Protecting the most vulnerable in an economic crisis: a participatory study of civil society organisations in the Republic of Ireland

This paper advances knowledge of how civil society organisations (CSOs) negotiate the shift from boom-time public expenditure to governmental austerity. The study focuses on the Republic of Ireland, where CSOs occupied an important role in providing a voice for ‘vulnerable’citizens in corporatism for over a decade. The global financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures caused the country’s model of corporatist-style ‘social partnership’ to collapse. The article connects CSOs’ adaptation to austerity measures when protecting the ‘people behind the cuts’ to broader questions about co-optation of civil society through state-led policymaking
institutions.

The Greek Debt Crisis and Southern Europe: Majoritarian Pitfalls?

Although widely debated in broader socioeconomic terms, the Eurozone crisis has not received adequate scholarly attention with regards to the impact of alternative political systems. This article revisits the debate on majoritarian and consensus democracies drawing on recent evidence from the Eurozone debacle. Greece is particularly interesting both with regards to its potential ‘global spillover effects’ and choice of political system. Despite facing comparable challenges as Portugal and Spain, the country has become polarized socially and politically, seeing a record number of MP defections, electoral volatility and the rise of the militant extreme right. The article explains why Greece, the country that relied most extensively on majoritarian institutions, entered the global financial crisis in the most vulnerable position while subsequently faced insurmountable political and institutional obstacles in its management. The article points to the paradox of majoritarianism: in times of economic stress, the first ‘casualties’ are its strongest elements – centrist parties (bi-partisanship) and cabinet stability.

Beyond Financialisation? Transformative Strategies for More Sustainable Financial Markets in the European Union

The global financial crisis has led many regulators and lawmakers to a rethinking about current versus optimum financial market structures and activities that include a variety and even radical ideas about delevaraging and downsizing finance. This paper focuses on the flaws and shortcomings of regulatory reforms of finance and on the necessity of and scope for more radical transformative strategies. With 'crisis economics' back, the most developed countries, including the EU member states, are still on the edge of disaster and confronted with systemic risk. Changes in financial regulation adopted in the aftermath of the financial meltdown have not been radical enough to transform the overall system of finance-driven capitalism towards a more sustainable system with a more embedded finance. The paper discusses financialisation in order to understand the development trends in finance over the past decades and examines various theories to describe the typical trends and patterns in financial regulation. By focusing on a limited number of regulatory reforms in the European Union, the limitations of current reforms and the need for additional transformative strategies necessary to overcome the finance-driven accumulation regime are explored. Finally, the regulatory space for such transformative strategies and for taming finance in times of crisis, austerity, and increased public protest potential is analysed.

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland after the Crisis

Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top-down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a post–New Public Management emphasis on recentralizing administrative capacity. This article, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command-and-control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European-type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood.

Eurozone Network Connectedness During Calm and Crisis: Evidence from the MTS Platform for Interdealer Trading of European Sovereign Debt

This paper examines the connectedness of the Eurozone sovereign debt market over the period 2005–2011. By employing measures built from the variance decompositions of approximating models we are able to define weighted, directed networks that enable a deeper understanding of the relationships between the Eurozone countries. We find that connectedness in the Eurozone was very high during the calm market conditions preceding the global financial crisis but decreased dramatically when the crisis took hold, and worsened as the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis emerged. The drop in connectedness was especially prevalent in the case of the peripheral countries with some of the most peripheral countries deteriorating into isolation. Our results have implications for both market participants and regulators.

Waiting for Godot? Welfare Attitudes in Portugal Before and After the Financial Crisis

Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarization in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualized country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

How bank business models relate with risk?: The case of Portugal in times of financial crisis

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on the recovering from the financial crisis: Equity returns of the banking sector

This paper analyses, through a dynamic panel data model, the impact of the Financial and the European Debt crisis on the equity returns of the banking system. The model is also extended to specifically investigate the impact on countries who received rescue packages. The sample under analysis considers eleven countries from January 2006 to June 2013. The main conclusion is that there was in fact a structural change in banks’ excess returns due to the outbreak of the European Debt Crisis, when stock markets were still recovering from the Financial Crisis of 2008.

