Search

Financialization occurs where, over time, capitalist economies undergo a transformation, with profit-making via investment in production declining, to be replaced by profit-making via investment in financial markets. In the present research, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for this process, that we call the credit-debt reproduction mechanism. We derive this inductively, starting with Marx's analysis of the paradox of monetary profit and its practical manifestation in the capitalist economy, the shortage of money in circulation. This shortage results in capital becoming increasingly expensive, making long-term investment decisions less certain, less profitable and less justifiable. Investment in financial markets grows, but this leads to an ever-expanding cycle of credit and debt, which puts capitalist economies on a one-way road from productive investments to predominantly unproductive investments. We include in this analysis important reflections on the distinction between "financialization" and "financial development." We also revive and revisit the notion of the shortage of money as a key driver in this process. Another contribution made in this research is to draw a distinction between practical and theoretical solutions to the paradox of monetary profit. Crucially, our research confirms the absence of a theoretical solution to the paradox, there existing only practical solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries.

Informal street vending is the most widespread activity in the global informal economy and a central part of citizens' everyday lives, both sellers and patrons, in the urban centres of the Global South. Recently, however, authorities have started to ban street vending and even buying from vendors, as they impose policies that seek to control access to and use of urban spaces in pursuit of urban modernisation. Despite this, street vending continues. We seek understanding of this policy failure, from the perspective of the patrons of street vendors, a largely-neglected focus. Adopting a neoinstitutionalist framework, we utilise the concept of institutional incongruence to frame our empirical research. We apply multinomial analysis to an in-depth survey of 529 individuals in Lagos, Nigeria, complemented by 10 interviews. We find patrons are motivated by multiple economic, social and spatial factors. Our results, as well as codifying and confirming existing understandings of patrons' motivations, introduce a distinct factor – necessity – into the literature. These results allow us to offer important policy insights. Gaps between citizens' behaviour impacted by the formal institutions of neoliberal urban policies, and the longstanding informal institutions shaping custom, and community, provide new insights into Lagosians' everyday lives as patrons of street vendors. Moreover, these urban policies are shown to drive people towards street vending, as sellers and patrons – the opposite of their intended outcome. For policies to be developed that can reduce institutional incongruence and improve, rather than worsen, Lagosians' lives, our results offer an important starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.01148.x Byline: Robert Ackrill (l), Adrian Kay (2) Abstract: The Uruguay Round Agreement made significant changes to the governance of international trade. Trade rules and dispute settlement mechanisms were altered and a series of specific agreements provided for liberalisation across economic sectors. The Agreement on Agriculture, arguably the most difficult and contentious to negotiate, permitted the continued use of trade-distorting instruments, both domestically and at the border. Rule-enforcement in agriculture therefore relies crucially on the clarity of the rules. This paper provides an in-depth study of a unique and critical case for understanding the new rules: the EC sugar regime. This policy was challenged unsuccessfully under the pre-Uruguay Round rules, but successfully under the new rules. This case is particularly valuable in allowing us to isolate the effect of the Uruguay Round on agricultural trade disputes: the policy under challenge was essentially unchanged and the legal actions addressed the same concern - excessive export subsidisation. Drawing on primary and secondary materials and interviews with key policy actors, sugar is used to illustrate how those involved in the multilateral process learned from particular rule weaknesses revealed in earlier cases, revising those rules in the Uruguay Round in such a way that dispute panels can more readily and objectively determine rule breaches. Author Affiliation: (l)Nottingham Trent University (2)Griffith University, Brisbane

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7976.2008.00137.x Byline: Robert Ackrill (1), Adrian Kay (2), Wyn Morgan (3) Abstract: In 2008, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reached its fiftieth birthday. It has been a constant factor in directing resources to the EU agricultural sector, but the means of channelling these resources have changed considerably over time. This article charts the evolution of the CAPs principal policy instruments and analyzes the welfare effects of its major reforms. It also analyzes these changes in terms of the institutional context of the principal reform pressures, namely international trade obligations and EU budget concerns. We will show that the link between these two pressures was never one of simple determinism: the CAP and its reform can only be understood in light of these pressures and of endogenous vested interests to the policy. En 2008, la Politique agricole commune (PAC) celebre ses 50 ans. Cette politique a ete un facteur constant de l'orientation des ressources vers le secteur agricole de l'UE, mais les moyens utilises pour acheminer ces ressources ont change considerablement au fil du temps. Le present article retrace l'evolution des principaux instruments de la PAC et analyse les effets de ses grandes reformes sur le bien-etre. Elle analyse aussi ces changements dans le contexte institutionnel des pressions de la reforme, a savoir les obligations commerciales internationales et les preoccupations quant au budget de l'UE. Nous montrons que le lien entre ces deux types de pression n'a jamais ete d'un determinisme simple: la PAC et sa reforme ne peuvent etre comprises qu'en examinant ces pressions et les droits acquis endogenes qu'elles generent. Author Affiliation: (1)Division of Economics, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK (corresponding author: phone: +44 115 848 4234; fax: +44 115 848 4707; e-mail:robert.ackrill@ntu.ac.uk). (2)Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Department of Politics & Public Policy, Griffith Business School, Nathan, Brisbane QLD 4111, Australia (phone: +61 (0)7 3735 5401; fax: +61 (0)7 3735 7737; e-mail:a.kay@griffith.edu.au). (3)Associate Professor in Economics and Director of Teaching and Learning, School of Economics, B3, Sir Clive Granger Building, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK (phone: +44(0)115 9515473; fax: +44(0)115 9514159; e-mail:wyn.morgan@nottingham.ac.uk).

