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Purpose This paper aims to briefly review the literature on interest rate convergence and the European debt crisis with a special focus on the current fiscal problems of some governments in Europe.Design/methodology/approach Relevant empirical papers are identified and reviewed focusing on time series analysis techniques.Findings The introduction of the euro has caused interest rate convergence among European Monetary Union (EMU) government bond yields. However, now sovereign credit risk and possibly even redenomination risk have caused divergences in European bond markets.Research limitations/implications A major limitation is that a relatively new field of the literature is surveyed. However, there are enough papers of relevance. This review paper could therefore be helpful in finding new approaches for additional empirical research examining the EMU bond market.Originality/value The results of empirical studies in a relatively new field of the literature are summarized. There meanwhile are some relevant papers. A brief survey of the results of these papers is provided. Important empirical findings with regard to interest rate convergence, sovereign credit risk and redenomination risk in the EMU are discussed and evaluated. The review is especially helpful for researchers and practitioners in the field of managerial finance and risk managers in the financial services industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 European elections led to a sharp rise in the electoral consensus of parties and independent parliament members perceived as eurosceptic. This paper analyzes the interconnections between distressed economies and the electoral success of hard-line eurosceptic parties. On a panel of 108 elections between 2008 and 2015, the random-effects model shows the relative effect of long- and short-term political trust, economic performance indicators, and institutional variables in determining the rise of hard-line eurosceptic parties. In contrast with previous studies, which have tended to de-emphasize the effect of economic performance in determining the success of eurosceptic forces, the results of this paper detect both a direct and a mediated effect of the economic crisis on the electoral success of hard-line eurosceptic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wave of privatisation is unfolding in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has yet to receive serious scholarly attention. This paper examines the case of Ireland, where an austerity strategy and European Union International Monetary Fund bailout conditionality have given impetus to the transfer of public assets to the private sector. Theoretically, the paper explains the roots of the phenomenon with reference to a reformulated concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' whose usefulness lies in emphasising the politico-economic drivers of privatisation, which have been neglected in the mainstream literature. A typology is presented that argues that accumulation by dispossession manifests itself, in practice, through four main processes: (1) private repossession of assets nationalised during the financial crisis; (2) restructuring of state-owned enterprises; (3) commodification of assets and services hitherto located outside the market; and (4) privatised stimulus through public-private partnerships. The paper's framework should be useful to conceptualise ongoing privatisation processes in other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security Systems; however, this financial product does not enjoy its expected popularity. A potential explanation of this reality might be due to the fact that European countries are far from being homogeneous, nor their pensions systems. Therefore, any policy geared toward improving financial retirement planning should take into account these potential differences. As a first approach to their analysis, this paper proposes the existence of four different ‘social models’ in Europe -namely, Continental, Mediterranean, Nordic and Transitional-. Overall, empirical evidence confirmed the significant influence of country’ ‘social model’ on the decision to invest in retirement accounts on a sample of 31,468 individuals in 2013. It was also proved that this decision is positively related to age, household income and wealth, higher levels of formal education, job situation, good health status, and long-term planning horizons; and negatively related to age squared, household size or financial risk aversion. In short, future policies and reforms regarding private pensions should not only take into account the existence of individual differences among Europeans, but also the existence of differences depending on institutional and cultural country factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013 it was declared that 'the eurozone crisis is over'. However, in fact, the series of financial crises since 2008 may have interrupted the process of EMU enlargement, which in turn triggered a continuing crisis of confidence in the euro. In this paper we extend the sigma-convergence test to provide a more precise understanding of real interest rate parity ( RIP) convergence. On the basis of this, we predict the timing for eliminating the cost of economic asymmetric shocks. Our estimation indicates the RIP among EMU members and accessions were still valid after the disruptions of the 2008 financial crisis. However, the situation has been even worse since the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis, and ceteris paribus, symmetry cannot be achieved without further policy actions. This implies that the EMU authority must do its best to strengthen