"Aggregation Bias" DOES explain the PPP puzzle

This article summarizes our views on the role of an "aggregation bias" in explaining the PPP Puzzle, in response to the several papers recently written in reaction to our initial contribution. We discuss in particular the criticisms of Imbs, Mumtaz, Ravn and Rey (2002) presented in Chen and Engel (2005). We show that their contentions are based on: (i) analytical counter-examples which are not empirically relevant; (ii) simulation results minimizing the extent of "aggregation bias"; (iii) unfounded claims on the impact of measurement errors on our results; and (iv) problematic implementation of small-sample bias corrections. We conclude, as in our original paper, that "aggregation bias" goes a long way towards explaining the PPP puzzle

When trade unions succeed: cases of blocked liberalisation in the common market

Despite the generally accepted weakness of trade unions at the European Union level, an analysis of two high profile cases – the Services Directive and the Port Directive – shows that trade unions are able to mobilise effectively at the European level and, within constellations of actors, crucially impact EU decision making. In contrast to common claims that a lack of access to EU institutions makes such groups powerless, it is argued here that the exclusion of large opposing societal groups from consultations is neither a quick nor a sure fire recipe for dismantling opposition. On the contrary, it politicises the process and may lead to opposing groups mobilising in more contentious ways

Sexualities and the ECHR: Introducing the Universal Sexual Legal Subject

Shifting from an essentialist to a constructionist perspective on sexual identities, I move from a consideration of the homosexual legal subject, as presently treated under the European Convention on Human Rights, to the elaboration of a universal sexual legal subject. The universal sexual legal subject enjoys two basic rights: the right to choose sexual activity and sexual identity and the right to establish relationships and families in accordance with this choice. The possibility of including these two rights within the Convention presupposes their insertion into a set of sexually neutral standards which grant the universal sexual legal subject equality of choices. By examining the case law of the European Court and Commission of Human Rights on decriminalization of same-sex sexual activity, and family and relationship issues, I question the sexual particularity of the construction of the homosexual legal subject. This analysis of the case law provides the legal material and principles around which the insertion of the two sexual rights into the Convention is discussed. Both sexual rights are located within the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8). Equality of choices can only be guaranteed if the right to marry and found a family (Article 12) is erased and marriage is ‘privatised’ into Article 8 on an equal footing with other sexual and relational choices

The relative dynamics of investment and the current account in the G-7 economies

This paper contributes to the empirics of the intertemporal approach to the current account. We use a cointegrated VAR framework to identify permanent and transitory components of country-specific and global shocks. Our approach allows us to empirically investigate the sensitivity to persistence implied by many forward-looking models and our results shed new light on the excess volatility of investment encountered by Glick and Rogoff (JME 1995). In G7 data, we find the relative current-account and investment response to be in line with the intertemporal approach

Rediscovering the Spirit of Competition: On the Normative Value of the Competitive Process

The paper develops its core argument in 12 sections structured in three parts: I Positive analysis; II Normative proposal; and III Operationalisation. Section B illustrates the traditional justification for the utilitarian perception of competition and analyses its main weaknesses. Section C explores conceptual differences and underlines the fundamental similarities of the two major deontological antitrust schools (Austrian and Ordoliberal). Section D provides some conceptual argumentation for the treatment of competition as a constitutional value. Section E introduces the theoretical framework of value pluralism which reconciles the conflicts between constitutional values. The methodology of value pluralism is applied in order to balance the value of competition with the interests of welfare. Section F opens the second part of the paper. It explores competition as the essence of liberal democracy, claiming that the economic aspects of competition together with its political (elections) and cultural (free speech) elements constitute the core of democratic governance. Accordingly, these values should be protected as a matter of evolutionary choice of society without any utility-based verification. Section G conceptualises the ‘Oroboros dilemma’ of self-destructive freedom and democracy, which is described in the domain of competition by Robert Bork as the ‘antitrust paradox: a policy at war with itself ’. Section H continues the comparative analysis of competition. It explores regulatory practices developed for the protection of free elections (political competition) and free speech (cultural competition) on one hand and economic competition on the other. It reveals the main methodological error of antitrust, which prevents immunisation of some anticompetitive practices from sanctions on non-utilitarian grounds. This section concludes that, unlike its political and cultural counterparts, economic competition is gradually transforming into a purely instrumental consequentialist policy which corresponds neither to the semantics nor even to the syntax of the term ‘competition’. The logic of such transformation is a direct consequence of the above-mentioned methodological inconsistency between economic competition on one hand and the political and cultural aspects of competition on the other. Section I develops the argument that in certain situations anticompetitive agreements are immunised from antitrust sanctions provided that they simultaneously promote competition more than they distort it. This possibility exists in the regulation of the political and cultural aspects of competition, but it is missing in the economic context. The current structure of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) does not envisage this option. Therefore in practice courts tend to develop indirect ways of granting immunity to undertakings which cannot conform to the rigid utilitarian requirements of Article 101(3) TFEU. While acceptable, this solution is far from optimal. For this reason the section proposes a conceptual amendment of Article 101 TFEU. This proposal is designed as a contribution to the academic debate on the role of the competitive process in antitrust rather than as a direct call for changes in primary European law. Section J clarifies that the proposed deontological benchmark for competition does not diminish the importance of utilitarian values since the proposal merely extends the current regulatory framework without substituting any of its existing parts. The application of the amended Article 101 (3) TFEU would still be based upon the discretion of the decision-maker. The will of the decision-maker (be it the Commission, national authorities or courts) constitutes the central part of this section. It analyses the balancing techniques, developed by the legal and constitutional theories and implements them into the area of antitrust. Section K continues the analysis of the balancing act, dealing specifically with the technique of separation of different values. It proposes a two-step methodology of balancing. The first one is purely value-centric. It artificially isolates each value from all others in order to undertake their independent analysis which helps to understand the internal essence of each value separately. The second consecutive step recontextualises previously isolated values into the main regulatory agenda. This section demonstrates that the present-day regulatory status of competition does not enable it to be in the par-in-parem relationships with other values, because all balancing acts are performed as a one-step analysis: each value is only balanced against the others at the external level, where the one with the higher importance always prevails. This section is designed to provide the operational justification for the normative proposal developed in Section I. The last section summarises the main findings of the paper

