Academic literature on the topic 'Economic and Monetary Union – Public opinion'

The decisions of the Council of Europe on December 5"', 1978, that would lead to the establishment of the European Monetary System, raise a multitude of questions. Among these, the creation of a European currency unit, the ECU, and the announcement of the establishment in the near future of a European Monetary Fund, the E.M.F., are the most symbolic decisions in terms of public opinion as well as the most important in their economic and political implications. In this article, we will show that the development of the ECU and the creation of a E.M.F. with substantial decisional autonomy are the two conditions necessary for strengthening the European monetary union.

The author describes the specific features of public policy process at the European Unionlevel and its differences related to policy-making at national level. He underlines, amongother things that the policy agenda in the European Union is being shaped differently.At the national level the agenda is under greater influence of politicians who are closelyinterconnected with voters. At the European Union level the technocratic (not directlyelected) European Commission has a monopoly of legislative initiative. Furthermore, atthe European level feasibility studies – as an element of the pre-decision stage in publicpolicy-making – tend to be ignored. In nation-states we can see such analyses as a resultof competition taking place between those who rule and their political opposition. Atthe European Union level it is not the case. The author points out that these mechanisms would have been beneficial for the EU member states. They would have haltedthe implementation of decisions which ran the excessive risk. He has also in mind thedecision related to the introduction of the monetary union. In his opinion, this decisionwas made without a proper feasibility analysis (costs and profits). Basically, the decisionon a common currency was made on political rather than substantive grounds. A largenumber of experts were against the idea as they perceived serious risks involved in it.The supporters of greater European integration ignored the fact that the monetary uniondeprived nation-states of many factors that affected the economic development in a positive way. The point is that they were under influence of “total optimism” expecting only good results of the monetary union. The mechanisms of crisis management, including exitscenario from the monetary union, or methods of supporting those members who needfinancial aid, have not been even created. Furthermore, the evaluation of the monetaryunion was not properly carried out as it was based on the assessment of the process (forexample, smooth introduction of euro notes and coins or phasing out of the nationalcurrencies in 2002) and not of its results

Do crises increase governmental responsiveness to citizens’ policy demands in the European Union? Building on the responsiveness literature, we challenge the claim that well-organized business interests determine governmental preferences in times of crisis. We argue instead, that vote-seeking governments rather account for citizens’ policy demands, given particularly high levels of saliency and public attention prevalent during crises. To test our theory, we analyse the formation of German governmental preferences on Economic and Monetary Union reforms during the Eurozone Crisis. We use novel data from the ‘EMUChoices’ project, public opinion polls as well as newspaper articles and trace the development of the German government’s positioning on reforms such as the new Eurozone bailout fund or the tightening of fiscal governance rules. Our analyses show that the German government, despite intensive lobbying efforts by banks and industry associations, responded rather closely to the demands of the public. On a normative ground, this finding highlights that input legitimacy in European Union decision-making is stronger than oftentimes assumed, at least at the level of governmental preference formation in times of crises.

The experience of public finance management in the EU in the framework of tightly controlled coordination of medium-term fiscal policy and the single monetary policy of the European Monetary Union (EMU) indicates that Strategic Public Finance Governance (SPFG) should be distinguished from the strategy for reforming the public finance management system within the established approaches of Public Finance Management (PFM) as general from special. The Strategic Public Finance Governance Mission (SPFG) is seen as enhancing the government’s financial capacity to respond in a timely and adequate manner to global challenges and threats through coordinated and targeted participation in relevant international activities and programs that correlate with the solution of certain global problems. The mission also includes expanding the fiscal space for public financial support of national sustainable development priorities that meet national interests, the criteria of national security in general and economic, financial, fiscal in particular. This involves the use of both domestic and borrowed (from other countries, international organizations, etc.) financial resources. Nowadays, the PFM approach covers mainly the general government sector. Strategic Public Finance Governance (SPFG) should cover the public sector as a whole. In our opinion, this is the main direction of further European integration reform of the public finance management system in Ukraine.

The EU reformed the regulatory rules of the Eurozone in response to the European sovereign debt crisis, empowering the EU to more effectively enforce the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which is designed to prevent debt crises. Given recent empirical evidence that the EU’s willingness to enforce EU law depends on public opinion, under what conditions will EU residents view SGP enforcement as an effective way of tackling the crisis? I theorize how individuals will evaluate SGP enforcement and test my theory’s predictions using cross-national survey data from all Eurozone member states and Bayesian multi-level models. I find that respondents’ preferences over SGP enforcement depend on the interaction of their political support for the European Economic and Monetary Union and their member state’s noncompliance with the SGP criteria. Public buy-in for SGP enforcement is lower precisely when enforcement is most important.

The aim of this study is to assess the Treaty on Stability, Coordinationand Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union as an instrument fiscalpolicy coordination and identify some of the consequences that potentially carriesits use. All EU-members conduct independent fiscal policies, regardless of whetherthey are members of the euro zone or not. It is now known that one of the immediatecauses of the crisis in part the euro zone countries was permanent crossingfiscal convergence criteria as a result of an erroneous and irresponsible fiscalpolicy. Used so far forms of coordination of fiscal policies were too weak to preventthe destabilization of the Member States' public finances. The crisis has becomethe impetus for build deeper integration in the area of fiscal policy. Treaty onStability, Coordination and Management, called briefly Fiscal Compact or TSCG,is another instrument of fiscal policy coordination in the European Union. In largepart it is a repetition and a little evolution of the Stability and Growth Pact. Thisstudy indicated some disadvantages of the Fiscal Compact, what has the potentialto lead to its inefficiency. These are: reference to the structural balance, which isa relatively small transparency budgetary rule for the public opinion and becauseof the existence of several competing methods for its calculation; the Treaty providesfor the possibility of "extraordinary circumstances" and does not specify theterm balanced budget, which is a softening of fiscal discipline and opens opportunitiesfor political bargaining; financial penalties imposed on overdebt governmentswill not improve their situation. The Treaty on Stability, Management and Coordination does not constitute a breakthrough in the coordination of fiscal policiesin the European Union.

