The determinants of vulnerability to currency crises: country-specific factors versus regional factors

We investigate the determinants of exchange market pressures (EMP) for some new EU member states at both the national and regional levels, where macroeconomic and financial variables are considered as potential sources. The regional common factors are extracted from these variables by using dynamic factor analysis. The linear empirical analysis, in general, highlights the importance of country-specific factors to defend themselves against vulnerability in their external sectors. Yet, given a significant impact of the common component in credit on EMP, a contagion effect is apparent through the conduit of credit market integration across these countries under investigation

Entry and fiscal policy effectiveness in a small open economy within a Monetary Union

In this article I develop an imperfectly competitive dynamic general equilibrium model for a small open economy integrated in a monetary union. Here, the type of entry in the non-traded goods’ sector affects fiscal policy effectiveness. Fiscal policy effectiveness is enlarged when aggregate demand stimuli increase intra-industrial competition (case I). This is due to the counter-cyclical mark-up mechanism generated by entry. Such a mechanism is absent in the usual monopolistic competition where entry only has a sharing effect (case II).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? : New Labour's appeal to a 'new Bretton Woods'

Tony Blair’s political instinct typically is to associate himself only with the future. As such, his explicit appeal to ‘the past’ in his references to New Labour’s desire to establish a “new Bretton Woods” is sufficient in itself to arouse some degree of analytical curiosity (see Blair 1998a). The fact that this appeal was made specifically in relation to Bretton Woods is even more interesting. The resonant image of the international economic context established by the original Bretton Woods agreements invokes a style and content of policy-making which Tony Blair typically dismisses as neither economically nor politically consistent with his preferred vision of the future (see Blair 2000c, 2001b)

Social Cohesion, Structural Holes, and a Tale of Two Measures

EMBARGOED - author can archive pre-print or post-print on any open access repository after 12 months from publication. Publication date is May 2013 so embargoed until May 2014.This is an author’s accepted manuscript (deposited at arXiv arXiv:1211.0719v2 [physics.soc-ph] ), which was subsequently published in Journal of Statistical Physics May 2013, Volume 151, Issue 3-4, pp 745-764. The final publication is available at link.springer.com http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10955-013-0722-

Political Regimes and Sovereign Credit Risk in Europe, 1750-1913

This article uses a new panel data set to perform a statistical analysis of political regimes and sovereign credit risk in Europe from 1750 to 1913. Old Regime polities typically suffered from fiscal fragmentation and absolutist rule. By the start of World War I, however, many such countries had centralized institutions and limited government. Panel regressions indicate that centralized and?or limited regimes were associated with significant improvements in credit risk relative to fragmented and absolutist ones. Structural break tests also reveal close relationships between major turning points in yield series and political transformations