The role of deposit insurance and bank’s asset size in the 2008 financial crisis

In this paper we analyze the role of deposit insurance in providing the market with liquidity in times of financial turmoil. To do so, we look at the variation in insured and uninsured deposits between 2005Q3 and 2011Q3, controlling for liquidity, solvency and capital adequacy indicators, and find evidence that deposit insurance does provide some confidence in keeping funds in banks in times of turmoil. Additionally we follow an event study methodology to assess the impact of deposit insurance oriented policies on bank holding companies stock market returns, and find a TBTF effect.

Consumer perception of CSR in Portugal: The aftermath of the financial crisis

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature has largely neglected consumers’ perceptions in the debate regarding the role of CSR in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In that context, this study aims to test the possibility that consumers’ perceptions of CSR level, firm reputation and brand trust, might depend on the type of industry sector of a firm, the level of fit of an initiative or both. By conducting a survey on Portuguese consumers and running a two-way analysis of variance, it suggests that solely the type of industry sector has an effect on consumer perception and that consumers are less tolerable of controversial industries.

Shiva's dance: Crisis, local institutions and private firms

The uneven spatial distribution of start-ups and their respective survival may reflect comparative advantages resulting from the local institutional background. For the first time, we explore this idea using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess the relative efficiency of Portuguese municipalities in this specific context. We depart from the related literature where expenditure is perceived as a desirable input by choosing a measure of fiscal responsibility and infrastructural variables in the first stage. Comparing results for 2006 and 2010, we find that mean performance decreased substantially 1) with the effects of the Global Financial Crisis, 2) as municipal population increases and 3) as financial independence decreases. A second stage is then performed employing a double-bootstrap procedure to evaluate how the regional context outside the control of local authorities (e.g. demographic characteristics and political preferences) impacts on efficiency.

Financial crisis: theory and practice

In the last 50 years, we have had approximately 40 events with characteristics related to financial crisis. The most severe crisis was in 1929, when the financial markets plummet and the US gross domestic product decline in more than 30 percent. Recently some years ago, a new crisis developed in the United States, but instantly caused consequences and effects in the rest of the world. This new economic and financial crisis has increased the interest and motivation for the academic community, professors and researchers, to understand the causes and effects of the crisis, to learn from it. This is the one of the main reasons for the compilation of this book, which begins with a meeting of a group of IAFI researchers from the University of Barcelona, where researchers form Mexico and Spain, explain causes and consequences of the crisis of 2007. For that reason, we believed this set of chapters related to methodologies, applications and theories, would conveniently explained the characteristics and events of the past and future financial crisis This book consists in 3 main sections, the first one called "State of the Art and current situation", the second named "Econometric applications to estimate crisis time periods" , and the third one "Solutions to diminish the effects of the crisis". The first section explains the current point of view of many research papers related to financial crisis, it has 2 chapters. In the first one, it describe and analyzes the models that historically have been used to explain financial crisis, furthermore, it proposes to used alternative methodologies such as Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. On the other hand , Chapter 2 , explains the characteristics and details of the 2007 crisis from the US perspective and its comparison to 1929 crisis, presenting some effects in Mexico and Latin America. The second section presents two econometric applications to estimate possible crisis periods. For this matter, Chapter 3, studies 3 Latin-American countries: Argentina, Brazil and Peru in the 1994 crisis and estimates the multifractal characteristics to identify financial and economic distress. Chapter 4 explains the crisis situations in Argentina (2001), Mexico (1994) and the recent one in the United States (2007) and its effects in other countries through a financial series methodology related to the stock market. The last section shows an alternative to prevent the effects of the crisis. The first chapter explains the financial stability effects through the financial system regulation and some globalization standards. Chapter 6, study the benefits of the Investor activism and a way to protect personal and national wealth to face the financial crisis risks.

Diagnostic Related Groups (drgs): Resourceful tools for financial crisis times?

This document is intended to be read by the Colombian Ministry of Social Protection (former MoH) and includes some recommendations that could be implemented on the aim to increase allocative efficiency, thus improving macroeconomic performance of the Colombian Health System (CHS). It will be conducted as follows: first it will briefly review the background and actual context of the CHS, after this, will mention some related issues that justify a policy intervention on strategic purchasing to promote long run sustainability and hopefully the future attainment of major goals such as universal coverage and quality improvement. After prioritizing the main financial threats to the system, based on findings from literature review from countries that have successfully implemented similar policies, this paper will make some policy recommendations on regards especially to inpatient health care services in Colombia.