This paper reviews the selected issues related to the potential benefits and risks of Poland’s accession to the euro area. Poland has joined the European Union in 2004. Being a member of the Economic and Monetary Union, Poland was obliged to adopt the euro as its currency, but the date of the above currency introduction was not specified. Poland’s joining the euro area is often discussed in political and economic debates. Such debates benefit primarily from politics and ideology, and the economic issues, associating possible benefits and risks resulting from Poland’s accession to the euro area. The opponents of the common currency deal with issues related to the financial crisis in the territory of the euro zone counties. According to the study conducted in 2010 by the Public Opinion Research Center, it was observed that the number of Poles supporting Poland’s accession to the euro area was decreasing. The survey conducted by CBOS in 2017 showed that the number of respondents who were against Poland’s accession to the euro area was 72%. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the basic benefits and costs that result from the adoption of the common currency by Poland.

Abstract Within the context of the continuing integration process in Europe, this paper addresses the question of whether policies in the EU should head towards autonomy, coordination or harmonization. Taking the path dependence effect into account, it is the authors’ opinion that Europe has gone too far in its integration process to be able to continue with policies being fully under the competences of individual member countries. However, the habitual question still arises: does fiscal policy need to be harmonized to a level comparable to monetary policy as these two policies, necessarily, complement each other? This paper argues that it does not. There are three main arguments discussed. Firstly, the authors build on the theory of fiscal federalism. Secondly, there are significantly different regimes of welfare states and extents of social policies among European countries, which strongly determine the character of public finance. And thirdly, the tax systems across Europe are also highly divergent, with many features of continuing tax competition.

The implemention of a monetary union in Europe, to take full benefit of the Single Market’s potential benefits, has not up till now delivered the expected outcomes. On the contrary, the euro area has been afflicted by many difficulties, including weak growth, unemployment, and inequality. Many blame the euro’s malfunctioning design, and especially its inability to promote economic convergence and provide amendment and stabilization mechanisms. The latter view prevailed when shaping the austerity policies imposed on the countries more affected by the financial and sovereign debt crises, intensifying an economic recession with dramatic social consequences. Citizens’ distrust in the European Union’s institutions grew, along with support for nationalistic political forces opposing the European integration project. Some of EMU’s needed reforms will both promote convergence, and help smooth economic activity and maintain citizens’ wellbeing when crises occur. The creation of an autonomous budget for the euro zone was mentioned in a European Commission discussion paper on the future of the EU. This is an eminently political matter, very sensitive to domestic public opinions. In fact, the existence of a budget for the euro zone, in recognition of the fact that this subset of EU countries has specific needs, distinct from those of other non-EMU members, would translate into a situation requiring the design of different budgets within the EU. Such issue is at the heart of the intense debate between holders of different views concerning the future of the EU and of the euro zone, especially in what concerns the question of which of these geometries will in the future be the engine for further economic and political integration in Europe. This paper assesses one of the main deficiencies of the euro’s governance model – lack of automatic stabilization – and discusses proposals to overcome it.

This article analyses the causal factors underlying the formation of French preferences during the Eurozone crisis solving process (2008–2017). Going beyond the clear distinction between national preference formation and interstate bargaining of liberal intergovernmentalism, this article combines new intergovernmentalism, political economy and feedback loops to study the horizontal linkages between different actors included in the process of domestic preference formation. Based on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) Choices dataset, which includes semi-structured interviews conducted with French policy-makers involved in the European Union negotiations at the highest level, we will concentrate on French preference formation in four negotiations at the European Union level: the 3 May 2010 agreement on bilateral loans to Greece, the initial capitalisation amount of the European Stability Mechanism, the negotiations on the legal nature of the ‘debt-brake’ included in the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance and the reverse qualified majority voting procedure. The article shows that confidential and restricted administrative networks played a central role in reducing the uncertainty stemming from the fragile financial positions of the hypertrophied domestic banking system. At the same time, French negotiators find themselves between a rock and a hard place during negotiations at the European Union level, not crossing the red line fixed by Germany, on the one hand, and ensuring that policy solutions are compatible with governmental political stance and domestic economic interests, on the other hand. Contrary to recent research pointing out to the increasing influence of domestic public opinion on national preference formation, however, feedback loops between the outcome of the crisis solving process and French politics and policies had very little impact.

