The Cost of Servicing Greece’s Debt: A Sisyphean task? CEPS Commentary, 4 February 2015

Following the victory of Syriza in the Greek elections on January 25th, policy-makers, economists and concerned EU citizens are scrambling to understand the causes, modalities and consequences of a possible Greek default in order to anticipate and prepare for what is likely to unfold in the coming weeks and months. The debate on the sustainability of Greek public finances has often been characterised by a lack of clarity and even a certain degree of confusion. This brief note focuses first on the cost that Greece faces in servicing its debt and then asks whether this is a manageable or a Sisyphean task. It concludes by reflecting on the political implications of the new government’s announced intentions and whether these are being taken into account in the current debate over debt restructuring.

An Exercise in Legal Honesty: Re-writing the Court of Justice and the Bundesverfassungsgericht. IHS Political Science Series No. 136, February 2014

At a time of crisis – a true state of emergency – both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the German Federal Constitutional Court have failed the rule of law in Europe. Worse still, in their evaluation of the ersatz crisis law, which has been developed in response to financial and sovereign debt crises, both courts have undermined constitutionality throughout Europe. Each jurisdiction has been implicated within the techocratisation of democratic process. Each Court has contributed to an incremental process of the undermining of the political subjectivity of European Citizens. The results are depressing for lawyers who are still attached to notions of constitutionality. Yet, we must also ask whether the Courts could have acted otherwise. Given the original flaws in the construction of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the politically pre-emptive constraints imposed by global financial markets, each Court might thus be argued to have been forced to suspend immediate legality in a longer term effort to secure the character of the legal jurisdiction as a whole. Crisis can and does defeat the law. Nevertheless, what continues to disturb is the failure of law in Europe to open up any perspective for a return to normal constitutionality post crisis, as well as its apparent inability to give proper and honest consideration to the hardship now being experienced by millions of Europeans within crisis. This contribution accordingly seeks to reimagine each Judgment in a language of legal honesty. Above all, this contribution seeks to suggest a new form of post-national constitutional language; a language which takes as its primary function, proper protection of democratic process against the ever encroaching powers of a post-national executive power. This contribution forms a part of an on-going effort to identify a new basis for the legitimacy of European Law, conducted jointly and severally with Christian Joerges, University of Bremen and Hertie School of Government, Berlin. Differences do remain in our theoretical positions; hence this individual essay. Nevertheless, the congruence between pluralist and conflict of law approaches to the topic are also readily apparent. See, for example, Everson & Joerges (2013).

Ukraine on the financial front – the problem of Ukraine’s foreign public debt. OSW COMMENTARY NUMBER 178|05.08.2015

One of the key challenges that Ukraine is facing is the scale of its foreign debt (both public and private). As of 1st April it stood at US$ 126 billion, which is 109.8% of the country’s GDP. Approximately 45% of these financial obligations are short-term, meaning that they must be paid off within a year. Although the value of the debt has fallen by nearly US$ 10 billion since the end of 2014 (due to the private sector paying a part of the liabilities), the debt to GDP ratio has increased due to the recession and the depreciation of the hryvnia. The value of Ukraine’s foreign public debt is also on the rise (including state guarantees); since the beginning of 2015 it has risen from US$ 37.6 billion to US$ 43.6 billion. Ukraine does not currently have the resources to pay off its debt. In this situation a debt restructuring is necessary and this is one of the top priorities for the Ukrainian government as well as for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its assistance programme. Without this it will be much more difficult for Ukraine to overcome the economic crisis.

Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #18, 2013-2014

This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.

The debt, the stock market and the state-owned enterprises. The sources of chaos on the Chinese financial markets. OSW Commentary NUMBER 201/16.03.2016

The government’s extensive programme for stimulating the economy has enabled China to maintain high economic growth after the global financial crisis in 2008. However, this success has come at the price of a number of negative economic phenomena and the consequences they have had are the major challenge for the government today. The vast programme of investments in infrastructure, construction and fixed assets, which has been the main source of economic growth over the past few years, has caused a rapid increase in China’s debt from 158% of GDP in 2007 to 282% in 2014. Along with the local governments in charge of implementing the programme, the Chinese sector of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has been heavily burdened by the stimulation policy. The sector’s profitability has fallen, its indebtedness has increased and management problems have been revealed.

