New Risks Ahead:The Eastward Enlargement of the Eurozone

Eastward enlargement is one of the hot topics in European economics. The accession of central and eastern European Countries (CEEC) into the European Union (EU) is accompanied by an extension of the eurozone to this region. This paper surveys likely outcomes and challenges of this specific feature of EU enlargement. Moreover, the ar-ticle represents the start of an international research project dealing with these ques-tions. Research is structured along different markets. Hence, the impact of an adoption of the euro is analysed for capital and labour markets as well as with respect to exchange rate and monetary policies. Our main position is that the euro has in general beneficiary ef-fects for the CEEC and the current EU in all examined markets. However, these bene-fits evolve mainly in the long run, whereas the short-term costs of adaptation to the new situation may be high. Although we believe that the present value of long-term benefits exceeds these costs, it is by no means clear that policy-makers will share this view. Due to the usual political-economy transformation, the assessment of costs and benefits may be different for politicians than compared to any overall perspective. If of-ficial policies become unforeseeable, so will private behaviour. International investors may reverse their capital flows, draining precious liquidity, and leading to currency and financial crises whenever they perceive the authorities’ commitment to EMU less credi-ble. This article highlights some thinkable mechanisms how any such crisis could evolve. It, thus, sets the agenda for further research, mainly, with the focus on appropriate policy strategies to keep adaptation costs as low as possible, minimise other external risks, without hampering the long-term benefits.EMU, EU enlargement, monetary integration

Die Osterweiterung der Eurozone: Einige grundlegende Ueberlegungen zu Moeglichkeiten und Risiken

Once part of the European Union no opt-out means, for CEE applicant countries, that they will have to become members of the Eurozone as soon as they fulfil the Maastricht criteria. However, compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact and aiming at nominal and real convergence imply efforts which are significantly higher than the simple implementation of the acquis communautaire. Torn between completing their transformation process on the one hand and linking their economies as fast as possible to euroland on the other, most CEE countries face the risk of fixing their currency too eagerly, thus, being trapped to choose disinflation over growth. This paper presents the increased risk potential across the most important policy areas: capital markets, trade and FDI, labour markets, exchange rate policy, and monetary and fiscal policy. Moreover, a brief comparison of the Czech Republic and Poland reveals the need for further specific country analysis, since CEE countries’ exposure to possible risks of the Eurozone enlargement vary significantly.EMU enlargement, monetary integration

Expansion of the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) knowledge base and resources.

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities associated with 7000+ diseases-is used by thousands of researchers, clinicians, informaticians and electronic health record systems around the world. Its detailed descriptions of clinical abnormalities and computable disease definitions have made HPO the de facto standard for deep phenotyping in the field of rare disease. The HPO\u27s interoperability with other ontologies has enabled it to be used to improve diagnostic accuracy by incorporating model organism data. It also plays a key role in the popular Exomiser tool, which identifies potential disease-causing variants from whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing data. Since the HPO was first introduced in 2008, its users have become both more numerous and more diverse. To meet these emerging needs, the project has added new content, language translations, mappings and computational tooling, as well as integrations with external community data. The HPO continues to collaborate with clinical adopters to improve specific areas of the ontology and extend standardized disease descriptions. The newly redesigned HPO website (www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) simplifies browsing terms and exploring clinical features, diseases, and human genes

The Human Phenotype Ontology in 2017.

Deep phenotyping has been defined as the precise and comprehensive analysis of phenotypic abnormalities in which the individual components of the phenotype are observed and described. The three components of the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO; www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) project are the phenotype vocabulary, disease-phenotype annotations and the algorithms that operate on these. These components are being used for computational deep phenotyping and precision medicine as well as integration of clinical data into translational research. The HPO is being increasingly adopted as a standard for phenotypic abnormalities by diverse groups such as international rare disease organizations, registries, clinical labs, biomedical resources, and clinical software tools and will thereby contribute toward nascent efforts at global data exchange for identifying disease etiologies. This update article reviews the progress of the HPO project since the debut Nucleic Acids Research database article in 2014, including specific areas of expansion such as common (complex) disease, new algorithms for phenotype driven genomic discovery and diagnostics, integration of cross-species mapping efforts with the Mammalian Phenotype Ontology, an improved quality control pipeline, and the addition of patient-friendly terminology

"Limits for the provision of economic stability to Central and Eastern European countries"