This thesis consists of four self-contained but related papers trying to uncover different aspects of banking and sovereign risk in the member countries of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). From a methodological point of view, they all have in common the contingent claims model from the theory of finance, which is used to value call options on a stock. The first paper, “Bank risk behavior and connectedness in EMU countries”, studies the structural differences in banking sector and financial regulations at country level to measure and analyze the banking sector risk behavior. Deviating from the current view, which in our opinion is excessively focused on Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs), we introduce a micro approach to emphasize the role of smaller financial institutions in build-up of risk. The paper starts with a discussion of the reasons that are needed to consider this choice. Contingent claims analysis model is employed to calculate the risk of individual banks which is then aggregated at country level. The remaining of the paper tries to highlight the information content of country level banking risk indices. It is shown that if banking sector risk is calculated at country level using a bigger sample of banks, it can provide a simple, convenient and intuitive forward looking risk measure. The risk measures differentiate countries based on the structural differences in their financial sectors and show strong correlations with national and regional market sentiment indicators. They outperform the regulatory risk measures based at the European level and the causal linkages run from them to the latter indicators, suggesting better information content. And even though they have high correlations, causality and connectedness tests reveal no systemic component. The second paper, “Sovereigns and banks in the euro area: a tale of two crises”, attempts to quantify the directional intensity of sovereign-bank linkages in the euro area countries. To this end, we borrow the indicator of banking sector risk in each country from the first paper, and use a traditional measure of sovereign risk (10-year government yield spreads over Germany). The paper starts with the review of channels via which banks and sovereigns are linked in a vicious cycle. We apply a dynamic approach to testing for Granger causality between the two measures of risk in each country, allowing us to check for episodes of significant and abrupt increase in short-run causal linkages. The empirical results indicate that episodes of causality intensification vary considerably in both directions over time and across the different EMU countries. The directionality suggests the presence of causality intensification, mainly from banks to sovereigns, in the crisis periods. Our findings also present empirical evidence about the existence of an adverse feedback loop between sovereigns and banks in some euro-area countries. The third paper, “Incorporating creditors' seniority into contingent claim models: Application to peripheral euro area countries”, develops and uses a seniority structure of sovereign's creditors to analyze the impact of sectoral distribution of debt on the sovereign credit risk. Specifically, this paper highlights the role of multilateral creditors (i.e., the ECB, IMF, ESM etc.) and their preferred creditor status in explaining the sovereign default risk of peripheral euro area (EA) countries. Incorporating lessons from sovereign debt crises in general, and from the Greek debt restructuring in particular, we define the priority structure of sovereigns' creditors that is most relevant for peripheral EA countries in severe crisis episodes. This new priority structure of creditors, together with the contingent claims methodology, is then used to derive a set of sovereign credit risk indicators. In particular, the sovereign distance-to-default indicator, proposed in this paper (which includes both accounting metrics and market-based measures) aims to isolate sovereign credit risk by using information from the public sector balance sheets to build it up. Analyzing and comparing it with traditional market-based measures of sovereign risk suggests that the measurement and predictive ability of credit risk measures can be vastly improved if we account for the changing composition of sovereigns' balance sheet risk based on creditors' seniority. In the last paper, “Revisiting the sovereign-bank linkages: Evidence from contingent claims analysis”, we reconsider the sovereign-bank nexus as discussed in the second paper to check the robustness of our findings. Using the banking sector risk indicator developed in our first paper, together with the sovereign risk index build in the third paper we re-inspect the bank-sovereign linkages. We use three different statistical measures of interconnection based on principal components analysis, Granger causality network and Diebold-Yilmaz's connectedness index. We also compare our results with alternative specifications using existing market-based indicators of banking and sovereign risk. Our results suggest strong connectedness and co-movement between country-level banking and sovereign risk indicators. We also find evidence of an increasing role of idiosyncratic risk factors driving the evolution of all risk indices in the post-crisis period, thus supporting the “wake-up call hypothesis” that the sensitivity of financial market participants to fundamental differences increased during the crisis. Country-wise analysis of time-varying bi-directional linkages using dynamic Granger-causality suggests the development of a bank-sovereign doom loop in Spain corroborating for this country the findings of our second paper. Connectedness analysis also suggest that increasingly the risk is being driven away from market-based uncertainty to the idiosyncratic risk factors, which are better captured by the contingent claim based indices.

This study examines the relationship between economic and monetary integration culminating in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and welfare state trajectories focusing on the cases of Belgium, Italy, and Greece in the 1990s. The conventional wisdom on this relationship expected that EMU would lead to across-the-board downsizing of the European welfare states through imposing macroeconomic austerity in general and budgetary restraint in particular. The study questions the validity of this prediction which is represented by the austerity hypothesis. Based on an analysis of social expenditure data in the run-up to EMU the study reveals that spending levels remained largely stable and therefore that the welfare states of the EMU-candidates largely escaped radical retrenchment. Avoiding significant and systematic expenditure retreat was possible not only in the face of powerful fiscal pressures but also during a period when policymakers had the opportunity to justify even the most draconian measures in the name of achieving EMU membership. Hence the study addresses the following puzzle: How could Europe's welfare states largely avert across-the-board downsizing during the 1990s despite fiscal pressures they faced on the road to EMU? Through an examination of episodes of welfare reform in three critical cases (Belgium, Italy, and Greece) which needed to go through drastic budgetary cutbacks for EMU membership, the study shows that the Maastricht criteria did compel successive governments in these member states to propose radical welfare reforms, vindicating the conventional wisdom's expectations. In episodes of welfare reform, however, governments discovered that their reform capacities were largely limited due to domestic opposition from an alliance of entrenched interests. The convergence period was marred with recurrent mass mobilization of unions against welfare reforms which forced governments to scale back their original ambitions or scrap them altogether. This shows that the expectations of the conventional wisdom that EMU would actually lead to massive retrenchment of Europe's welfare states, however, are not borne out by the evidence on welfare state trajectories in the 1990s.

The political economy transformations of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have received a great deal of attention over the past decade. The focus of much research has been to examine the internal national reorientations of the countries with regard to the changes in political and economic conditions. The importance of the international reorientation of these countries toward Western Europe in general and the European Union in particular has been generally overlooked. This dissertation examines public opinion on the political and economic transformations within the framework of the direction of the international reorientations of the countries. The countries were divided into three categories, those that can be expected to be invited to join the European Union in the next enlargement, those that can be expected to join the European Union in a subsequent enlargement, and the countries not seeking European Union membership. Public opinion on democracy and the market economy and attitudinal factors that influence these opinions are compared in 16 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The data are from the Central and East European Barometers 3-7 (1992 - 1996). The findings suggest that general opinions regarding satisfaction with democracy are not related to the status of the country seeking membership in the European Union while support from the market economy does differ. When examining attitudinal factors that are related to satisfaction with democracy and support for the market economy, differences emerged between the three categories of countries. These findings suggest that public opinion is in part shaped by the international orientations of the country and that changes in public opinion are important in understanding the political and economic transformation processes.

