Financial integration, capital misallocation and global imbalances

This paper shows that in a stylized model with two countries, characterized by different levels of financial development, the following facts can be replicated: 1) persistent current account surpluses and 2) high TFP growth in China. Under autarky, entrepreneurs in the emerging country overinvest in short-term projects and underinvest in long-term projects because short-term assets help them secure long-term investments in the presence of credit constraints. This creates an aggregate misallocation of capital. When financial markets integrate, entrepreneurs with long-term projects can have access to cheaper short-term assets abroad, which leaves them more resources to invest in their projects. This both reduces capital misallocations and generates capital outflows.

The role of European Union integration in post-communist democratization in Bulgaria and Macedonia

Cette recherche porte sur la dimension interprétative de l'intégration européenne et sur son rôle dans la démocratisation au sein des pays postcommunistes. Je focalise mon attention sur la signification pour les gens desdits pays que revêtent la participation politique, la compétence politique, et l’action collective. Cette signification prend forme selon des circonstances spécifiques, agencées par les relations de pouvoir asymétriques avec l’Union européenne (UE). J’examine la littérature sur le rôle de l'intégration européenne dans la démocratisation des pays postcommunistes et je distingue deux paradigmes théoriques principaux : un premier qui met l'accent sur le processus institutionnel, l’autre sur le processus instrumental stratégique. Au sein de ces deux approches, je présente différents auteurs qui voient l'UE soit comme un facteur pro-démocratique, soit comme un facteur antidémocratique dans le contexte postcommuniste de transition politique. Cette recherche ne suit pas théoriquement et méthodologiquement les études contenues dans la revue de la littérature. Plutôt, elle s’appuie sur un modèle théorique inspiré des recherches de McFalls sur la réunification culturelle allemande après 1989. Ce modèle, sans négliger les approches institutionnelles et stratégiques, met l’accent sur d'autres écoles théoriques, interprétatives et constructivistes. Mes conclusions se basent sur les résultats de séjours d'étude dans deux pays postcommunistes : la Bulgarie, membre de l'UE depuis 2007, et la Macédoine, pays-candidat. J’ai recours à des méthodes qualitatives et à des techniques ethnographiques qui triangulent des résultats puisés à des sources multiples et variées pour exposer des trajectoires dynamiques de changement culturel influencées par l'intégration européenne. Les conclusions montrent sous quelles conditions les idéaux-types de changement politique conventionnels, soit institutionnel ou stratégique, représentent des modèles utiles. Je présente aussi leurs limitations. Ma conclusion principale est que l'intégration européenne représente un phénomène complexe dans le monde des significations. C’est un facteur qui est simultanément un amplificateur et un inhibiteur de la culture politique démocratique. Les gens créent des sous-cultures différentes où des interprétations multiples du processus d'intégration européenne mènent à des effets dissemblables sur la participation politique, la compétence et l’action collective. La conversation discursive entre les gens qui composent de telles sous-cultures distinctes peut produire des effets divergents au niveau national. Cette recherche n’est pas une analyse de l’UE comme mécanisme institutionnel ; elle ne pose ainsi pas l’UE comme une institution qui détermine directement le processus de démocratisation postcommuniste. Plutôt, elle s’intéresse au processus d’intégration européenne en tant qu’interaction qui affecte la culture politique au sein des pays postcommunistes, et à la manière dont cette dernière peut agir sur le processus de démocratisation. Mon point d’intérêt central n’est donc pas l’européanisation ou le processus de devenir « comme l’Europe », à moins que l’européanisation ne devienne une composante de la culture politique avec des conséquences sur le comportement politique des acteurs.

Transcending borders with international top management teams: a study of European financial multinational corporations

This paper investigates how changes in firm degree of internationalization are associated with the configuration of top management teams (TMT) based on a dataset of 41 large European firms in the banking and insurance industry, including detailed career profiles of the 264 executives that were serving on the TMTs of these firms at year-end 2002. Our findings suggest firms tend to match top executive profiles to their strategies. Entry into new foreign markets and new cultural zones was found to be associated with higher levels of international capacity at TMT level, whereas changes in international posture per se are not related to TMT international capacity. We discuss the interplay between firm strategies and internal structures in the context of firm internationalization and suggest directions for future research on TMTs

European economic integration

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the recent trend in European economic affairs - the desire for integration. These plans and proposals were an expression of the need in the post war era for economic planning on a regional scale. It was in this respect that Europe experimented in a new approach to international economics.

European financial institutions: a useful inspiration for developing countries?

Includes bibliography

Regional financial integration in East Asia: challenges and prospects

Includes bibliography

European Immigrant Integration after Multiculturalism

This paper takes the recent abdication of multiculturalism by the leaders of Europe’s most powerful nations (Germany, France, and Britain) as hub for a reflection on common themes in Europe’s crisis of multiculturalism. The most obvious common theme in this crisis is Islam and problems of Muslim integration. Accordingly, this paper addresses the role of religion and Islam in Europe’s multiculturalism crisis, and elaborates on the “muscular liberalism” or “civic integration” policies that have appeared in lieu of a discarded multiculturalism. In a final step, I tackle, in a forward-looking mode, some “critical issues” that will shape European immigrant integration after multiculturalism: the need to fight discrimination despite multiculturalism’s ebb, a greater concern for majority culture, the importance of robust debate and democracy as medium of integration, the often-neglected factor of immigrant selection, and a recognition that institutions matter more than policy in the process of integration.

Greater Europe. Putin's vision of European (dis)integration. OSW Study 46/2013

On several occasions since 2001 Vladimir Putin has raised the concept of ‘Greater Europe’, a partly-integrated common space comprising mainly Russia and the European Union. This concept has never been recast into a detailed political programme. While it has been championed as‘a Europe without dividing lines’, the concept would in practice permanently split Europe into two geopolitical blocs – the Western bloc of the European Union, with Germany in the dominant role, and the Eastern bloc, consisting of the emerging Eurasian Union, with Russia in a hegemonic position. In recent years Russia has undertaken a number of initiatives aimed at implementing some elements of the concept. However, most of these have failed to become reality. In this context, we should expect Russia’s policy to focus on implementing its priority project of Eurasian integration, based on the structures of the Customs Union/the Eurasian Union. The Greater Europe project, on the other hand, will be postponed until the time when, as Moscow believes, a weakened EU will be ready to accept Russian proposals.

American Attitudes on European Political Integration — The Nixon-Kissinger Legacy. IES WORKING PAPER 2/2007

This paper concentrates on the Nixon-Kissinger view of European political integration. In contrast with the mainstream position of the American Administrations during the 1950s and 1960s, Kissinger was convinced that by encouraging European unity, the United States was in fact creating its own rival. The start of a new system of European foreign policy cooperation in 1970 was seen by Kissinger as a particularly important example of Europe’s attempt to challenge the American hegemony. Kissinger emphasized the need to maintain Western Europe in a subordinate role. Three main lines of action were pursued to keep the development of the European Community under control: maintaining bilateral contacts with key European allies, requesting a seat at the Community's decision-making table, and linking "obedient" European behavior to American military presence in Europe. The legacy of this policy still seems to influence the current American policy on the European Union. The Nixon-Kissinger term was, however, detrimental to rather than conducive of harmonious transatlantic relations. Tendencies to emulate it should therefore be discouraged.