symmetry and thereby solidify the EMU, at which point it will be better able to re-start the process of enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that corporate governance, and executive and employee compensation in particular, was a key driver behind the decline in the quality of the ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs), which in turn contributed to the financial crisis. It argues that the most common explanations for the failure of CRAs, including conflict of interest, inadequate models and insufficient staff, were themselves driven by the incentives provided to decision-makers. In support of its argument, it draws on a number of recent inquiries and reports on the causes of the crisis. It then critically analyses the European Regulation on CRAs, paying particular attention to its reliance on corporate governance structures to deal with conflicts of interest. It emphasises that US-based CRAs already had equivalent structures in place before the crisis, but that they did not prevent the decline in ratings quality. Indeed, they put in place the remuneration schemes which this paper argues drove the decline in quality. It concludes with some suggestions as to other ways in which CRA failure might be prevented in future and how the Regulation might be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health systems in Europe were hit by the economic crisis to various degrees. Evidence from worst affected countries shows detrimental consequences for health systems and health outcomes. EU member states face an increased risk of cross-border health threats given the growing difficulties to prevent and control infectious disease outbreaks with resources limited by cuts to public spending on health. Although health systems constitute a core national competence, the crisis has triggered the extension of EU economic surveillance over this field. The related debate focuses on the added value of EU action to support health systems in coping with the crisis challenges vs. the constraints imposed by stricter EU fiscal governance on national health policymakers. This paper provides an analysis of the changes triggered by the economic crisis. The analysis focuses on the EU level, exploring the changes in the output of EU institutions and their (possible) implications for health systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European crisis is the best case study for examining both the vulnerabilities of Europe's framework for economic governance and the very process of European integration itself. This statement is true for several reasons: first, because the European crisis is the most serious crisis the European Union has faced to date; second, because of the crisis, limits on the process of economic integration in Europe have been put to a real test; and third, because the main causes of the crisis are tied into the framework for economic governance that has been developed over the last few decades and therefore are connected to the very process of European unification itself. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate whether and to what extent the new framework for economic governance in Europe is largely a result of interstate bargaining and consequently whether national preferences continue to play an important role in the framework's general transformation. The economic crisis showed that important issues in economic policy concerning the change in economic governance and the role of the nation-state, which were ‘swept under the carpet’ in recent decades, must be resolved to make the European venture viable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the determinants of people’s support for European institutions, mainly focusing on the impact of European identity, after the economic crisis and in a moment in which – after profound uncertainty for its immediate future – there is a new feeling toward European integration. Previous research on support for European institutions, before the economic and financial crisis which had hit Europe since 2008, found that people’s evaluations followed mainly an instrumental logic – support being contingent on a perception of personal or national benefit accruing for EU membership – with an additional role played by European identification. This contribution expands the analysis after the beginning of the economic crisis, so to assess whether the former has affected the structure of such support, and deepens the analysis of the impact of EU identity on European institutional confidence. Using a recent Eurobarometer survey (86.2, 2016) and combining both individual and contextual data, the paper shows that European identity plays a crucial role in explaining European support also after the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews some of the recent studies on international capital flows with a focus on the role of European global banks. It presents a revision to the commonly held "global saving glut" view that East Asian economies (along with oil-rich nations) were the dominant suppliers of capital that fueled the asset price boom in many parts of the world in the early 2000s. It argues that the role of funding costs and a "liberal" regulatory regime that allowed for an unprecedented expansion of the balance sheets of European banks was no less important. Finally, we describe the aftermath of the crisis in terms of some of the challenges faced by Europe as a whole and European banks in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the current European economic landscape, plagued by financial, economic and national debt crises, a vivid debate has been sparked in the academic and professional environment regarding the way in which the