The work sheds light on the largely under-investigated puzzle of the distributional impact of EU economic governance on the budget structures of the Member States. The overarching research question is: Is the impact of the Stability and Growth Pact neutral to the composition of domestic public spending? In addressing the EU-MS fiscal puzzle the thesis considers three main research questions: 1. when and how the SGP affects the composition of national budgets. 2. if and how the SGP has affected the domestic composition of public expenditures during the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis. 3. if and how the impact of the SGP changes across different domestic political, institutional and economic conditions. The thesis brings together the literature of the domestic determinants of national fiscal policy with that on the Economic and Monetary Union. Firstly, the disaggregate assessment of where the bite of the EU economic governance framework lands back at home sheds some light on how the Pact fulfils its policy objectives of promoting at the same time fiscal discipline and inclusive growth. Within this context, it contributes to the rich debate on the subordination of social objectives to economic ones at the hand of the EU fiscal surveillance regulatory framework. At the same time, it evaluates the claim of a detrimental effect of the Pact on investment and growth, linked to the lengthening and worsening of the severe downturn in the context of the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, as well as the divergence between core and periphery. Building on the well-established findings on the interplay between (national) fiscal rules and the political, institutional, and economic context the analysis provides a causal empirical assessment over the panel of the EU28 from 1995 to 2018 of whether and under which conditions the EU economic governance framework impacts the structure of the budgets of the Member States. In considering both a synthetic indicator of changes to the budget structure, disaggregated impact on all budget lines (e.g. health, education, social protection, etc.), and on broad components associated with investments, transfers, and the mitigation of inequalities, the analysis provides a rare comprehensive picture of which elements are affected at all and where comparatively the highest toll emerges within the components of national spending. The main results are the following: • EU economic governance is far from being neutral in affecting the budget structure of the Member States; • Its impact on the national fiscal policy mix is heterogeneous over time - increasing substantially with the latest wave of reform - and scope, limited predominantly to Eurozone countries under EDP surveillance and aligning quite poorly with prescriptions of the CSRs; • Budgetary dynamics do not escape the bind of the EDP in times of crisis, rather the framework is the most impactful in such circumstances, generating substantial spending restructuring which is both pro-cyclical and detrimental for inclusive growth, as well as for geographical convergence; • Heterogeneity in the effect of the Pact extends to domestic circumstances, with political characteristics of the government (e.g. small budget distances, high alternation) and a unitary institutional structure as a precondition for any impact to materialise, while in the economic domain, alike for the crisis, the restraint of the SGP materialises especially in countering expansionary pressures such as those of ageing and unemployment. Findings refute the widespread argument within the literature of a limited impact of the supranational fiscal governance framework given the poor track record of compliance with the deficit targets of the Stability and Growth Pact. Conversely, the work contributes a more sophisticated account of the EU economic governance framework. It distinguishes not only membership to the EMU and the Eurozone but also close supranational budgetary surveillance under the Excessive Deficit Procedure. Additionally, it accounts for the heterogeneous effects of the Pact over its life and two substantial reforms. While an effect that runs against fiscal discipline is somewhat confirmed for EU and Eurozone membership, EDP surveillance emerges as the key driver of a consolidation-driven restructuring effect on national budget structures. Such dynamic, however, is far from homogeneous across time and place: being under the EDP leads to changes in the fiscal policy mix only within the Eurozone and after the 2011 reform when excluding the period of the crisis. Second, the analysis investigates the alignment between the effect on the national budget structure of the supranational fiscal rule and the policy coordination within the Semester comparing the distributive effect of the Pact with the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) in selected Member States. Overall, the negative impact of the EDP on inequality mitigating measures and investment and specifically on health, education, and social protection, more often than not clashes with the CSRs in the considered Member States. Heterogeneities both in the impact of the EDP on the budget structure in the post-2011 period across the core and periphery and the CSRs imply, however, a more substantial disconnect between the two arms of the EMU for the Southern Member States, supporting the narrative of a particularly detrimental effect of the Pact on social spending and inequality. Third, a further contribution is the granular analysis of dynamics in times of crisis unveiling whether the escape clauses shield domestic budget structures from any shock at the hands of the supranational fiscal rule or rather instead the national fiscal policy mix is affected. The analysis offers a rare detailed account of the cost of the SGP in times of crisis for specific budget components and their relative penalization at the hands of austerity policies, allowing to pinpoint if investments have been preserved at the expenses of social policies and those mitigating inequality, together with the intergenerational distributions of fiscal discipline. The results contradict the hypothesis of national budgets escaping from the claws of the pact during economic downturns. Rather, during the crisis more marked restructuring of the fiscal policy mixes emerges, as the EDP surveillance has a significant and sizeable impact on the budget structure and some of the key budget lines of interest even before the 2011 reform in times of crisis. The analysis reveals that not all spending is equally affected, as while EDP surveillance acts to (nearly fully) contain the recessionary upward push on spending, for example, in the domains of education and social protection, it more than compensates for the crisis for another key budget line such as health. As a result, divergences emerge in the constraining effect of the Pact on transfers, investment, and inequality mitigation. The first is only negatively impacted by the EDP surveillance in times of crisis, while the remaining categories always feel the constraining influence of the Pact which is further strengthened during the Great Recession. The already bleak picture for an inclusive and growth-enhancing investment rich recovery hides substantial divergences between core and periphery explored in details in the dissertation, as southern countries carry the worst prospect in terms of full containment of transfers and slashing of investments, with an intergenerational cost shouldered especially by youth. Finally, the work considers as well the interplay between the supranational level and the national context, identifying how the characteristics of the governing coalition (i.e. ideology, the range within the government and alternation), the federal- unitary institutional nature, along with fiscal rule strength preferences in the Member States, and the demographic and employment conditions affect the transmission of the supranational commitments within the Stability and Growth Pact onto the domestic budget structure. In doing so it uncovers as well which national configurations and conditions are conducive to a (restraining) impact of the SGP on national spending and the fiscal policy mix. Findings show that national political context facilitating changes to the budget structure (i.e. small coalition ranges and high alternations) are associated with a larger impact of the EDP surveillance on the fiscal policy mix, which loses significance under less favourable political conditions. A similar pattern emerges for ideology, with somewhat moderate governments as a precondition for any impact of the EDP surveillance, which is more sizeable on the left side of the spectrum. In the institutional arena unitary countries are more conducive to restructuring their budgets when falling under EDP surveillance, while conversely, national fiscal rule preferences show a complementarity between the extent to which countries prefer fiscal discipline on their own and the Pact, with EDP surveillance affecting more substantially the Member States with a laxer approach to spending. Finally, the demographic pressure and that of high unemployment stiffen the budget structure increasing the barriers against a restructuring effect of the Pact. However, from the opposite perspective - alike for the crisis - the constraining power of EDP surveillance is quite remarkable, containing their budgetary implications. To that effect, the EDP enacts substantial convergence across various levels of unemployment and old-age dependency rate. As such, the thesis confirms that while effects are heterogeneous and dependent on the national context, the Pact for Eurozone countries under EDP surveillance is far from a minor nuisance but rather a powerful force capable of substantially restraining if not annihilating key pressures such as that of demography, unemployment, and even the crisis. The thesis is structured as follows. After introducing the purpose and relevance of the work in Chapter One, Chapter Two situates the analysis within the extant literature on the domestic determinants of the budget structure, fiscal rules, and the EU economic governance, which inform and ground the research questions and hypotheses presented in Chapter Three. From such premises, the methodological approach and research design are outlined in Chapter Four touching on the key empirical challenges and mitigation strategies deployed in assessing such a complex ecosystem. Four empirical chapters follow. Chapter Five uncovers heterogeneities in the effect of the EU economic governance over its different configurations (e.g. Eurozone, EDP surveillance) and subsequent regulatory framework (i.e. initial, post- 2005, and post-2011), together with the (mis)-alignment across the effect of the Pact on domestic budget structures and the prescriptions of the Country-Specific- Recommendations. Chapter Six and Seven are dedicated to the assessment of the effect of the Pact during the Great Recession and Eurozone crisis, evaluating whether - against the expectations derived from the escape clauses - any impact on the budget structure emerges at all during the crisis, considering as well at a granular level where the bite of the EU economic governance at crisis lands across budget lines. Chapter Seven continues along the same line considering the distributional effects on investments, transfers, and inequality mitigation during the crisis, taking a closer look at the social dimension and how the intergenerational balance of spending is altered. Chapter Eight concludes the empirical analysis evaluating the interaction between the Pact and the national context uncovering which political, institutional, and economic domestic configurations are most conducive to the impact of the SGP. Finally, Chapter Nine situates the key findings of the thesis in the context of the reform debate on the Pact and fiscal governance more in general, considering as well the insights and outlook for the future of political and economic integration which can be drawn for the unprecedented challenge of the Covid-19 crisis and (partial) policy evolution for the pandemic response.

