The Conversation: Why leaving the euro is back on the agenda in the Greek election

Greece leaving the euro is old news. Since the former Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, agreed to a third bailout in July, the perception of Grexit as an immediate threat has subsided – or at least disappeared from commentary. Nonetheless, while appetite for Grexit outside Greece has abated, the traumatic seven months of wrangling over its bailout with Europe produced a significant domestic demand for a return to the national currency.

Do Escudo ao Euro: a mudança no Banco Central

A mudança é constante dos nossos dias, tornando-se uma necessidade imperativa nas organizações para ultrapassar os desafios de uma sociedade em permanente evolução. A adesão de Portugal à União Europeia, e consequentemente ao Eurosistema e Sistema Europeu de Bancos Centrais, culminou com a adopção de uma nova moeda — o Euro. Toda a evolução experimentada neste longo caminho provocou uma enorme transformação no Banco Central. Pretende esta dissertação apresentar algumas perspectivas de mudança organizacional e também sistematizar a transformação ocorrida no Banco de Portugal ao longo da última década. / Change is constant in our days, making it an imperative need in organizations to overcome the challenges of an evolving society. Portugal's accession to the European Union and consequently the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks, led to the adoption of a new currency — the Euro. All developments experienced in this long road led to a huge transformation in the Central Bank. This thesis aims to present perspectives on organizational change, and also standardize the transformation in the Bank of Portugal over the last decade.

Libro de Resúmenes del Congreso Euro-Latinoamericano de Intervención en Justicia Juvenil

Libro de Resúmenes del Congreso Euro-Latinoamericano de Intervención en Justicia Juvenil celebrado en la Universidad de Almería del 21/10/15 al 23/10/15.

Kryzys demokracji liberalnej - wybrane problemy rządzenia, legitymizacji i reprezentacji

Główna problematyka zawarta w tekście dotyczy: (1) znaczenia i zakresu kryzysu w gospodarce i polityce, (2) przyjęcia przez państwo i społeczeństwo logiki racjonalności ekonomicznej jako paradygmatu postępowania, (3) przewartościowania pojęcia polityki, co wiąże się m.in. z przyjęciem przez rządzących roli zarządców wybranych sfer państwa oraz z posługiwaniem się przez nich logiką „mieszanej racjonalności” („logiką władzy” i „logiką racjonalności ekonomicznej”), (4) wyzwań związanych z dystrybucją dóbr, (5) reprezentacji i legitymizacji w demokracji liberalnej. Gospodarka kapitalistyczna wpływa na wszystkie sfery życia społecznego, co zmusza do przedstawienia jej „modus operandi”. Charakterystyczne cechy oddziaływania to: (1) racjonalność formalna, (2) dogmat efektywności i ilościowej mierzalności, (3) reprodukcja ideologii mówiącej o wolnej woli jednostki, niezależnie od kontekstu społecznego, (4) wymuszanie odpowiedniej dla siebie reprodukcji siły roboczej, (5) kolonizacja kolejnych sfer aktywności społecznej (np. edukacji i szkolnictwa wyższego), (6) wpływ na wykluczenie grup społecznych ze względu na poziom zabezpieczenia materialnego. Wszystko to sprowadzić można do pojęcia logiki racjonalności ekonomicznej. Rządzący posługują się „mieszaną strategią”, która oparta jest na dwóch logikach postępowania – (1) logice władzy, (2) logice racjonalności ekonomicznej. Logika władzy to nic innego jak dążenie do zdobycia i utrzymania władzy, gdzie władza sama w sobie staje się celem, natomiast struktury państwa stanowią przestrzeń, którą należy przejąć lub opanować. Rządzący aby ukryć swoją bezideowość i konflikty w walce o przejęcie struktur państwa uprawiają politykę „na zewnątrz”, która przyjmuje formę „festiwalu” agonicznego dyskursu. Taka polityka możliwa jest dzięki rozdawnictwu podczas redystrybucji dóbr (niezgodnie z racjonalnością ekonomiczną) lub/i dzięki instrumentalnemu traktowaniu dystrybucji uznania. W związku z niemożnością utrzymania wysokiego poziomu rozdawnictwa, szczególnie w sytuacji kryzysu gospodarczego, rządzący chętnie posługują się logiką racjonalności ekonomicznej. Rozwiązania oparte na racjonalności ekonomicznej, mimo ich negatywnego odbioru przez społeczeństwo, wprowadzane są przy zastosowaniu argumentacji zagrożenia bezpieczeństwa (gospodarczego, socjalnego, narodowego itd.). Tym samym państwo wycofuje się z rządzenia na rzecz zarządzania niektórymi sferami państwa. Nie można tego nazwać inaczej jak „ucieczką” od odpowiedzialności, co jest szczególnie zauważalne w sytuacjach destabilizacji gospodarczej. W takich sytuacjach mamy do czynienia z „outsourcingiem zadań” państwa, co przyjmować może różne formy – (1) przenoszenie funkcji na inne instytucje przy zachowaniu kompetencji kontrolnych lub (2) przenoszenie obowiązków na inne własne instytucje, które wcześniej pełniły inną rolę. Wszystko to można nazwać rekonfiguracją funkcji państwa w związku z dominacją gospodarki kapitalistycznej i oddziaływaniem logiki racjonalności ekonomicznej. W tekście podjęto również problem dystrybucji dóbr i uznania, jednakże jedynie w aspekcie jej instrumentalizacji przez rządzących. Można wysunąć tezę, że liberalne koncepcje wolności jednostki oraz priorytet dla własności prowadzą do łatwiejszego ideologicznego uzasadnienia stosowania mieszanych strategii i racjonalności. W tekście przedstawiono też tezę o instrumentalizacji dystrybucji dóbr, tzn. instrumentalnego wykorzystywania dowartościowania różnych mniejszości w ramach systemu politycznego. Należy też stwierdzić, że dominacja logiki wolnego rynku prowadzi do deprecjacji redystrybucji dóbr w stosunku do gloryfikacji problematyki uznania. Tekst jest jedynie zarysowaniem problematyki wyczerpywania się formuły demokracji liberalnej, co przedstawiono na wybranych zagadnieniach. Podjęty problem demokracji liberalnej nie skupia się na próbie odtworzenia modelu tego rodzaju demokracji, raczej ważniejsze było stwierdzenie przejmowania w działaniu czegoś, co można określić mianem logiki racjonalności ekonomicznej. Wartą dalszego analizowania jest sama logika „mieszanej racjonalności”, którą sprowadzono do przenikania się „logiki władzy” i „logiki racjonalności ekonomicznej”.

