A well designed Europe-wide financial transactions tax could be a powerful source of revenue for the EU budget

What would be the implications of a financial transactions tax in Europe? While the French argue such a tax would help stabilize the debt crisis, the British believe that the instrument would prompt an exodus of financial activity to other parts of the world. Iain Begg argues that the latter argument may not hold, and that the tax could become a source of revenue for governments if introduced as a ‘tax for Europe’. There has been much debate in recent months about a financial transactions tax (FTT), with some Member States, notably France, very keen to see its introduction, while others are more sceptical. Given the prominence of the City of London in its economy, the UK, not surprisingly, is opposed to the introduction of such a tax in the European Union because of fears that it would prompt an exodus of financial activity to other parts of the world. For the UK, the argument is that unless a global FTT (which it claims to support) can be introduced, imposing such a tax unilaterally in Europe would be tantamount to an own goal

The Cypriot banking crisis shows that Europeans have yet to work out the answer to the question, ‘who pays?’

The past week has been a tumultuous one for Cyprus, with negotiations and renegotiations towards a bailout for the country’s embattled banks. While an agreement has finally been struck, Iain Begg writes that the crisis is a direct result of an over-extended banking system: something that also affects other Eurozone members. The solution, to make bank depositors pay, could undermine confidence in the Eurozone’s banking system

The Rewards of Managing an Electronic Mailing List

published or submitted for publicatio

The 2008/2009 review of the EU budget: Real or cosmetic?

Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion, Öffentlicher Haushalt, European Economic and Monetary Union, Public Budget

Economic governance in an enlarged euro area

Ten years on from its launch, it is clear that EMU, which has to be regarded as a more profound regime change than is often acknowledged, has had a pronounced effect on economic governance. As a framework for the conduct of macroeconomic policy, EMU has had undoubted successes in assuring price stability and in instilling greater fiscal discipline, yet it is open to the criticism that it has not (yet?) delivered improved performance in the real economy. Moreover, some of the compromises made at the outset and over the twenty years since the roadmap for EMU was first set out, notably to reconcile divergent French and German preferences, have left certain elements of the policy architecture unresolved. In the coming years, several more Member States are expected to become full participants in EMU, so that fresh thinking on the governance arrangements is warranted, not least to accommodate the rather different economic characteristics of the candidate countries.Begg, euro area enlargement, governance, economic policy co-ordination, EMU

Structural policy and economic convergence

EU-Regionalfonds,, Entwicklungskonvergenz, EU-Staaten, EU cohesion fund, Economic convergence, EU countries

A Mechanism for Ventricular Expansion in Communicating Hydrocephalus

This report investigates a new possible molecular mechanism for the pathogenesis of hydrocephalus. New research by Dr. Miles Johnston has found that the injection of anti beta_1 integrin antibodies into the ventricle of rats causes a drop in parenchymal pressure and causes the cerebral ventricles to enlarge which is characteristic of hydrocephalus. We investigate intramantle pressure gradients as a possible force to enlarge the ventricles and we propose a new poroelastic model incorporating the effect of the antibodies to determine if they are a possible mechanism for hydrocephalus

Functional differential equations arising in cell-growth

Non-local differential equations are notoriously difficult to solve. Cell-growth models for population growth of a cohort structured by size, simultaneously growing and dividing, give rise to a class of non-local eigenvalue problems, whose “principal” eigenvalue is the time-constant for growth/decay. These and other novel non-local problems are described and solved in special cases in this paper

Evaluation of the main achievements of cohesion policy programmes and projects over the longer term in 15 selected regions (from 1989-1993 programme period to the present)

Against a background of inconclusive evidence of the results of EU Cohesion policy since 1989, the aim of this study has been to evaluate the main achievements of EU Cohesion policy programmes and projects and their effectiveness and utility over the longer term in 15 selected regions of the EU15. Specifically, the main objectives of the study were twofold: (i) to examine the achievements of all programmes co-financed by the ERDF and, where applicable, the Cohesion Fund, which have been implemented in the 15 selected regions from 1989 to 2012 (regional programmes and national programmes implemented in the regions); and (ii) to assess the relevance of programmes and the effectiveness and utility of programme achievement