This thesis examines public opinion towards membership in the EU, before and after the 2008 global economic crisis, in the newest member states to join the institution in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania). Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, socialist economies and communism maintained a citizenry that never experienced unemployment and that did not have a political voice. Because free-market economic policies and democratic values are new to these countries, public opinion regarding membership in a supranational organization that promotes and fosters these ideals is important to study. Data from the Eurobarometer Public Opinion Survey spring waves 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the World Bank, and Eurostat are used to measure multiple indicators of support for membership in the EU. Ordered logistic regression and means comparison analyses are employed to measure the effect of national-level economic prospects, economic winner/loser status, political party power, age, national identity, gender, and individual-level political ideology on public opinion toward membership. The results demonstrate that multiple indicators affect attitudes toward membership and that a negative shift in public opinion is apparent following the 2008 global economic crisis. At the individual-level of analysis, economic winner/loser status and national identity are significant in the predicted direction in all five models. Age is a significant indicator of support only in 2008, 2009, and 2010. At the aggregate-level, means comparison analyses and t-test statistics indicate that GDP annual growth rates have a positive effect on attitudes toward membership in the EU. As GDP annual growth increases, approval of membership in the EU increases. Eurozone membership and unemployment rates indicate varied support for membership in the EU, and the results of means comparison analyses of political party power at the national-level are inconclusive and exploratory in nature. With all findings considered, future studies can further examine the implications and long-term effects of global financial crises on public opinion towards membership in various international economic organizations.
M.A.
Masters
Political Science
Sciences
Political Science; American & Comparative Politics Track

This thesis analyses whether the concept of monetary sovereignty evolves under the impact of globalization and financial integration, and provides a framework for assessing what this implies. Thereby, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of both the contemporary exercise of sovereign powers in monetary and financial matters and of the driving forces behind the evolution of international law in this field. As elaborated in chapter 1, the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed by this thesis is not static but dynamic in nature. Due to the dual nature of sovereignty as a concept having not only positive but also important normative components, monetary sovereignty cannot become eroded under the impact of legal and economic constraints. Chapter 2 examines the ongoing hybridization of international monetary law arising from changes in the sources of this complex body of law, from the unsuitability of the categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law for characterizing all normative evolutions in this field, and from the rise of private and transnational monetary law. Chapter 3 scrutinizes the phenomenon of exchange rate misalignment under monetary and trade law. Intrinsically related, it assesses which aspects of the IMF’s legal framework should be reformed in order to tackle contemporary challenges to the stability of the international monetary system, such as global current account imbalances. Chapter 4 analyses the increasing regionalization of monetary sovereignty. It argues that, to the extent that transferring sovereign powers to a monetary union is what provides a state’s population with maximum monetary and financial stability, the underlying transfers are not a surrender of monetary sovereignty, but its effective exercise under the form of cooperative sovereignty. Finally, chapter 5 assesses the implications of the contemporary concept of monetary sovereignty proposed herein for the reorganization of the international financial architecture in the wake of the Great Recession.

The aim of this work is to analyze the success of European monetary integration and it's contribution to countries, who's economics are, no matter if for the long lasting difficulties or recent transformation, likely to be called hazardous. In the first part, the work concerns itself with the very conception of the idea of European monetary integration and it's development, over the final form of the project, it's accomplishment up till current problem and challenges. The second part is an analysis of chosen countries who belong in the category named above. With this countries I will try to analyze the effect that joining the monetary union had on their economy. In the end I'll summarize the acquired knowledge to evaluate the effect of the common currency on the chosen group of countries.

AbstractIn the wake of the “Great Recession” and its severe fiscal implications, many European countries enacted significant pension reforms aimed at reducing public spending and limiting contribution rates. Unlike most changes carried out before, they were implemented swiftly and without building a broad political and social consensus, usually being suggested or even mandated by inter- and supranational organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the European Union (EU). While some of these cuts were at least partly revoked during the following years of economic recovery, European welfare states still tend to face lower “pension burdens” in the upcoming decades than had been expected during the 2000s. Financial sustainability, however, puts adequacy at risk for present and future retirees, many of whom no longer achieve sufficient working careers anyway.