Maastricht 2.0 - Proposed reform of EU sovereign debt rules. Policy Brief #2012/05

The European Union’s regulations governing sovereign debt are based on the principle of equal treatment of all member states. The recommendations we make here concerning changes in European Union sovereign-debt reduction rules take account of national particularities, but are by no means arbitrary in nature. According to the calculations we present here, such reformed regulations would do far more to promote economic growth than would be the case under the Fiscal Compact’s European debt brake. By 2030, real gains in growth will amount to more than 450 billion euros more than the outcome that would presumably be obtained under the European debt brake.

Primary sex determination of placental mammals: a modelling study uncovers dynamical developmental constraints in the formation of Sertoli and granulosa cells

Primary sex determination in placental mammals is a very well studied developmental process. Here, we aim to investigate the currently established scenario and to assess its adequacy to fully recover the observed phenotypes, in the wild type and perturbed situations. Computational modelling allows clarifying network dynamics, elucidating crucial temporal constrains as well as interplay between core regulatory modules.

A Unified Approach to Automatic Testing of Architectural Constraints

Architectural decisions are often encoded in the form of constraints and guidelines. Non-functional requirements can be ensured by checking the conformance of the implementation against this kind of invariant. Conformance checking is often a costly and error-prone process that involves the use of multiple tools, differing in effectiveness, complexity and scope of applicability. To reduce the overall effort entailed by this activity, we propose a novel approach that supports verification of human- readable declarative rules through the use of adapted off-the-shelf tools. Our approach consists of a rule specification DSL, called Dicto, and a tool coordination framework, called Probo. The approach has been implemented in a soon to be evaluated prototype.

Age constraints on the tectonic evolution of the Itremo region in Central Madagascar

The Itremo region in Central Madagascar comprises a deformed metasedimentary sequence (Itremo Group) that has undergone greenschist to lower amphibolite facies metamorphism. During a first phase of deformation (D1) Itremo Group sediments were deformed into a fold-and-thrust belt and transported toward the E to NE on top of migmatitic gneisses rocks of Anatananarivo block. A second phase of deformation (D2) affected both the fold-and-thrust belt and structurally underlying units, and formed large-scale N-S trending folds with steeply dipping axial planes. A Late Neoproterozoic Th–U–Pb XRF monazite age (565±17 Ma) dates the emplacement of a granite that truncates first-phase structures in the Itremo Group, and indicates that the fold-and-thrust belt formed prior to ≈565 Ma. Th–U–Pb electron microprobe dating was applied to elongated monazites that lie within the first-phase foliation of Itremo Group metapelites. The detrital cores of zoned monazites reveal two distinct age populations at ∼2000 and 1700 Ma, the latter age giving a maximum depositional age for the Itremo Group. Statistical analysis of ages determined from the rims of zoned monazites and from unzoned monazites indicates three Late Proterozoic–Early Paleozoic monazite growth events at about 565–540, 500 and 430 Ma. The oldest age population is contemporaneous within error, with the intrusion of the dated granite. The two younger age populations are found both in the Th–U–Pb and Ar–Ar data; together with the perturbation of the Rb–Sr system we interpret both ages as due to alteration related to fluid circulation events, possibly connected to the emplacement of pegmatite fields in Central Madagascar. Syn-D1 tectonic growth of contact metamorphism minerals such as andalusite has been observed locally in metapelites along the margin of Middle Neoproterozoic (≈800 Ma) granites, suggesting that D1 in the Itremo Group is contemporaneous with the intrusion of granites at ≈800 Ma. The N-S trending D2 folds are associated with ≈E-W shortening during the final assembly of Gondwana in Late Neoproterozoic–Early Cambrian times.