The Central and Eastern European countries' efforts to become members of the European Union as soon as possible demonstrate their eagerness to benefit not only from market access to the European Union (EU) and from access to the Union's agricultural and regional funds to continue their transition to market economies. They also indicate their readiness to sacrifice some vital areas of their newly-won economic and political autonomy to become part of the comprehensive web of the EU's economic, political, and social system. This paper discusses the state of readiness of the Central and East European Countries (CEEC) to become EU members over the next few years and the Union's capacity to absorb up to ten CEECs over the next decade or so. This paper concludes that the economic and political opening of the CEEC has been smoother and took place with lesser societal conflicts than initially expected. However, these changes have to master a set of difficulties that come from too slow an adjustment to global challenges. This leads to impairments of international economic competitiveness that, in turn, slow necessary adjustment. The main reason is not lacking democratic legitimacy but both the structural conservation of factors stemming from the socialist past and the social consequences that come from an uncompromising opening of the economies

New risks ahead: The eastward enlargement of the Eurozone

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die zukuenftigen Risiken im Zusammenhang mit der Osterweiterung der Europaeischen Union. Der Beitritt der zentral- und osteuropaeischen Laender (CEEC) in die EU wird von einer Ausweitung der Eurozone auf diese Regionen begleitet. Der Beitrag gibt einen Ueberblick ueber moegliche Ergebnisse und Herausforderungen dieser spezifischen Eigenschaft der EU-Erweiterung. Ausserdem stellt der Artikel den Anfang eines internationalen Forschungsprojektes vor, das sich mit diesen Fragen beschaeftigt. Die Forschung wird entlang unterschiedlicher Maerkte strukturiert, so dass die Auswirkungen der Euroeinfuehrung auf die Kapital- und Arbeitsmaerkte sowie in Bezug auf Verbrauchssteuern und Geld- und Kreditpolitik analysiert werden. Die Hauptposition der Autoren ist, dass der Euro im Allgemeinen positive Effekte fuer die CEEC und die EU haben wird. Jedoch entwickelt sich dieser positive Effekt hauptsaechlich langfristig, waehrend die kurzfristigen Kosten der Anpassung an die neue Situation hoch sein koennen. Obgleich die Autoren glauben, dass der langfristige Nutzen diese Kosten uebersteigt, heisst das nicht, dass massgebende Politiker diese Ansicht teilen. So unvorhersehbar wie die offizielle Politik ist auch das private Verhalten. Internationale Investoren koennten z.B. die Kapitalfluesse umlenken, und so zu einer Waehrungs- und Finanzkrise beitragen. Dieser Artikel hebt einige denkbare Mechanismen hervor, wie sich eine solche Krise entwickeln koennte. (ICDUebers)'Eastward enlargement is one of the hot topics in European economics. The accession of central and eastern European Countries (CEEC) into the European Union (EU) is accompanied by an extension of the eurozone to this region. This paper surveys likely outcomes and challenges of this specific feature of EU enlargement. Moreover, the article represents the start of an international research project dealing with these questions. Research is structured along different markets. Hence, the impact of an adoption of the euro is analysed for capital and labour markets as well as with respect to exchange rate and monetary policies. Our main position is that the euro has in general beneficiary effects for the CEEC and the current EU in all examined markets. However, these benefits evolve mainly in the long run, whereas the short-term costs of adaptation to the new situation may be high. Although we believe that the present value of long-term benefits exceeds these costs, it is by no means clear that policy-makers will share this view. Due to the usual political-economy transformation, the assessment of costs and benefits may be different for politicians than compared to any overall perspective. If official policies become unforeseeable, so will private behaviour. International investors may reverse their capital flows, draining precious liquidity, and leading to currency and financial crises whenever they perceive the authorities' commitment to EMU less credible. This article highlights some thinkable mechanisms how any such crisis could evolve. It, thus, sets the agenda for further research, mainly, with the focus on appropriate policy strategies to keep adaptation costs as low as possible, minimise other external risks, without hampering the long-term benefits.' (author's abstract)German title: Neue zukuenftige Risiken: die Osterweiterung der EurozoneAvailable from http://www.ezoneplus.org/archiv/ezoneplus wp one.pdf / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Expansion of the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) knowledge base and resources.

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities associated with 7000+ diseases-is used by thousands of researchers, clinicians, informaticians and electronic health record systems around the world. Its detailed descriptions of clinical abnormalities and computable disease definitions have made HPO the de facto standard for deep phenotyping in the field of rare disease. The HPO's interoperability with other ontologies has enabled it to be used to improve diagnostic accuracy by incorporating model organism data. It also plays a key role in the popular Exomiser tool, which identifies potential disease-causing variants from whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing data. Since the HPO was first introduced in 2008, its users have become both more numerous and more diverse. To meet these emerging needs, the project has added new content, language translations, mappings and computational tooling, as well as integrations with external community data. The HPO continues to collaborate with clinical adopters to improve specific areas of the ontology and extend standardized disease descriptions. The newly redesigned HPO website (www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) simplifies browsing terms and exploring clinical features, diseases, and human genes