European banking sector can contribute to the achievement of a long term sustainable economic growth. The debate is even more entailed since the financial crisis started in the banking sector and the main contagion happened through banks operating regionally and globally. Within this context, our paper aims at providing an overview of the main characteristics of the European banking sector and of the challenges that it will face in the post-crisis period. This represents a first necessary step in our opinion, for the better understanding of the way in which the European banking sector can contribute to the achievement of a long term sustainable economic growth. In order to achieve this we used a qualitative analysis combined with a series of empirical data and a series of own calculated indicators that underline some of the characteristics of the EU member states banking systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The huge increases in debt-GDP ratios following the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, which are unprecedented except in times of war, has focused attention on the viability of the fiscal positions of EU countries and the US, how to assess this and the likely future evolution of these positions. This paper proposes an indicator of the fiscal stance which computes the fiscal adjustment required to reach a specific debt-GDP targeted given the forecasts of future deficit and interest rates obtained from an unrestricted (recursively-estimated) VAR model. The index is easy to compute and can be decomposed to disclose the different contribution of revenue, expenditure, nominal yields, inflation and growth to the fiscal stance. For this reason it provides a transparent and detailed measure of the fiscal stance, particularly suitable for multi-country surveillance. As a result, the index improves on the tax-gap indicators widely used by governments and international agencies, and is far more informative than formal econometric tests of fiscal sustainability. The time series of the indicator for individual EU countries and the US show that their fiscal position has fluctuated considerably over the last 40 years, and has particularly deteriorated since 2007. The index predicts that the adjustment required to restore pre-crisis debt-GDP levels are higher for high debt countries like Greece, Italy and Portugal. They become more severe the shorter is the time horizon for the adjustment. As a large degree of uncertainty surrounds the assessment of the fiscal stance in the medium and long run, we argue that policy makers should inform their policy based on the worst case scenario predicted by the indicator. - Vito Polito and Michael Wickens [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharp deceleration of credit growth to the private sector in the EU, after half a decade of exuberance, will inevitably squeeze households and enterprises and can only aggravate the worsening recession. The region experienced very rapid credit growth in recent years, which was generally viewed positively as supporting rapid convergence to the but at the same time it contributed to the emergence of sizable macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities. European Governments should use monetary and fiscal policy and not only in order to stimulate domestic non-governmental credit growth because it is crucial for the recovery of the European economies. Within emerging markets, eastern European economies have been the hardest hit. The linkages between western Europe and emerging European banking systems make the region particularly vulnerable. The paper tries to present some financial policy measures regarding banking sector for stimulating credit growth in the Europe and especially, in the Central and Eastern European Countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper summarises a collaborative international research project comparing the impact of the ongoing conglomerate of crises in nine EU policies. All of them saw significant crisis-induced pressures and challenges. Beyond changes in discourse, the crisis-induced pressures have, in many areas, also triggered a rather sizable amount of policy change. Considering EU competences, no single example of re-nationalisation was found, but many new EU-level tasks. The governments were of prime importance in immediate crisis management but supranational institutions and processes continue to matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Until very recently, European employers and political leaders denied the need for any coordination in industrial relations at EU level. In 2011, however, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a new European economic governance regime that makes EU member states' labor policies subject to multilateral surveillance procedures. This paper analyzes this ‘silent revolution’ from above and assesses organized labor's responses to this challenge. It shows that the EU's new governance regime does not follow the classical model of a federal state, but rather the governance structures of multinational corporations that control their local subsidiaries through the use of whipsawing tactics and coercive comparisons. European trade unions' and social movements' difficulties in politicizing European economic governance are thus best explained by the ability of the new supranational EU regime to nationalize social conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In January 2011, the European Union established three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) for the financial sector: the European Banking Authority (EBA, in London), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA, in