Cooperation á la carte is the way forward for EU AI regulation

Disputes over how to regulate artificial intelligence have rapidly risen up the global agenda in the last few years. But is a single set of global, or even just transatlantic rules the way to address the issue? Daniel Mügge argues that for the European Union, with its towering ethical ambitions, the answer may be ‘No’

Financial regulation in the European Union: A research agenda. CES Papers - Open Forum #10, 2012

Over the past two decades, the European Union (EU) has become a central actor in financial regulation and developed complex institutions to fulfill its roles. Pre-financial crisis scholarship has provided key insights into the functioning of this institutional cobweb and its evolution over time. However, the financial crisis has highlighted four facets of EU financial regulation (EUFR) that deserve more scholarly attention than they have received so far: (1) the permissive pre-crisis consensus on the merits of financial liberalization and integration, (2) the embeddedness of financial regulation in the political economy of EU integration at large, (3) preference formation of public and private stakeholders in EUFR, and (4) the global economic and regulatory context of EUFR. This paper presents the key scholarly challenges across these four areas. Addressing them promises not only academic insights but also promotes the relevance of EUFR research for real-world policy dilemmas

The national accounting paradox:How statistical norms corrode international economic data

The transnationalization and digitization of economic activity has undermined the quality of official economic statistics, which still center on national territories and material production. Why do we not witness more vigorous efforts to bring statistical standards in line with present-day economic realities, or admissions that precision in economic data has become increasingly illusive? The paradoxical answer, we argue, lies in the norms underpinning global statistical practice. Users expect statistics to draw on unambiguous sources, to allow for comparison over time and across countries, and they prize coherence—both internally and with holistic macroeconomic models. Yet as we show, the ambition of the transnational statistical community to meet these norms has in fact undermined the ability of economic data to represent economic life more faithfully. We base our findings on interviews with two dozen leading statisticians at international economic organizations, archival research at the International Monetary Fund and a thorough review of debates among statistical experts

Absent alternatives and insider interests in postcrisis financial reform

The credit crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has fundamentally challenged much financial regulation and the political institutions that produced it. Measured against the criticisms that have been brought forth against previous financial governance, the extent of governments’ overall reform ambitions has been disappointing, generating little hope that the threat of future crises is being tackled seriously. Starting from this observation, this article asks: what explains governments’ reform choices, and thus also their limited ambitions? To explore this question, this article focuses on the positions that four governments central to global financial regulation (the USA, the UK, Germany and France) have taken in advance of the G20 meetings in 2009 across four key issue areas in financial regulation: accounting standards, derivatives trading, credit ratings agencies and banking rules. It evaluates both the overlap between positions across domains and governments as well as the differences between them. Such variation, we argue, provides key clues to the overall drivers behind reforms – as well as their limits. The overall picture that emerges can be summarized as follows: governments have been staunch defenders of their national firms’ competitive interests in regulatory reforms. That has not necessarily meant that they followed industry preferences across the board – new rules that might dent profits were imposed in several cases. It has been the relative impact, compared to foreign competitors, that counted in reform positions, not the absolute impact. As this article also shows, these differences of opinion have played out within the context and the limits of the overall debates about thinkable policy alternatives. In spite of fundamental criticisms of pre-crisis regulatory orthodoxy, convincing and coherent alternatives have been forthcoming slowly at best. This has made reform proposals less radical than criticisms, seen on their own, might suggest.Die Kreditkrise, ausgebrochen im Sommer 2007, hat gängige Regulierungsmodelle und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden politischen Institutionen grundsätzlich in Frage gestellt. Gemessen an der fundamentalen Kritik die seitdem an bestehenden Strukturen geäußert worden ist, sind die Reformambitionen westlicher Regierungen in diesem Bereich allerdings enttäuschend und geben kaum Hoffnung, dass der Bedrohung durch zukünftige Krisen ernsthaft begegnet wird. Diese Beobachtung generiert die zentrale Frage dieses Beitrags: wie lassen sich die Reformschritte verschiedener Regierungen, und insbesondere deren begrenzter Umfang, erklären? Unsere Analyse konzentriert sich auf die Reformpositionen die vier Regierungen mit Schlüsselpositionen in globalen Finanzfragen (USA, Großbritannien, Frankreich, Deutschland) im Vorfeld der G20-Treffen 2009 eingenommen haben. Vier Regulierungsfeldern stehen dabei zentral: Rechnungslegungsstandards, Derivathandel, Bankenregulierung und Ratingagenturen. Der Beitrag nimmt dabei sowohl bemerkenswerte Überlappungen der Regierungspositionen sowie Unterschiede zwischen ihnen in den Blick. Vor allem letztere erlauben Rückschlüsse auf die treibenden Kräfte hinter Reformbemühungen. Die Analyseergebnisse lassen sich wie folgt zusammenfassen: Regierungen haben in internationalen Verhandlungen die Wettbewerbsinteressen ihrer nationalen Finanzdienstleister verteidigt. Das heißt nicht, dass Industrieinteressen durchgängig in politische Positionen übernommen worden sind - nicht selten haben neue Regeln Bankprofite eher geschmälert. Vielmehr ist es der relative Einfluss der neuen Regeln auf Wettbewerbsfähigkeit gewesen, verglichen mit ausländischen Firmen, der entscheidend war. Gleichzeitig zeigt dieser Beitrag, dass die verschiedenen Regierungspositionen sich alle innerhalb eines Rahmens bewegen, der auf ‚denkbare‘ Regulierungsalternativen begrenzt ist. Ungeachtet der Fundamentalkritik gegenüber dem seinerzeit gängigen Regulierungsparadigma, die nach der Krise laut geworden ist, mangelt es nach wie vor an überzeugenden, grundlegenden Alternativansätzen. Darum sind viele Reformvorschläge weniger radikal ausgefallen als die Kritik, isoliert betrachtet, nahegelegt hätte

