|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
136147
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Crises can force leaders and technocrats together, highlight failures and, more rarely, precipitate changes in ideological worldview and the prevailing consensus. In 2007–8, the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression of 1929 caused a paradigm shift in financial and regulatory ideology. G20 leaders and central bankers reasserted collective power and authority over financial markets and global banks to an extent and in a manner not seen since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. The retreat of state authority reversed direction. The spell of the ‘mystical Anglo-Saxon model of liberalisation and deregulation’ was broken. In 2014 the paradigm shift is still underway and still under attack by recalcitrant bank CEOs and their lobbyists, but the shift may be durable—signalling a major change in international regulation of the world's largest financial markets and firms.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
135873
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
A truly democratic European Union seems to have become the graal of European politics, the project's redemptive promise and unreachable horizon. Much has been written about the gap between promise and performance and about the obstacles to EU democratization. Here, we suggest that one way to apprehend the ‘democratic deficit’ debate as it has evolved in the wake of the euro crisis is to think of it as a ‘democratic trilemma’. We argue that European legitimacy requires responses in different realms: first, an acknowledgement of Europe's ‘transnational democratic interdependence’; second, an anchoring of the functionalist European superstructure in ‘national democratic legitimacy’; and third, a grounding of both European and national power in ‘local democratic legitimacy’. While the very notion of trilemma points to the tensions that arise in trying to satisfy these requisites simultaneously, we nevertheless need to look for ways of alleviating the trilemma rather than coming up with democratic magic bullets in a single one of these realms. While our main goal is to reframe and open up the debate around the key concepts of empowerment, mutual recognition and flexibility, we also provide examples of what this may mean.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
134864
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Using the common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) technique to a set of balanced panel error correction model, we examine the effects of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and the global financial crisis of 2008 on the behavior of saving and investment in East Asian countries. Our results show that saving and investment rates are highly dependent across countries of East Asia. This finding underlines the importance of taking into account cross-sectional dependence when analyzing saving–investment relationship. The results also indicate that the adverse financial shock of 1997 has negatively affected the short run correlation between saving and investment, but has not influenced their long run relationship. Our finding, hence, verifies the prediction of new open economy macroeconomic theories regarding the divergence of short run saving–investment from its long run trend for East Asia. Moreover, we find that the global financial crisis of 2008 has not affected the saving–investment dynamics in this region. It means that the consequences of the Asian and global financial crises for saving–investment dynamics are not the same in East Asia. One might attribute these differences to the origins of these two shocks, i.e., internal versus external to the region. These findings may have some policy implications for those countries that rely heavily on foreign investment and are subject to various internal and external financial shocks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
135981
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Based on the stylized facts of financial crises and systemic risk accumulation, this paper constructs a new financial imbalance index (FII) from the perspective of endogenous financial cycles and assesses its application in China's macro-financial analysis. The results show that the FII is not only an effective index to detect financial imbalances in China's economic cycles, but is also more accurate than and plays more of a leading role than conventional indicators, such as the consumer price index, the financial conditions index and the purchasing managers indicator. Empirical analysis shows that the FII can be used as an effective indicator to measure systemic financial risk, and can provide policy-makers and market participants with useful information to make appropriate decisions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
135206
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Just a few years ago, Greece came perilously close to defaulting on its debts and exiting the eurozone. Today, thanks to the largest sovereign bailout in history, the country’s economy is showing new signs of life. In exchange for promises that Athens would enact aggressive austerity measures, the so-called troika -- the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund -- provided tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans. From the perspective of many global investors and European officials, those policies have paid off. Excluding a one-off expenditure to recapitalize its banks, Greece’s budget shortfall totaled roughly two percent last year, down from nearly 16 percent in 2009. Last year, the country ran a current account surplus for the first time in over three decades. And this past April, Greece returned to the international debt markets it had been locked out of for four years, issuing $4 billion in five-year government bonds at a relatively low yield -- only 4.95 percent. (Demand exceeded $26 billion.) In August, Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the country’s credit rating by two notches.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
ID:
134268
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Europe is facing both a political crisis of democracy and legitimacy and an economic crisis of debt and competitiveness. These crises seem to point in two distinct directions, growing social unrest over the Europeanized mechanisms of economic adjustment, and increasing efforts at strengthening those same institutions that regulate the adjustment process. Recent analyses have suggested that this failure of democracy will prove decisive; legitimacy for crisis management efforts requires a redemocratization of the European polity. Instead, drawing on an analysis of ordo- and neo-liberal traditions, the article explains how European integration was itself a response to the perceived threat of democratic demands at the domestic level. The body of the article then traces the crisis through three phases, arguing that efforts by state managers reflect a deliberate attempt to depoliticize policy-making processes. Yet the selective intervention—to restore accumulation whilst withdrawing social spending—has only fuelled the politicization of segments of European society. This threatens to test the limits of depoliticization as a governing strategy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 7 |
ID:
134859