Frankfurt) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA, in Paris). So far, the ESAs have played less a supervisory role than a regulatory role. They have focused on technical measures specifying in more detail the often abstract legislation adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. These measures may be binding technical standards or non-binding guidelines or recommendations. They are of great importance, to both financial and non-financial industry. Currently, the European Commission is reviewing the regulations governing the three ESAs and will bring forward its proposals for amendments in early 2015. This paper entails 12 recommendations to policymakers for improving the ESAs' work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime performance and support for democracy. Individual-level analyses do not reveal any clear patterns concerning the impact of long-term societal factors or short-term economic considerations. Due to data quality limitations the paper has a predominately exploratory nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who do citizens blame for the recent European economic crisis? In this paper, we test theories about blame attribution with respect to the economic crisis. We argue that blame for the crisis is partially conditioned by partisan bias and framings of the crisis as being related to globalization. We test the argument with new survey data and a survey experiment from Spain. In the experiment, respondents receive different framings of the economic crisis which are endorsed by different political parties and non-partisan organizations. We obtain the following findings: (i) blame for who is responsible for the economic crisis is greatly affected by partisanship; (ii) making globalization as a cause of the crisis salient exonerates the government of blame, but only for co-partisans of the government; and (iii) citizens are willing to blame other globalization-related factors for the crisis, in particular, European governments and blame the domestic government less. The results expand our understanding of public opinion dynamics during major economic recessions and also suggest conditions under which 'scapegoating' globalization can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland was the only EU member state to hold a referendum to ratify the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (otherwise known as the Fiscal Compact Treaty) on 31 May 2012. It was passed by 60.3% to 39.7%. This briefing paper argues that the referendum debate is of wider interest to EU scholars as both sides articulated diverging policies for how Europe should respond to the financial crisis, in a possible precursor to future debates across the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the completion of the single European market and the full liberalization of capital markets two separate trilemmas emerged in the early 1990s: a monetary trilemma between free capital movements, fixed exchange rates, and national monetary autonomy; and a financial trilemma between free capital movements, financial stability, and national financial supervision autonomy. The paper argues that although these two trilemmas stem from the same root cause, financial integration, the financial trilemma is particularly acute for countries that have chosen to resolve the monetary trilemma by entering into a monetary union. The lesson from the recent crisis is that eurozone countries need to replace their national financial supervision institutions by supranational institutions capable of managing and resolving financial crises. This will require pooling together some of their fiscal sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the great financial crash, the need for new fiscal rules to prevent unsustainable fiscal policies is universally recognised. In practice such rules, including those in the Stability and Growth Pact, have proved to be impossible to enforce. Thus, to avoid unsustainable fiscal policies reappearing, and to prevent monetary policy from being undermined by undisciplined governments, there is a need for a framework capable of imposing fiscal discipline. This paper considers an intertemporal assignment, where fiscal policy focuses on long-term objectives and monetary policy on short-term stabilisation. We argue for public sector debt targets as a practical way to achieve such a set up, and an excess debt protocol is constructed to give enforceable form to those targets. The ideas of 'fiscal space' and optimal debt levels are used to provide a mechanism for identifying a stable region within which the debt targeting regime should operate. Making these factors explicit would both improve the credibility of planned fiscal policies and reduce risk premia on borrowing costs. We finally show how Europe's competitiveness pact, and debt restructuring operations, can be used to maximise the available fiscal space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and financial crisis opened a window of opportunity to place the Single Market back on top of the European agenda as part of a two-tiered crisis response, which also included reinforced financial supervision and economic co-ordination. We argue that the Commission acted as a 'purposeful opportunist' in both tiers; but whereas in economic governance issues there was breakthrough change in the Commission's achievements and competences, in the Single Market realm policy change was fairly modest. Using process tracing analysis our goal is to explain why the Commission did not succeed in furthering a genuine Single Market reform. Our findings suggest that the Commission's entrepreneurship was constrained by the limited salience of Single Market issues in the crisis context