The Problem with Trade Measurement in International Relations

Trade statistics are widely used in studies and policymaking focused on economic interdependence. Yet, researchers in International Relations (IR) have largely disregarded half the data available to study trade. Bilateral trade flows are usually recorded twice: by the sending economy as an export and by the receiving one as an import. These two values should match, but discrepancies between them tend to be large and pervasive. Most studies ignore this issue, which we label the “mirror problem” for short, by using only one entry. However, it is not self-evident which one is consistently most accurate. Hence, IR's reliance on error-prone trade statistics may be distorting its study of economic interdependence. This article explores this problem in three steps: first, we quantify the mirror problem in trade data. Second, we investigate the origins of the mirror problem, using statistical analyses, archival records, and interviews with statistical experts. Third, we illustrate the implications of the mirror problem through replications covering diverse topics in IR. We find that accounting for the mirror problem can variably strengthen, undermine, or overturn conclusions of such analyses. The findings underscore the severity of measurement problems in IR and suggest particular ways to address those problems

The delusive economy:how information and affect colour perceptions of national economic performance

Economic knowledge plays a central role in many theories of political behavior. But empirical studies have found many citizens to be poorly informed about the official state of the economy. Analyzing two waves of the Eurobarometer database, we re-examine the distribution of public knowledge of three macroeconomic indicators in two dozen European countries. Respondents with high income and education give more accurate estimates than others, in line with previous studies. As we show, however, such differences in knowledge do not only reflect varying levels of information. People’s estimates are also shaped by affective dynamics, in particular a more pessimistic outlook that leads to overestimation of official unemployment and inflation (but not growth) figures. We find that emotive factors can bias inflation and unemployment estimates of respondents who find themselves in a privileged economic situation in a direction that incidentally also makes them more accurate, even though respondents are not necessarily being better informed. In real-world politics, official economic statistics thus do not function as a shared information backdrop that could buttress the quality of public deliberation. Instead, knowledge of them is itself driven by personal socio-economic circumstances

ALEGORIA BRASILEIRA EM LEITE DERRAMADO, DE CHICO BUARQUE

Este artigo analisa a trajetória mnemônica de Eulálio Assumpção, protagonista da narrativa Leite Derramado, de Chico Buarque, observando o percurso que ele realiza através das lembranças socioeconômicas do Brasil que se entrelaçam às rememorações de acontecimentos gerais de sua vida privada por quase um século. O estudo também contrapõe as características do “homem cordial” e do sujeito do “sabe com quem está falando?” – surgidos no início dos anos 40, na tentativa de definir a cultura e identidade brasileira –, como recurso para uma interpretação crítica e polêmica sobre o dilema brasileiro, que ainda persiste

Die transnationale Ordnung globalisierter Finanzmärkte. Was lehrt uns die Krise?

Die Krise der Finanzmärkte, die 2007 begann, hat die meisten Politiker und Wissenschaftler überrascht. In der Soziologie haben, wie in der Wirtschaftswissenschaft, vor 2007 nur Wenige das Krisenpotenzial erkannt, das in der Beschaffenheit des modernen Finanzsystems liegt. Unter dem dominanten Einfluss der liberalen Neoklassik in der ökonomischen Theorie wurde weithin geglaubt, dass Märkte im Allgemeinen und damit auch Finanzmärkte sich selbst regeln. Die Finanzkrise und ihre Folgen haben hier zu einem Umdenken geführt. Inzwischen besteht unter Wissenschaftlern und Politikern ein breiter Konsens, dass Defizite der Regulierung für die krisenhafte Entwicklung im globalen Finanzsystem mit verantwortlich waren. Da die Finanzmärkte globalisiert sind und die Krise als eine globale wahrgenommen wurde, wurde allgemein eine Neuregelung durch Vereinbarungen auf internationaler Ebene verlangt, um künftigen Krisen vorzubauen