In the article, the author aims to highlight some directions of action in the management of the public debt meant to minimize the risks of the outburst of a debt crisis in Romania, in the domestic and international context. The analysis shows that the evolution of Romania's total public debt in the period 2015-2019 is positive, in the sense of improved sustainability. The economic literature suggests that there are two conditions whose implementation could prevent a financial and a debt crisis from occurring (an early warning system and a regulatory scheme with "teeth"). Comparing the fiscal policy in Japan and Greece, the author presents some features for minimizing the risks of a debt crisis and shows that the rules of fiscal policy change fundamentally when a country becomes a member of a monetary union. Starting from the main economic problems of Romania and from the experience of the public debt crises in some countries of the European Union, there are made proposals for actions aimed at leading to the minimization of the risks of a debt crisis in Romania. The methodology used consists in comparative and descriptive analyses, drawing of conclusions and literature review.

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty defined the conditions for the introduction of the euro as a common currency in the European Union. These are macroeconomic indicators that measure the level of nominal convergence achieved and thus the state’s readiness to participate in monetary union. These conditions (convergence criteria) relate to price stability, stability and sustainability of public finances, which includes budget deficits and public debt, exchange rate stability and convergence of long-term interest rates. In addition to nominal convergence, the degree of legal convergence is also assessed - the provisions of national legislation relating to the independence of the central bank, the ban on monetary financing and preferential access to state financing, and integration into the European System of Central Banks are assessed. Among the member states that have not yet adopted the euro, only the Republic of Croatia is fully harmonized in this regard. On July 10, 2020, the Croatian kuna was included in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II). Accessing the ERM II mechanism is often referred to as the euro waiting room. Despite the fact that the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has not abated, the Republic of Croatia has not stopped its efforts to become a full member of the euro area. The paper will present the benefits of the introduction of the euro, but also the inevitable costs incurred during the conversion process. As the pandemic has not slowed down the conversion process and the moment of conversion is approaching, on the other hand, there are conflicting views on the introduction of the euro as the official currency, which are trying to be implemented through a referendum. The paper will discuss the legal aspects of Croatia’s accession to the euro area and what measures are envisaged when exchanging the Croatian kuna for the euro, especially from the aspect of consumer protection, given the fact that Croatia has one of the highest euroization rates of all non-euro area EU member states.

Women’s political representation is influenced by a number of different factors, including those belonging to political, socio-economic and cultural realms. The study analyses one of these factors – public opinion, which researchers classify into a group of cultural factors. While almost half of the world’s population believes that men are better political leaders than women, the median proportion of women in national parliaments in August 2020 on average is 25%. This suggests that women’s political representation may be related to low public support for women in politics. At the same time, although Latvian society in long-term prefers men in politics, there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of women in Latvian Parliament since elections of the 13th Saeima. The aim of the study is to establish whether the situation in Latvia resembles the general global and European Union tendencies, and if not, to identify the factors influencing the increase in the proportion of women in the Saeima. The study concludes that in the context of the world and the European Union, there is a correlation between public opinion on women in politics and the proportion of women in national parliaments. The case of Latvia could be considered a deviation from the norm. The rapid increase in the proportion of women in the 13th Saeima can be attributed to factors like the election of new political forces and a party representing the leftist values, as well as the increase in women’s activity in the labour market.

Increasing financialization in the EU over the last two decades rendered different macroeconomic stories in regard to growth rates, industrialization and innovation, institutional transformation, inequality and financial stability. In addition, monetary union has created a favourable environment for such process by increasing a market expansion of financial institution and increasing financial assets within companies. However, the process of financial liberalization has changed economic structure in many countries leading to an excessive increase in both private and public debt and subsequently to the process of deindustrialization. For example, deindustrialization lead to a significant reallocation of resources from the industrial sector to the service sector in Croatia. The Global economic crisis of 2008 has shortly devitalized excessive financialization, yet it did not contain it. The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether the two economic lanes, financialization and industrialization, are mutually related and do they follow same linear or non-linear process. Identification is based on Markow switching approach with time-varying transition probabilities and covers annual data from 1995 to 2018. The period covers and extends beyond the Global crisis, which facilitates our empirical logic on examining the regime switching behaviour for both economic processes. Obtained results suggest nonlinearity within, both financialization and industrialization processes, by identifying two distinct levels of behaviour before and after the Global crisis.

<p>The decision to rehabilitate buildings in a sustainable way is complex, because the associated costs require different levels of assessment, given their relevance to all stakeholders in the decision- making, and are not always easily quantifiable. Following recent decisions of the European Union, it is urgent to carry on with studies to support for sustainable rehabilitation investment projects. In this context, the use of methodologies based on Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) contributes positively to support decisions. The CBA comprise methods to evaluate the net economic impact of an investment project, and can be used for a variety of interventions. The CBA is characterized by being an evaluation model that admits monetary unity as the main measure and has been predominantly used in the context of large public investments during the second half of the twentieth century.</p><p>The present paper aims to present the CBA concepts, its application to different investment projects, identifying the procedures and phases of the methodology, as well as the presentation of the main corresponding cost-benefit performance indicators. Its importance and potential will be highlighted for various stakeholders in the decision-making process, as well as examples of its application to the construction and / or rehabilitation of: i) architectural heritage; ii) school buildings; and iii) health infrastructures. Some final remarks of the study under development, to date, will be presented and discussed as well as future developments.</p>

Several improvements have been made in the nuclear energy sector during the last decade leading to new design for advanced nuclear power plants. Literature presents several studies about the economics of these new Power Plants, however the economic analysis of these plants usually considers only the classical accounts related to Construction, Operation & Maintenance, Fuel and Decommissioning. Beside these accounts there are many factors, from now on named External Factors (e.g. social acceptability, enhanced safety, emergency planning zone reduction, etc.) able to heavily determine the profitability of the investment. This paper presents the differential impact of these External Factors on nuclear technology with different sizes. According to the classification currently in use in the IAEA, small reactors are those with electric generation power lower than 300 MW, while medium sized reactors are those with electric power between 300 and 700 MW [1]. We define “Small Medium Reactors” (SMR) reactors with an electrical output smaller than 700 MW (usually 335 MWe) and as “Large reactors”, (LR) reactors with an equivalent electric power greater than 700 MW. (usually 1340 MWe) Starting from the international literature point of view, the paper provides a list of external factors distinguished in economically quantifiable or not. Two different approaches have been used for their assessment: a monetary ranking and a strategic one. Then, using a Quality Function Deployment approach, a multi-attribute model is introduced to obtain a weight for every external factor, dividing their impacts into three sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental and social). The results show that the new SMR perform better than LR thanks to the smaller size which allows an enhancement of the safety level (which affects the public opinion) and a greater flexibility in the market.