and by the lack of actual political commitment from the other relevant stakeholders. Thus, our research highlights the limits of the Commission's opportunistic behaviour in less advantageous circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the fast growth of consumption, the promotion of purchasing green products could be a way to minimize the environmental impact and achieve the sustainable consumption. Considering that there is a lack of studies about green purchase behavior and its determinants in all European Union countries (EU), the aim of this paper is to evaluate the main determinants of green purchase behavior by applying the Theory of Planned Behavior. Referring to Hostefe's cultural dimensions we revealed how cultural aspects contribute to purchase behavior. The results showed that there were observed big differences in terms of green purchase behavior in the EU countries and it did not depend on economic development significantly. The subjective norms and interaction of knowledge and confidence in green products significantly determined the green purchase behavior in all countries. According to the cross-culture studies, all cultural dimensions did not have significant influence on green purchase behavior. However, cultural dimensions are related to factors which directly influence green purchase behavior. Therefore, due to the process of the EU cultural convergence and economic crisis, it could have indirect impact on green purchase behavior. These findings have important implication for marketers and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Central Bank (ECB) has received a lot of criticism for its too little, too late performance to ease market pressures during the economic crisis. At the same time, the ECB and the Federal Reserve (Fed) have managed the new economic realities that have emerged in the international context differently. Despite the criticisms, the European Central Bank is the European Union institution that has assumed more control due to the new model of economic governance of the EU. Why did the Federal Reserve act so nimbly and quickly to calm the markets, while the ECB was so cautious in managing monetary policy? The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative analysis of the management of interest rates and other monetary policy measures undertaken by the Central Bank and the Federal Reserve during the economic crisis, as well as to understand the changes in the context of the ECB and the emergence of its authority within the European Union's economic governance model since 2011. Thus, in order to carry out a scrupulous exposition, we will also limit the time frame of this study to the 2007-2014 period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The current European economic crisis changes radically the structure of present and future employment, the political agenda and the adoption of appropriate economic policy means in the whole Europe. This is mostly true for southern European countries that were hit hard by economic crisis and thus raising questions about the appropriate policy mix required in supporting employment. In Greece, for example, the problem of unprecedented large unemployment (27 %) by summer 2013, is an urgent issue dominating in all current discussions related to adoption of the best economic policy means. Often, these discussions are focused on some general macroeconomic policy suggestions that are not based on a microeconomic analysis of how firms are affected by economic crisis, not only, in the same sector, but also, in different sectors of the economy. In this study, we explore the determinants of job creation and job destruction using a large and comprehensive panel data set of Greek manufacturing firms, covering the time period 2004 - 2011 and distinguishing between the pre-crisis (2004-2007) and post-crisis (2008-2011) period. Our study reveals that, although the crisis has indeed a substantial negative effect on employment growth in all sectors of Greek manufacturing, some sectors (such as food products) are less affected compared to others (especially textiles, wearing apparel and leather products). Thus, our results suggest that a discretionary microeconomic policy that could encourage production and exports, with such measures as tax reductions, investment subsidies, export grants, etc., in favour of the less affected sectors could contribute to reducing large unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Spanish Journal of Finance & Accounting / Revista Espanola de Financiacion y Contabilidad is the property of Routledge 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.)

This article analyses the influence and status of the Central and Eastern European states within an enlarged European Union. It analyses two European Union policy negotiations: the Services Directive and the European Union's Financial Crisis Rescue Plan. Central to understanding the influence of a member state within negotiations are its economic size and knowledge of the Brussels policy-making apparatus. Nevertheless, as the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe have gained experience of the European Union policy negotiation process, they remain limited in their ability to influence outcomes. Therefore it can be concluded that while knowledge during negotiations is a necessary condition for successfully influencing outcome, alone it is insufficient because economic weight is particularly pertinent to those outcomes. As a result, the status of the new member states within the European Union is best described as being that of a junior partner, despite the assumed parity of Union membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin and