating Financial Equations With Scientific Notebook®

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Students of finance are often challenged to understand how financial equations respond to changes in key variables. All too often, the pedagogy offered these students includes usage of static graphs. Although there is a plethora of research in other disciplines showing animation provides superior learning outcomes compared to static images, the use of animation to illustrate financial relationships has received little attention in the financial education literature. This paper and the animations shown on the www.financeanimations.com website demonstrate Scientific Notebook’s ® ability to animate equations commonly taught in university introductory finance courses.

Using Microsoft Corporation To Demonstrate The Optimal Capital Structure Trade-Off Theory

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

In this paper, we apply the trade-off theory of capital structure to Microsoft. We use data for bond ratings, bond risk premiums, and levered CAPM betas to compute the cost of equity and the weighted average cost of capital for Microsoft at different debt levels. This study shows the impact of increasing financial leverage on WACC. As financial leverage increases, the WACC decreases until the optimal debt ratio is reached, after which, the WACC begins to rise. At this debt ratio, the value of Microsoft will be maximized. Our results indicate the optimal debt ratio for Microsoft is 37.5 percent.

Differences In Student Evaluations From Hybrid And Traditional Courses

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Hybrid courses contain online elements in combination with reduced in-class seat time. This study examines differences in student evaluations from hybrid and traditional sections of an introductory course in economic and business statistics. In our hybrid course, face-to-face lectures are replaced with online lectures and class periods are conducted as question-answer and practice sessions. We find strong evidence that students mark down evaluation scores in the hybrid versus traditional format. Markdowns occur across all dimensions of the evaluation instrument.

The Implementation Of A Terminal Master’S Program In Applied Economics

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

This paper examines the impacts of transforming a traditional master’s program into a professionally-oriented, terminal degree program in applied economics. Alumni surveys were conducted before and after the curricular innovation and the results indicate that the change in program provided high quality training that alumni judged to be more relevant to the post-graduate work environment. This case study illustrates that master’s programs in economics can benefit by implementing curricular structures that explicitly serve terminal degree-seeking students while, at the same time, provide elements of training that students destined for the Ph.D. are unlikely to receive in a doctoral program.

Twitter And The Public Choice Course: A Pedagogical Vignette On Political Information Technology

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Given the paucity of undergraduate textbooks in public choice, instructors often look for innovative approaches and unique examples when teaching undergraduate courses in public choice economics. This essay offers a pedagogical vignette for undergraduate courses in public choice that deals with the technological development in political information represented by “tweeting.” Twitter offers mobile communications services that some representatives use to boost their stock of political reputation capital.

Minimizing Resource Costs Under A Gold Standard: From Warehouse Deposits To Deposit Banking

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

One of the criticisms of the gold coin standard is it entails more resource costs than other systems. Why after all should people have to carry around bags of gold for each transaction and pay to have so much of it stored in vaults? In this piece I will discuss the options of one famous lover of gold, Scrooge McDuck, and discuss how the storage cost criticisms of gold money are unwarranted. A system can easily evolve from one where people held coins to one where they loan their commodity via bankers and earn interest thereby eliminating the large need …

Npv Simulation: Technical Associates, Inc.

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

This paper presents a scenario analysis from an actual firm, one with a substantial level of sophistication. In this firm, input data is regularly created using probability distributions for sales estimates, cost estimates, tax considerations, and depreciation schedules. One limited scenario is presented in this paper - simplistic enough that students are able to concentrate on the mechanics of the simulation, but complex enough to reflect the degree of quantitative capability necessary in a financial analysis group within a company. The lack of a real-world example is thus solved in this paper, and sufficient guidance is given to direct a …

Brain-Type, Gender, And Student Success In The Principles Of Economics

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

Studies of the impact of gender on student performance in the principles of economics yield ambiguous conclusions. Some studies find that women are less successful than men in the principles of economics, while others conclude that gender is inconsequential. Few, if any, scientific works find women’s performance better than men’s performance. These ambiguities arise because past studies have not considered the distribution of brain-types by gender. This paper addresses the question of which brain-types are more successful in the principles of economics and whether these brain-types can be associated with a particular gender.

Advancing The Credit Channel And Credit Rationing In The Undergraduate Curriculum: A Useful Model

Journal of Economics and Finance Education

This paper introduces a model of the lending decision that accounts for credit rationing behavior as it captures fundamental aspects of the credit channel of monetary policy. The model distinguishes between the credit channel’s bank-lending and balance-sheet effects in its representation of how different types of shocks influence lending. It is hoped that the model will facilitate and encourage greater attention in the undergraduate curriculum to the credit channel as well as credit rationing, the significance of both having been accentuated by the recent sub-prime lending crisis and the Fed’s expanded responsibilities in the financial markets.