In the mid-1980s, the impact of three decades of uranium processing near rural Fernald, Ohio, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, became the centre of national public controversy. When a series of incidents at the uranium foundry brought to light the years of contamination to the environment and surrounding farmland communities, local citizens’ groups united and demanded a role in determining the plans for cleaning up the site. One citizens’ group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH), formed in 1984 following reports that nearly 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide had been released from a dust-collector system, and three off-property wells south of the site were contaminated with uranium. For 22 years, FRESH monitored activities at Fernald and participated in the decision-making process with management and regulators. The job of FRESH ended on 19 January this year when the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson — flanked by local, state, and national elected officials, and citizen-led environmental watchdog groups including FRESH — officially declared the Fernald Site clean of all nuclear contamination and open to public access. It marked the end of a remarkable turnaround in public confidence and trust that had attracted critical reports from around the world: the Cincinnati Enquirer; U.S. national news programs 60 Minutes, 20/20, Nightline, and 48 Hours; worldwide media outlets from the British Broadcasting Company and Canadian Broadcasting Company; Japanese newspapers; and German reporters. When personnel from Fluor arrived in 1992, the management team thought it understood the issues and concerns of each stakeholder group, and was determined to implement the decommissioning scope of work aggressively, confident that stakeholders would agree with its plans. This approach resulted in strained relationships with opinion leaders during the early months of Fluor’s contract. To forge better relationships, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who owns the site, and Fluor embarked on three new strategies based on engaging citizens and interested stakeholder groups in the decision-making process. The first strategy was opening communication channels with site leadership, technical staff, and regulators. This strategy combined a strong public-information program with two-way communications between management and the community, soliciting and encouraging stakeholder participation early in the decision-making process. Fluor’s public-participation strategy exceeded the “check-the-box” approach common within the nuclear-weapons complex, and set a national standard that stands alone today. The second stakeholder-engagement strategy sprang from mending fences with the regulators and the community. The approach for dispositioning low-level waste was a 25-year plan to ship it off the site. Working with stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to convince the community to accept a plan to safely store waste permanently on site, which would save 15 years of cleanup and millions of dollars in cost. The third strategy addressed the potentially long delays in finalizing remedial action plans due to formal public comment periods and State and Federal regulatory approvals. Working closely with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) and other stakeholders, DOE and Fluor were able to secure approvals of five Records of Decision on time – a first for the DOE complex. Developing open and honest relationships with union leaders, the workforce, regulators and community groups played a major role in DOE and Fluor cleaning up and closing the site. Using lessons learned at Fernald, DOE was able to resolve challenges at other sites, including worker transition, labour disputes, and damaged relationships with regulators and the community. It took significant time early in the project to convince the workforce that their future lay in cleanup, not in holding out hope for production to resume. It took more time to repair relationships with Ohio regulators and the local community. Developing these relationships over the years required constant, open communications between site decision makers and stakeholders to identify issues and to overcome potential barriers. Fluor’s open public-participation strategy resulted in stakeholder consensus of five remedial-action plans that directed Fernald cleanup. This strategy included establishing a public-participation program that emphasized a shared-decision making process and abandoned the government’s traditional, non-participatory “Decide, Announce, Defend” approach. Fernald’s program became a model within the DOE complex for effective public participation. Fluor led the formation of the first DOE site-specific advisory board dedicated to remediation and closure. The board was successful at building consensus on critical issues affecting long-term site remediation, such as cleanup levels, waste disposal and final land use. Fluor created innovative public outreach tools, such as “Cleanopoly,” based on the Monopoly game, to help illustrate complex concepts, including risk levels, remediation techniques, and associated costs. These innovative tools helped DOE and Fluor gain stakeholder consensus on all cleanup plans. To commemorate the outstanding commitment of Fernald stakeholders to this massive environmental-restoration project, Fluor donated $20,000 to build the Weapons to Wetlands Grove overlooking the former 136-acre production area. The grove contains 24 trees, each dedicated to “[a] leader(s) behind the Fernald cleanup.” Over the years, Fluor, through the Fluor Foundation, also invested in educational and humanitarian projects, contributing nearly $2 million to communities in southwestern Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Further, to help offset the economic impact of the site’s closing to the community, DOE and Fluor promoted economic development in the region by donating excess equipment and property to local schools and townships. This paper discusses the details of the public-involvement program — from inception through maturity — and presents some lessons learned that can be applied to other similar projects.