Political legitimacy and European monetary union: contracts, constitutionalism and the normative logic of two-level games

The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also neglected the need for an impartial and publically acceptable constitutional order to acknowledge reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we contend that any reconstruction of the EU's economic constitution has to pay attention to reconciling a European monetary order with the legitimacy of member state governance. The EU requires a two-level contract to meet this standard. Member states must treat each other as equals and be representative of and accountable to their citizens on an equitable basis. These criteria entail that the EU's political legitimacy requires a form of demoicracy that we call ‘republican intergovernmentalism’. Only rules that could be acceptable as the product of a political constitution among the peoples of Europe can ultimately meet the required standards of political legitimacy. Such a political constitution could be brought about through empowering national parliaments in EU decision-making

Women in Europe and in the world: The state of the Union 2016

Building on the definition of oppression developed by the philosopher Iris Young, the article argues that women in Europe are an oppressed group. Relying on recent statistics, it points out that a high percentage of women are still subject to gender violence; economically exploited and marginalized; powerless with regard to governance and participation in the public sphere, as well as victims of androcentrism—a pattern of cultural evaluation which seriously undermines women’s potential for development. The article then shows how this state of affairs has worsened over the last years, under the effects of the financial and economic crisis, and the austerity policies with which the European states have responded. Finally, it singles out two possible future scenarios. If the current neo-liberal trends persist, we can expect a move towards societies more polarized in terms of class and ethnicity; low fertility rates; and an increasing poverty of those most in need of care and in charge of care provision. The crisis could instead be perceived as an opportunity to diverge from this prevailing neo-liberal model, calling for a new, inclusive, societal model of development—a new humanism which puts the person, in her whole complexity and in her very real care dependent nature, at the very core of the political and economic project

"When and Why the Council of Ministers of the EU Votes Explicitly"

This paper reports newly collected empirical data sets on explicitly contested voting at ministerial level in the Council of Ministers of the European Union. These data sets cover the period 1994-2004, with more detail for the years 1998-2004. They provide us with rather steady patterns of explicitly contested voting across the period in terms of: proportions of decisions taken where contested voting was recorded; the different levels of contestation by country; and the issue areas in which explicit voting occurred more often. The data sets draw on the material available on the Council's own website, but they have been supplemented by hand-collected data, in particular as regards issue areas and types of decision. Once arranged appropriately the data sets will be posted on the web, so that other researchers can have access to the material. The initial analysis of the data is reported in the second edition of Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, The Council of Ministers, Palgrave, forthcoming, Chapter 10. The data show that explicit voting on agreed decisions at ministerial level is rather rare, that in nearly half the roll calls dissent is expressed only by singleton member states, that nearly half the cases concern 'technical' decisions on agriculture and fisheries, and that Germany more often votes 'no' or abstains than any other member state. The data confirm that ministers generally endorse collective decisions by consensus, even on the 70% or so cases where they could activate qualified majority voting (QMV). To the extent that voting takes place in these latter cases, it occurs implicitly rather than explicitly, operates mostly at the level of officials rather than ministers, and is not recorded systematically in publicly accessible form. These patterns are consistent with earlier accounts based on qualitative interview evidence

Measuring group switching in the European Parliament: Methodology, data and trends (1979-2009)

Party group switching in the European Parliament (ep), where parliamentarians individually or collectively switch from one party group to the other, is a well-known contributor to the volatility of the ep party system. We present a new dataset that contains party group information on all meps from 1979 to 2009. As a first step to a more comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of party group switching in the ep we describe characteristics of all switches that have occurred in these six legislatures, with a focus on the trends across time, variety between member states, party groups, and ideological party families

Mediation and peace

This paper applies mechanism design to conflict resolution. We determine when and how unmediated communication and mediation reduce the ex ante probability of conflict in a game with asymmetric information. Mediation improves upon unmediated communication when the intensity of conflict is high, or when asymmetric information is significant. The mediator improves upon unmediated communication by not precisely reporting information to conflicting parties, and precisely, by not revealing to a player with probability one that the opponent is weak. Arbitrators who can enforce settlements are no more effective than mediators who only make non-binding recommendations