Convenio Marco de Cooperación Estratégica entre la Universidad de Cuenca y el Instituto de Estudio de Medicina Tradicional de Euro-Asia-América de Shangai

Español

La segmentación laboral en la economía española durante el auge y la depresión del euro

En este TFG se tratará de dar explicación a la Teoría de la Segmentación laboral, centrándonos principalmente en el caso del mercado laboral español. La época elegida para este análisis será el antes y después de la crisis económica de 2008. Empezaremos haciendo una breve introducción del antes y después de la situación económica y laboral Española, seguiremos con la definición y el análisis de los cambios de la teoría de la segmentación laboral desde sus orígenes, después trataremos de explicar el porqué de su estudio (sus causas y consecuencias), más adelante veremos la influencia de la legislación laboral Española en ella y por ultimo terminaremos con unas breves conclusiones basadas en nuestras propias opiniones.

Playing with tension; national charisma at Euro 2012

European National football came together in the summer of 2012 for the 14th occasion. This book sets out to examine the enduring social tensions between supporters and authorities, as well as those between local, national and European identities, which formed the backdrop to the 14th staging of the European National football tournament, Euro2012. The context of the tournament was somewhat unique from those staged in previous years, being jointly hosted for the first time by two post-Communist nations still in the process of social and economic transition. In this respect, the decision to stage Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine bore its own material and symbolic legacies shaping the tournament: the unsettling of neo-liberal imaginings and emergent ‘East-West’ fears about poor infrastructure, inefficiencies and corruption jostled with moral panics about racism and fears surrounding the potentially unfulfilled consumerist expectations of west European supporters. The book seeks to explore the ideologies and practices invoked by competing national sentiments and examine the social tensions, ambiguities and social capital generating potentials surrounding national, ethnic, European identity, with respect to national football teams, supporters and supporter movements.

The conditional performance of euro bond funds: evidence from Portugal during the debt crisis

This paper evaluates the performance of a survivorship bias-free data set of Portuguese funds investing in Euro-denominated bonds by using conditional models that consider the public information available to investors when the returns are generated. We find that bond funds underperform the market significantly and by an economically relevant magnitude. This underperformance cannot be explained by the expenses they charge. Our findings support the use of conditional performance evaluation models, since we find strong evidence of both time-varying risk and performance, dependent on the slope of the term structure and the inverse relative wealth variables. We also show that survivorship bias has a significant impact on performance estimates. Furthermore, during the European debt crisis, bond fund managers performed significantly better than in non-crisis periods and were able to achieve neutral performance. This improved performance throughout the crisis seems to be related to changes in funds’ investment styles.