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Contemporary pension systems face a major fiscal challenge. In China, whose population has been aging rapidly, such a challenge is of extreme importance. This article finds that, in China, the cumulative funding gap in pensions should be 2022.34 billion Yuan until 2020, and 71 731.94 billion Yuan until 2050; however, based on the fiscal capacity of the Chinese state, the fiscal burden created by pensions is not expected to create a financial crisis between 2013 and 2020. Furthermore, a fiscal crisis can be avoided between 2021 and 2050 if fiscal revenue increases by at least 6.18% a year on average during that period. This absence of predictable financial crisis does not mean that there are no significant demographic and fiscal issues ahead. This means that China should promote pension reform to prepare for an increasingly heavy financial burden in the future. The article concludes with policy recommendations about how to improve the long-term fiscal situation of China's growing pension system
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 8 |
ID:
134485
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Why has Piketty's Capital become a publishing sensation? Not for revolutionary findings; its message that western societies have experienced increases in inequality of income and wealth over the long term is hardly new. Of the several reasons discussed in this article, attention is paid in particular to the book's timing and its claim to reveal the laws of income and wealth distribution in western societies. Had the book been published before 2008 it would have been much less successful. Piketty's revelation of the big trends and their underlying logic helps to objectify, legitimize and offer a kind of catharsis for surging middle-class anxieties during the Great Recession. These anxieties have been further intensified by evidence that over 90 per cent of the increase in disposable income in the United States has accrued to the top 1 per cent of the population in the past several years, and a not much lower percentage to the top 1 per cent in Britain. In the conclusion it is argued that if Piketty's forecasts are even remotely accurate, capitalism will lose its core claim to legitimacy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 9 |
ID:
136148
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Many observers have diagnosed a fundamental shift in financial regulation since the 2008 crisis. In contrast, this article argues that changes have mostly been superficial. The ideas underpinning regulation have been adapted rather than overturned. Our financial system remains highly fragile, even if exceptionally loose monetary policy obscures such fragility temporarily. Governments show little appetite to correct the lopsided relationship between the financial sector and the real economy and turn the sector into a reliable engine of prosperity and stability rather than a continued source of systemic risk.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 10 |
ID:
135986
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
As part of a multi-article presentation about national and social resilience to the military practitioner community, the article initially embeds the concept of resilience into a concept of change. From this grounding discussion, the profiling of national/social resilience is presented as a useful part of building an improved intelligence process of holistic change forecasting. Next, as a better way of seeing and evaluating how different nations and societies will uniquely respond to crises, uniquely recover post-crisis and thereafter change into their future, a way of using resilience change profiling to improve intelligence foresight and forecasting is detailed. Also, an argument is presented that during periods of financial stress, such an approach has efficacy, economy-of-force and other comparative advantage benefits to Western military organizations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 11 |
ID:
136329
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The emergence of well-positioned middle powers is a profound impetus for change within the international arena of structure rearrangement, issues replacement, and values reconstruction. In particular, India, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa are middle powers that rose together during the global FINANCIAL crisis to become a compelling force, each transitioning to active participant rather than follower.1 As a result, Chinese diplomatic personnel are in a unique position to capitalize on their newly transformed political and economic influence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 12 |
ID:
135268
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article develops the argument that informal institutions—‘G-x groupings’, ‘contact groups’, ‘core groups’—provide a vital space to renegotiate the terms and conditions of US hegemony. With the global balance of power shifting, US hegemony today is no longer seen as the exclusive framework to solve urgent collective action problems—major armed conflict, nuclear non-proliferation, climate change, global financial stability. These problems are of global significance and litmus tests for two key properties of US hegemonic power: the ability to maintain order and to provide public goods. As the global financial crisis of 2008 has demonstrated, emerging powers consider US hegemony as part of the problem rather than the framework through which to develop solutions. The substantial challenges for liberal institutions to adapt to major shifts in the global distribution of power and to act as effective problem-solvers has led to growing recourse to alternative mechanisms of collective action that operate in and around the liberal institutional architecture. However, they are not the convenient support structure for the renegotiation of Western liberal order on exclusive US terms. Informal institutions are platforms for contestation with an open outcome. Contestation includes the possibility of developing new patterns and understandings that may ultimately replace Western liberal order. The social contract between hegemonic leader and followers can be revoked. The contract will be up for termination if there is a widely shared belief that the hegemon fails to deliver sufficient public goods and proves to be incapable of performing its system maintenance functions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 13 |
ID:
136336
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The recent European debt crisis unexpectedly prolonged the region’s woes following the global financial tsunami of 2008. From 2012, an uneasiness has been brewing over whether the debt crisis was not just an economic crisis but also a political one. The media has been awash with terms such as “democratic deficit”, “legitimacy crisis” and “democratic crisis”. German sociologist Jurgen Habermas lamented:“Sometime after 2008, I understood that the process of expansion, integration and democratization doesn't automatically move forward of its own accord, that it’s reversible, that for the first time in the history of the EU, we are actually experiencing a dismantling of democracy. I didn’t think this was possible. We’ve reached a crossroads.” In 2013, the theme of the Political Studies Association Annual International Conference in the UK was “The Party’s Over?”. It said that: “the assumptions and modalities that have hitherto underpinned political life, and political analysis, may no longer be sustainable”. A good number of Chinese scholars have also argued that European democracy, and to a larger extent Western democracy, have reached an impasse.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|