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.10.003 Byline: Irina RAcentsmniceanu (a)(b), Robert Ackrill (c) Keywords: Rural development; New member states; Multifunctionality; Competitiveness; Policy choices Abstract: European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries. Author Affiliation: (a) European Institute of Romania, Bulevard Regina Elisabeta 7-9, Sector 3, RO-030016 Bucharest, Romania (b) Academy of Economic Studies, Faculty of International Business and Economics, Street Mihai Eminescu 13-15, Sector 1, Bucharest, Romania (c) Division of Economics, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU UK

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy needs additional reform, although price supports were lowered at the 1999 meeting. Plans include review of rules for arable agriculture in 2002 and the dairy industry in 2003.

Issues discussed concern the laws and policies that govern the management of the European Union's (EU) budget. The article addresses the EU's need to balance spending on the Common Agricultural Policy with other fiscal duties.

In this article, we analyse the trade-growth nexus for Slovakia. This country represents a critical case for such research because it is one of the most open economies in the world; by several measures it is the most open economy in the EU, with the most Eurocentric trade, and has maintained one of the best growth performances within the EU over a sustained period of time. In contrast to most contributions to the trade-growth literature, we analyse all six possible causal relationships between Slovakia’s exports, imports and growth, using the technique developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995), on quarterly data from 1997Q1 to 2014Q4. We find evidence supporting both the export-led-growth hypothesis and the import-led-growth hypothesis. None of the other four relationships was found to be significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender equality was a founding principle of the European Union (EU) and has remained on its policy agenda ever since, yet delivery of policy goals has been uneven across countries and economic sectors. We draw on theoretical and empirical literatures from human resource management and policy science to explore EU gender equality initiatives and their enactment within one sector which has seen virtually no improvements in gender-based employment equality: construction. To help understand the possible reasons for this, we compare practice and experiences in two countries; the UK and France. In both, the construction industry remains resolutely male-dominated, with women employed primarily in support and administrative roles. We deploy the concept of Europeanisation, to provide an analytical framework to understand the potential gaps between policy goals and on-the-ground implementation, whilst a comparative approach allows us to see if different national approaches to EU policy implementation can help explain these policy failures. We identify three potential ‘fracture points’ where breaks in policy transmission and enactment may occur: between the EU and national levels; between the national and industry levels; and within the industry itself. We identify areas for further research, where unpacking the ‘Black Boxes’ of policy development and industry practices, can help more effective policy-targeting to deliver policy goals on gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Europeanization addresses the impacts of EU (European Union) membership on national politics and policies. Over time, new policy processes have been developed, such as the use of soft law and the open method of co-ordination. What, though, are the consequences of these new processes for Europeanization? This article contributes to this under-researched area by examining the extent to which EU soft law influences policy adoption at the national level. Our empirical application is corporate governance, an area of growing EU policy interest, with significant soft law elements. We analyse the extent to which the European Commission's 2003 plan to enhance corporate governance achieved its aim of 'co-ordinating corporate governance efforts of Member States'. Our quantitative analysis of 95 national codes issued over 1992-2010 suggests that the Action Plan did influence national policy-making, but that the degree of national policy alignment depends on when the corporate governance code was issued, where, and by whom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuscript Type Empirical Research Question/Issue Existing research suggests that internal and external corporate governance mechanisms substitute for one another to mitigate agency problems in bidding firms. This paper tests whether the interaction between these mechanisms is more complementary. Research Findings/Insights While there is evidence for disciplinary responses to bids for unrelated targets involving strategic retrenchment and significant asset divestment, the influence of the information conveyed by this characteristic on the likelihood of post-abandonment discipline is not amplified when boards are less independent. Theoretical/Academic Implications The results suggest that certain characteristics are used to distinguish between abandoned bidders which require discipline and those that do not. However, our findings do not suggest that interaction between internal and external governance mechanisms is contingent on board independence. Instead, these interactions between shareholders and boards seem to be contingent on a range of company, industry, and situation-specific factors. Practitioner/Policy Implications While policy in the UK has focused on board independence as a means of effective corporate governance, our results suggest that this is not a panacea. Effective governance involves active owners, communicating their interests to boards, and boards responding accordingly. Further encouragement of such communication before, during, and after acquisitions will improve signals to managers that shareholders can target the necessary discipline of those whom they perceive to need it most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple streams framework draws insight from interactions between agency and institutions to explore the impact of context, time and meaning on policy change and to assess the institutional and issue complexities permeating the European Union (EU) policy process. The authors specify the assumptions and structure of the framework and review studies that have adapted it to reflect more fully EU decision-making processes. The nature of policy entrepreneurship and policy windows are assessed to identify areas of improvement. Finally, the authors sketch out a research agenda that refines the logic of political manipulation which permeates the lens and the institutional complexity which