The European Central Bank and the European Macroeconomic Constitution

The European Central Bank and the European Macroeconomic Constitution
Author: Klaus Tuori
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2022-09-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108804004

The book is about money, central banking and constitutions. It explains how the European Central Bank was established to ensure stability and prosperity for the euro area. The ECB was guided and controlled by a coherent European Macroeconomic Constitution. However, this model has failed during recurring crises, and the ECB has started to act as the euro area fire brigade. Consequently, it is pushing the boundaries of monetary policy, and with that challenging the accountability mechanisms and fundamentally also the democratic legitimacy of the EMU. The book sheds light on this complex economic-constitutional setting with a view on the future. The imbalance between various new operations and a single price stability objective is difficult to remedy. New objectives of financial stability, economic adjustment and environmental sustainability can cause fundamental ruptures between the ECB's formal role and its actions, and they also dangerously overburden monetary policy moving forward with substantial risks.

The Euro in the 21st Century

The Euro in the 21st Century
Author: Maria Lorca-Susino
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-02-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317033337

The Euro in the 21st Century clarifies the perception of the euro and empirically demonstrates that the euro has become a true common currency and the Eurozone a true optimal currency area, presenting, in turn, a model to imitate. In order to demonstrate this, this study analyzes the economic and monetary requirements and policies required to introduce a common currency as well as the theoretical underpinnings of both the European integration process and the historical economic, monetary, political, and social circumstances that favoured the creation of the economic and monetary union. Furthermore, this book sheds light on how the current economic and monetary circumstances are affecting the euro project through and analysis of three intertwined issues. It studies how the economic chaos and financial uproar, which has plagued the Eurozone and world economy since 2008, has affected the single-currency regime as well as the current image of the euro worldwide. Moreover it summarizes the lesson to be learnt from what can be considered 'the first euro crisis'. Finally, it thoroughly analyzes the behaviour of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund during this crisis. This book draws on and contributes to several bodies of literature within Political Economy, Economics, and International Relations and is particularly relevant at this time given that the current unfolding economic imbalances are causing some Eurozone Member States to rethink their economic and political views concerning the euro.

Unwitting Architect

Unwitting Architect
Author: Julian Germann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1503614298

The global rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s is widely seen as a dynamic originating in the United States and the United Kingdom, and only belatedly and partially repeated by Germany. From this Anglocentric perspective, Germany's emergence at the forefront of neoliberal reforms in the eurozone is perplexing, and tends to be attributed to the same forces conventionally associated with the Anglo-American pioneers. This book challenges this ruling narrative conceptually and empirically. It recasts the genesis of neoliberalism as a process driven by a plenitude of actors, ideas, and interests. And it lays bare the pragmatic reasoning and counterintuitive choices of German crisis managers that are obscured by this master story. Drawing on extensive original archival research, this book argues that German officials did not intentionally set out to promote neoliberal change. Instead they were more intent on preserving Germany's export markets and competitiveness in order to stabilize the domestic compact between capital and labor. Nevertheless, the series of measures German policy elites took to manage the end of golden-age capitalism promoted neoliberal transformation in crucial respects: it destabilized the Bretton Woods system; it undermined socialist and social democratic responses to the crisis in Europe; it frustrated an internationally coordinated Keynesian reflation of the world economy; and ultimately it helped push the US into the Volcker interest-rate shock that inaugurated the attack on welfare and labor under Reagan and Thatcher. From this vantage point, the book illuminates the very different rationale behind the painful reforms German state managers have demanded of their indebted eurozone partners.

The Political Theory of Neoliberalism

The Political Theory of Neoliberalism
Author: Thomas Biebricher
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1503607836

Neoliberalism has become a dirty word. In political discourse, it stigmatizes a political opponent as a market fundamentalist; in academia, the concept is also mainly wielded by its critics, while those who might be seen as actual neoliberals deny its very existence. Yet the term remains necessary for understanding the varieties of capitalism across space and time. Arguing that neoliberalism is widely misunderstood when reduced to a doctrine of markets and economics alone, this book shows that it has a political dimension that we can reconstruct and critique. Recognizing the heterogeneities within and between both neoliberal theory and practice, The Political Theory of Neoliberalism looks to distinguish between the two as well as to theorize their relationship. By examining the views of state, democracy, science, and politics in the work of six major figures—Eucken, Röpke, Rüstow, Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan—it offers the first comprehensive account of the varieties of neoliberal political thought. Ordoliberal perspectives, in particular, emerge in a new light. Turning from abstract to concrete, the book also interprets recent neoliberal reforms of the European Union to offer a diagnosis of contemporary capitalism more generally. The latest economic crises hardly brought the neoliberal era to an end. Instead, as Thomas Biebricher shows, we are witnessing an authoritarian liberalism whose reign has only just begun.