propagation of the European sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro. In particular, there was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of a monetary union under crisis conditions, especially in the absence of banking union and other European-level buffer mechanisms. Moreover, the inherent messiness involved in proposing and implementing incremental multicountry crisis management responses on the fly has been an important destabilizing factor throughout the crisis. After diagnosing the situation, we consider reforms that might improve the resilience of the euro area to future fiscal shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an image of posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services in the European Union, augmented by the economic crisis. In this context, economic realities, legal system and national political interests are identified as points of reflection. Consideration of the disparity of salary levels, resolving normative incoherence thru simplification and balance the position of political compromise, are identified as solutions for better fit adjustment of institutional mechanism of PWD, in accordance with specificities of each EU Member State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple theoretical model of monetary unification and data from 11 euro members are used to investigate the common currency's role in the macroeconomic performance of these countries. Euro membership has been typically accompanied by lower (or steady) inflation, but also by higher business-cycle volatility. In addition, synchronization of cyclical output was substantially affected by the common currency only in Greece (where it declined considerably) and Finland and Ireland (where it increased). Consistent with the theoretical predictions, the empirical evidence shows a strong negative relationship between cyclical synchronizations and volatilities, which however is not much stronger under the euro than it was during the Maastricht period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's insight regarding challenges for monetary policy that the European Monetary Union (EMU) faces. He states that EMU will find it difficult to ensure monetary policy stability if membership requirement will not be met in the union. He mentions that in order for the policy not continually be challenged by financial crisis, the central bankers should take into consideration the implication of monetary policy in the financial stability as well as the price stability.

The European Union is in danger of losing its vision with regard to the membership perspectives of the countries of the Western Balkans. The process is marked by 'enlargement fatigue' and a loss of political will. Tracing the state of play as regards the Western Balkans since the Thessaloniki Summit of 2003, the suggestion is that the momentum has been lost and that the combination of technical and political hurdles makes accession too long and too difficult to be a significant factor in promoting reforms from within and realigning political commitments. The gap is growing between EU member states (Slovenia, Greece), candidate countries (Croatia, Macedonia), potential candidate countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia), and Kosovo. The global economic and financial crisis has also brought the IMF back into the region and further contributed to a sense of abandonment by the EU. Ultimately a commitment to enlargement is framed within other commitments in terms of security, energy policy and reconstruction. Clear signals are needed to change this, including a Thessaloniki II summit under the Swedish Presidency to re-assert the commitment of the EU to the region. The EU has, on the one hand, to put its own house in order and, on the other, to offer a reasonable political perspective to the Balkans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their introduction to this special issue, the editors mentioned that the commodification of labour is one important feature of capitalism. Hence, the reaction of the principal organizations that represent and defend labour needed to be explored. This article focuses on Belgian and German trade unions' apprehensions of European integration during the 1970s and sheds lights on two major findings. First, trade unions' perceptions of European integration were very clearly influenced by the condition and the evolution of capitalism. National trade unions observed that the transformations of capitalism could not be adequately addressed by national polities and industrial relations structures. Hence, trade unions heavily insisted on the necessity of political and trade unionist European cooperation. The latter is considered a necessary intermediary to allow labour to counterbalance the new forms of capital and to regain the influence it lost nationally. The second finding is that there existed a huge paradox between this enduring rhetoric of the necessity of European integration and the willingness of trade unions to give up some of their national prerogatives. The evolving forms of capitalism made it imperative to cooperate more at the supranational level but trade unions remained very much reluctant national institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse in GDP brought about by the global economic crisis in 2008 affected female employment less than male employment, whereas austerity has been particularly harsh on women, a gendered impact described in the literature as "he-cession to sh(e)-austerity". This article analyses gendered trends in the labour markets of eight European countries, decomposing quarterly changes in labour participation of women and men and in employment by sector. The "hecession to sh(e)-austerity" scenario is not observed in all countries. Other channels through which austerity policies can jeopardize gender equality and women's rights are identified with reference to a typology of such policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model for analyzing the sovereign debt crises of 2010-2013 in the Eurozone. The government sets its expenditure-debt policy optimally. The need to sell large quantities of bonds every period leaves the government vulnerable to self-fulfilling crises in which investors, anticipating a crisis, are unwilling to buy the bonds, thereby provoking the crisis. In this situation, the optimal policy of the government is to reduce its debt to a level where crises are not possible. If, however, the economy is in a recession where there is a positive probability of recovery in fiscal revenues, the government also has an incentive to smooth consumption and increase debt. Our exercise identifies conditions on fundamentals for which the incentive to smooth consumption dominates, giving rise to a situation where governments optimally 'gamble for redemption,' running fiscal deficits and increasing their debt, thereby increasing their vulnerability to crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and costly debt restructurings in Greece and Argentina, the sovereign debt restructuring regime (SDRR) has been reformed in a number of ways. Taken together, these reforms have had a mixed impact in comparison to existing governance arrangements put in place during the early 2000s: changes to IMF lending rules have weakened the regime, reforms to sovereign bond contracts have strengthened it, and a UN-centred initiative to construct a new multilateral debt restructuring framework has had little impact in either direction. The pattern of post-2008 change reveals that reforms focusing on pre-defined rules to trigger debt restructuring (the IMF lending reforms) areless likely to succeed than those focused on the process of restructuring once the decision to restructure has been taken (contract reforms). It also shows that efforts to build comprehensive, multilateral legal frameworks for debt restructuring (the initial goal of the UN initiative) face enormous obstacles. At a more theoretical level, the post-2008 experience highlights the enduring power of the United States and leading European states to shape outcomes in this sector, as well as the need to embrace eclectic theoretical frameworks in analysing the complicated politics of SDRR reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of crisis in Europe have proliferated since late 2009. This article investigates the relationship between the diagnosis of crisis and the cohesion and enlargement of the 'European project' in the context of Southeastern Europe. The article adoptsMichel Foucault's understanding of diagnosis as a strategic activity of language in order to re-construct the diagnostic discourse in relation to ongoing events in Greece and the Republic of Macedonia. Diagnostic practice produces accounts of crisis that are clinical, moralising, and prescriptive, affixing meanings to complex and overdetermined events in order that they can be acted upon. Diagnoses of the crises in Greece and Macedonia converge in their identification of political and cultural features of the national political economy in need of expert correction. The diagnosis of crisis emerges as an essential feature of European Union governmentality, which functions to delimit the bounds of political contestation in times of uncertainty and upheaval in favor of technocratic interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the Eurozone crisis has brought about two transformations in the basic rules of the EU economic constitution: the acceptance of public financial assistance to Eurozone Member States and the replacement of market discipline of domestic economies by bureaucratic discipline. Treating the measures adopted during the crisis and especially the response of the ECJ in Pringle and Gauweiler as constitutional transformations makes it possible to develop a narrative of the crisis that avoids two popular and opposing approaches that lead to a dead end: the wholesale acceptance of the legality of the measures adopted during the crisis on one hand, or their dismissal as simply illegal deviations from the EU constitutional framework on the other. In order to develop this constitutional narrative, the article borrows the theme framed by Weiler in his seminal article "The Transformation of Europe" and develops a constitutional interpretation of the moral hazard concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reads the current Eurocrisis going far beyond the classical linear explanations of the dualism between an imperialist core and a victimised periphery. Instead, it mobilises the concepts of social capital and of global imperialist chain to demonstrate the continuum between the agendas of the dominant classes in both the core and the periphery and the use of intergovernmental regional organisations as privileged tools for their strategies of exposing national capitals to international competition. Seen from this point of view, the current Eurocrisis is something far more complex than a mere exercise of domination of a major power (Germany, in this case) over peripheral economies: it is part of a strategy of redesigning the traditional model of welfare state, in which the Euro and the European Monetary Union work as dispositives of an hegemonic approach useful for the national bourgeoisies of the entire European space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Politics & Policy 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.)