In the second quarter, annual inflation (9.67%), the technical staff’s projections and its expectations continued to increase, remaining above the target. International cost shocks, accentuated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have been more persistent than projected, thus contributing to higher inflation. The effects of indexation, higher than estimated excess demand, a tighter labor market, inflation expectations that continue to rise and currently exceed 3%, and the exchange rate pressures add to those described above. High core inflation measures as well as in the producer price index (PPI) across all baskets confirm a significant spread in price increases. Compared to estimates presented in April, the new forecast trajectory for headline and core inflation increased. This was partly the result of greater exchange rate pressure on prices, and a larger output gap, which is expected to remain positive for the remainder of 2022 and which is estimated to close towards yearend 2023. In addition, these trends take into account higher inflation rate indexation, more persistent above-target inflation expectations, a quickening of domestic fuel price increases due to the correction of lags versus the parity price and higher international oil price forecasts. The forecast supposes a good domestic supply of perishable foods, although it also considers that international prices of processed foods will remain high. In terms of the goods sub-basket, the end of the national health emergency implies a reversal of the value-added tax (VAT) refund applied to health and personal hygiene products, resulting in increases in the prices of these goods. Alternatively, the monetary policy adjustment process and the moderation of external shocks would help inflation and its expectations to begin to decrease over time and resume their alignment with the target. Thus, the new projection suggests that inflation could remain high for the second half of 2022, closing at 9.7%. However, it would begin to fall during 2023, closing the year at 5.7%. These forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty, especially regarding the future behavior of external cost shocks, the degree of indexation of nominal contracts and decisions made regarding the domestic price of fuels. Economic activity continues to outperform expectations, and the technical staff’s growth projections for 2022 have been revised upwards from 5% to 6.9%. The new forecasts suggest higher output levels that would continue to exceed the economy’s productive capacity for the remainder of 2022. Economic growth during the first quarter was above that estimated in April, while economic activity indicators for the second quarter suggest that the GDP could be expected to remain high, potentially above that of the first quarter. Domestic demand is expected to maintain a positive dynamic, in particular, due to the household consumption quarterly growth, as suggested by vehicle registrations, retail sales, credit card purchases and consumer loan disbursement figures. A slowdown in the machinery and equipment imports from the levels observed in March contrasts with the positive performance of sales and housing construction licenses, which indicates an investment level similar to that registered for the first three months of the year. International trade data suggests the trade deficit would be reduced as a consequence of import levels that would be lesser than those observed in the first quarter, and stable export levels. For the remainder of the year and 2023, a deceleration in consumption is expected from the high levels seen during the first half of the year, partially as a result of lower repressed demand, tighter domestic financial conditions and household available income deterioration due to increased inflation. Investment is expected to continue its slow recovery while remaining below pre-pandemic levels. The trade deficit is expected to tighten due to projected lower domestic demand dynamics, and high prices of oil and other basic goods exported by the country. Given the above, economic growth in the second quarter of 2022 would be 11.5%, and for 2022 and 2023 an annual growth of 6.9% and 1.1% is expected, respectively. Currently, and for the remainder of 2022, the output gap would be positive and greater than that estimated in April, and prices would be affected by demand pressures. These projections continue to be affected by significant uncertainty associated with global political tensions, the expected adjustment of monetary policy in developed countries, external demand behavior, changes in country risk outlook, and the future developments in domestic fiscal policy, among others. The high inflation levels and respective expectations, which exceed the target of the world's main central banks, largely explain the observed and anticipated increase in their monetary policy interest rates. This environment has tempered the growth forecast for external demand. Disruptions in value chains, rising international food and energy prices, and expansionary monetary and fiscal policies have contributed to the rise in inflation and above-target expectations seen by several of Colombia’s main trading partners. These cost and price shocks, heightened by the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have been more prevalent than expected and have taken place within a set of output and employment recovery, variables that in some countries currently equal or exceed their projected long-term levels. In response, the U.S. Federal Reserve accelerated the pace of the benchmark interest rate increase and rapidly reduced liquidity levels in the money market. Financial market actors expect this behavior to continue and, consequently, significantly increase their expectations of the average path of the Fed's benchmark interest rate. In this setting, the U.S. dollar appreciated versus the peso in the second quarter and emerging market risk measures increased, a behavior that intensified for Colombia. Given the aforementioned, for the remainder of 2022 and 2023, the Bank's technical staff increased the forecast trajectory for the Fed's interest rate and reduced the country's external demand growth forecast. The projected oil price was revised upward over the forecast horizon, specifically due to greater supply restrictions and the interruption of hydrocarbon trade between the European Union and Russia. Global geopolitical tensions, a tightening of monetary policy in developed economies, the increase in risk perception for emerging markets and the macroeconomic imbalances in the country explain the increase in the projected trajectory of the risk premium, its trend level and the neutral real interest rate1. Uncertainty about external forecasts and their consequent impact on the country's macroeconomic scenario remains high, given the unpredictable evolution of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, geopolitical tensions, the degree of the global economic slowdown and the effect the response to recent outbreaks of the pandemic in some Asian countries may have on the world economy. This macroeconomic scenario that includes high inflation, inflation forecasts, and expectations above 3% and a positive output gap suggests the need for a contractionary monetary policy that mitigates the risk of the persistent unanchoring of inflation expectations. In contrast to the forecasts of the April report, the increase in the risk premium trend implies a higher neutral real interest rate and a greater prevailing monetary stimulus than previously estimated. For its part, domestic demand has been more dynamic, with a higher observed and expected output level that exceeds the economy’s productive capacity. The surprising accelerations in the headline and core inflation reflect stronger and more persistent external shocks, which, in combination with the strength of aggregate demand, indexation, higher inflation expectations and exchange rate pressures, explain the upward projected inflation trajectory at levels that exceed the target over the next two years. This is corroborated by the inflation expectations of economic analysts and those derived from the public debt market, which continued to climb and currently exceed 3%. All of the above increase the risk of unanchoring inflation expectations and could generate widespread indexation processes that may push inflation away from the target for longer. This new macroeconomic scenario suggests that the interest rate adjustment should continue towards a contractionary monetary policy landscape. 1.2. Monetary policy decision Banco de la República’s Board of Directors (BDBR), at its meetings in June and July 2022, decided to continue adjusting its monetary policy. At its June meeting, the BDBR decided to increase the monetary policy rate by 150 basis points (b.p.) and its July meeting by majority vote, on a 150 b.p. increase thereof at its July meeting. Consequently, the monetary policy interest rate currently stands at 9.0% . 1 The neutral real interest rate refers to the real interest rate level that is neither stimulative nor contractionary for aggregate demand and, therefore, does not generate pressures that lead to the close of the output gap. In a small, open economy like Colombia, this rate depends on the external neutral real interest rate, medium-term components of the country risk premium, and expected depreciation. Box 1: A Weekly Indicator of Economic Activity for Colombia Juan Pablo Cote Carlos Daniel Rojas Nicol Rodriguez Box 2: Common Inflationary Trends in Colombia Carlos D. Rojas-Martínez Nicolás Martínez-Cortés Franky Juliano Galeano-Ramírez Box 3: Shock Decomposition of 2021 Forecast Errors Nicolás Moreno Arias