Cosmopolitan Government in Europe

Cosmopolitan Government in Europe
Author: Owen Parker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2013-04-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113623988X

The invocation of ‘the market’ has been omnipresent in media discussions of ‘crisis Europe’. On the one hand, ‘the market’ is presented as that to which EU member states must collectively respond. It is the very purpose of a post-national government and that which dictates individual and collective identities. The expansion of market is that which guarantees and constitutes peace in Europe. On the other hand, ‘the market’ is that which government must seek to tame. It is the servant of government and ought not be permitted to undermine collective identities and solidarities associated with the juridical imaginary of social contract and sovereign nation-state. It is, from this perspective, the expansion of the social institutions of nation-state into the post-national arena that will constitute a lasting peace in Europe. Cosmopolitan Government in Europe uses a Foucauldian lens to consider the ethics of the scholarly and institutional discourses associated with these apparently divergent market and legal cosmopolitan visions of Europe. It reflects on attempts to reconcile or move beyond these discourses, particularly through the invocation of more pluralist modes of governance, but claims that such moves have been largely unsuccessful in both practice and theory. It argues that the very ambiguity in the relationship between the ideal subjects that these market and legal visions promote – respectively, post-national ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘citizen’ – is that which permits a space for resistance and politics. Thus, the book argues for a pragmatic politics which is cognizant of the violent potential inherent in any cosmopolitan attempt to govern Europe, while recognising the contemporary dangers associated with the dominance of a market cosmopolitan Europe. This work is an important and timely intervention in contemporary debates about democratic Europe and its shortcomings and will be of great interest to scholars of international political theory, European studies and international political economy.

The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism

The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism
Author: Thomas Biebricher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2022-09-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0192605429

Since the financial crisis of 2008, ordoliberalism emerged from relative obscurity to become one of the crucial terms of analysis across a wide range of academic literatures and public discussion. In fact, it became the main reference for a number of issues, including assessments of the attempted resolution of the Eurozone crisis, arguments about German hegemony in Europe, debates over the future of economic liberalism and controversies about authoritarian liberalism. What is striking about ordoliberalism is its pronounced ambiguity, as some view it as a more refined and potentially progressive variant of neoliberalism, while others cast it as a blueprint for a regime of austerity reigning over a society of competition with only rudimentary democratic institutions. And while ordoliberalism is often portrayed as a quintessentially German tradition, its impact has not been confined to the German context, extending all the way to the unlikely case of China. In short, ordoliberalism is a phenomenon of arguably considerable influence that remains poorly understood, as it is mystified by its proponents and vilified by its critics. The Oxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism contains a selection of chapters written by an international cast of experts on ordoliberalism that aim to elucidate and analyze the latter in all of its many facets. From the intellectual origins and prime exemplars to its main theoretical themes and practical applications up to the most recent debates taking place across a range of disciplines, this volume offers the first comprehensive account of ordoliberalism for the English-speaking world.

Germany's Economic Performance

Germany's Economic Performance
Author: J. Hölscher
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2016-01-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230374476

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of Germany's economic performance at the turn of the twenty-first century. The period under observation and analysis stretches from Germany's unification in 1990 over the death of the German Mark to first experiences with the Euro, with particular attention given to East Germany.

Euroland and the World Economy

Euroland and the World Economy
Author: Jörg Bibow
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2007-10-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230377556

This book takes a broad perspective to challenge orthodox views about the role of Euroland in the world economy, providing a comprehensive framework to address important questions for the future of the Euro, including the key question: will the single currency contribute to world economic dynamism or be driven by the vigour and vitality of others?

Report

Report
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2003
Genre: Economics
ISBN:

German Unification

German Unification
Author: P. Caldwell
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230337953

This wide-ranging collection brings together contributions from historians, political scientists, policymakers, and others to provide much-needed perspective on the unification of Germany as it actually played out in real historical time.