Essays on firm behaviour in the euro area

This thesis examines firms' real decisions using a large panel of unquoted euro area firms over the period 2003-2011. To this end, this thesis is composed of five chapters in which three are the main empirical chapters. They assess the dimensions of firm behaviour across different specifications. Each of these chapters provide a detailed discussion on the contribution, theoretical and empirical background as well as the panel data techniques which are implemented. Chapter 1 describes the introduction and outline of the thesis. Chapter 2 presents an empirical analysis on the link between financial pressure and firms' employment level. In this set-up, it is explored the strength of financial pressure during the financial crisis. It is also tested whether this effect has a different impact for financially constrained and unconstrained firms in the periphery and non-periphery regions. The results of this chapter denote that financial pressure exerts a negative impact on firms' employment decisions and that this effect is stronger during the crisis for financially constrained firms in the periphery. Chapter 3 analyses the cash policies of private and public firms. Controlling for firm size and other standard variables in the literature of cash holdings, empirical findings suggest that private firms hold higher cash reserves than their public counterparts indicating a greater precautionary demand for cash by the former. The relative difference between these two type of firms decreases (increases) the higher (lower) is the the level of financial pressure. The findings are robust to various model specifications and over different sub-samples. Overall, this chapter shows the relevance of firms' size. Taken together, the findings of Chapter 3 are in line with the early literature on cash holdings and contradict the recent studies, which find that the precautionary motive to hold cash is less pronounced for private firms than for public ones. Chapter 4 undertakes an investigation on the relation between firms' stocks of inventories and trade credit (i.e. extended and taken) whilst controlling for the firms' size, the characteristics of the goods transacted, the recent financial crisis and the development of the banking system. The main findings provide evidence of a trade-off between trade credit extended and firms' stock of inventories. In other words, firms' prefer to extend credit in the form of stocks to their financially constrained customers to avoid holdings costly inventories and to increase their sales levels. The provision of trade credit by the firms also depends on the characteristics of the goods transacted. This impact is stronger during the crisis. Larger and liquid banking systems reduce the trade-off between the volume of stocks of inventories and the amount sold on credit. Trade credit taken is not affected by firms' stock of inventories. Chapter 5 presents the conclusions of the thesis. It provides the main contributions, implications and future research of each empirical chapter.

Why does the Euro fail? The DCCA approach

The present crisis in the Euro is one of the most serious crises reported in history. The fact that different countries that adopted the Euro have different conditions to support asymmetric shocks in their economies could explain some of the consequences currently affecting the Eurozone. In this paper we apply detrended cross-correlation analysis and its cross correlation coefficient to evaluate the degree of financial integration of the first set of countries to adopt the common currency. Since time series used in these studies are known to be non-stationary, DCCA is suited to study it. It is the first time this methodology has been applied to study financial integration. We conclude that the degree of financial integration is unequal in several countries using the common currency. The fact that countries like Greece, Ireland or Portugal are the ones facing most problems in verification of the parity used in this paper could help to explain the present instability in the Eurozone.

The impact of SEPA in credit transfer payments: Evidence from the euro area

This paper analyses the effect of the implementation process of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) project on credit transfer payments in euro area countries during the period between 2008 and 2013.

Particle and gaseous emissions from compressed natural gas and ultralow sulphur diesel-fuelled buses at four steady engine loads

Exhaust emissions from thirteen compressed natural gas (CNG) and nine ultralow sulphur diesel in-service transport buses were monitored on a chassis dynamometer. Measurements were carried out at idle and at three steady engine loads of 25%, 50% and 100% of maximum power at a fixed speed of 60 kmph. Emission factors were estimated for particle mass and number, carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen for two types of CNG buses (Scania and MAN, compatible with Euro 2 and 3 emission standards, respectively) and two types of diesel buses (Volvo Pre-Euro/Euro1 and Mercedez OC500 Euro3). All emission factors increased with load. The median particle mass emission factor for the CNG buses was less than 1% of that from the diesel buses at all loads. However, the particle number emission factors did not show a statistically significant difference between buses operating on the two types of fuel. In this paper, for the very first time, particle number emission factors are presented at four steady state engine loads for CNG buses. Median values ranged from the order of 1012 particles min-1 at idle to 1015 particles km-1 at full power. Most of the particles observed in the CNG emissions were in the nanoparticle size range and likely to be composed of volatile organic compounds The CO2 emission factors were about 20% to 30% greater for the diesel buses over the CNG buses, while the oxides of nitrogen emission factors did not show any difference due to the large variation between buses.

Historical and Personal Perspectives on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989: address to 20th anniversary forums.

The story of the fall of the Berlin Wall was an aspect of the “imagination gap” that we had to wrestle with as journalists covering the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in Europe. It was scarcely possible to believe what you found yourself reporting, and that work became a two-track process. On one hand a mass social movement was dictating the pace and direction of events; on the other, the institutional business of politics as usual, to provide a framework for all the change that was happening, had to be managed – and reported on. In later analyseds we could see, that crisis in the Soviet Union led to the crisis over the Berlin Wall; and from the fall of the Wall, came Germany’s reunification, and with that also, formation of the European Union as it is today. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany convinced its neighbours that a reunited Germany, within an expanded EU, would be a very acceptable “European Germany” -- not the leader of a “German Europe”. It committed itself financially, supporting the new Euro currency. The former communist states of Eastern Europe demanded to join and expand the EU; in order to remove themselves from the Soviet Union, enjoy human rights, and share in Western prosperity. So today, following on from the events of 1989, the European Union is an amalgam of 27 member countries, with close to 500 million citizens and accounting for 30 % of world Gross National Product.