frames the EU policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments, increasingly, are encouraging the production and consumption of biofuels, as a partial substitute for fossil-fuel based transport fuels. One reason for this is to contribute to the fight against climate change. Sustainability criteria have been introduced recently by some countries to help ensure biofuels have lower greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels. Concerns have been expressed from various quarters that such criteria could represent World Trade Organisation (WTO)-incompatible barriers to trade. We, first, question recent contributions to the (mainly legal) academic literature which have sought to find ways of allowing biofuels to be treated differently in trade policy terms, based on whether or not they have been derived from feedstocks produced sustainably. We then draw on the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBTA) to offer guidance as to how to establish WTO-compatible sustainability criteria. There is little direct case law to draw on at the design stage, but we argue that if TBTA guidance is followed, a long-term absence of case law could be taken as an indication that the sustainability criteria established are indeed WTO-compatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple streams model, developed by Kingdon in the United States (US), is being adapted increasingly to study European Union (EU) policy-making. This, however, is revealing a theoretical underdevelopment in some of its central components. The present paper considers several concerns. It seeks to develop the idea of policy entrepreneurship as a context-specific activity that gives substance to the claim that 'ideas have their time'; it interprets the key notion of ambiguity, in the EU context, to mean institutional ambiguity; and it allows for spillovers between policy areas to be endogenous as well as exogenous. This affects the nature of the policy windows wherein policy entrepreneurship occurs. The adapted multiple streams model is used to analyse the 2005 EU sugar policy reform. Institutional ambiguity and endogenous spillovers are shown to create the conditions that enabled active policy entrepreneurship to lead, ultimately, to reform of this most resilient of policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the evolution of the international governance of agriculture as a sequential process, in which the negotiation of new trading and enforcement rules interacts with legal disputes over the interpretation of existing rules. The interaction between negotiation and litigation has produced a governance trajectory from vague to precise commitments and a strengthened dispute settlement process. We contest standard histories, which identify the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture as the singular event that established agriculture for the first time under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and which claim this represents the legalization of the agricultural trade regime. The case of agriculture contains important lessons for broader debates on international governance by articulating: (1) dynamic feedback processes, challenging the view that bargaining and enforcement aspects of international agreements are concluded simultaneously, and (2) key mechanisms underlying the greater precision of institutional commitments that tend to emerge over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of EuroChoices is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The development of the Open Method of Coordination, agreement on the Lisbon Agenda and EU enlargement offered the prospect of a new and substantial EU social policy agenda. This article considers EU social and cohesion policies in the context of the recent negotiation of the EU budget for 2007–13. We find the Commission's wish to redistribute EU spending in favour of these policy areas and new member states was thwarted by key political features of EU budget making: CAP spending levels which are downwardly sticky; institutional arrangements which provide for budget making as, at best, a zero-sum game; and the preferences of contributor member states in the EU-15 to contain overall spending while preserving their net budget positions. Questions are thus raised as to the ability of the EU to make any progress, from a budgetary perspective, on the social and cohesion policy agenda in an enlarged EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The EU budget has only recently started to feature in theories of European integration. Studies typically adopt a historical-institutionalist framework, exploring notions such as path dependency. They have, however, generally been rather aggregated, or coarse-grained, in their approach. The EU budget has thus been treated as a single entity rather than a series of inter-linked institutions. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by adopting a fine-grained approach. This enables us to emphasize the connections that exist between EU budgetary institutions, in both time and space. We show that the initial set of budgetary institutions was unable, over time, to achieve consistently their treaty-based objectives. In response, rather than reform these institutions at potentially high political cost, additional institutions were layered on top of the extant structures. We thus demonstrate how some EU budgetary institutions have remained unchanged, whilst others have been added or changed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negotiations over EU enlargement have highlighted difficulties in extending the CAP — and in particular direct payments — to the applicant countries, given the spending limits agreed in Berlin in 1999. This note presents estimates of direct payment costs in the Eastern European applicants. It argues that the only way all member states in an enlarged EU can receive the same level of payments is if the payments currently prevailing in the EU15 are reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze possible reforms to the Bulgarian VAT system, evaluating revenue-neutral reallocations of goods to tax bands within the existing 2-rate structure. We investigate the sensitivity of the results to behavioural response and imperfect tax recovery. We find only a weak case for the use of non-uniform VAT rate structures for redistributional purposes. Selective VAT exemptions can produce approximate welfare gains equivalent to a general price fall of much less than 1 per cent for plausible specifications of social welfare. JEL classification: D31, J31, P24. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of EuroChoices is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A letter to the editor is presented regarding the reformation of old Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which was published in the previous issue.