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141. Free Movement of People, Goods, Services and Capital in View of the Context of Stability Pact

Author:
Mladen Stanicic
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Austrian National Defence Academy
Abstract:
The Stability Pact is a strategic concept whose aim is to warrant long- term peace and stability in South-Eastern Europe. It is becoming an indispensable element of the global security structure which is currently being constructed in relations between the big powers, the USA, Russia and China, with the active participation of the United Nations, the European Union, international financial institutions and individual countries. As one of the sponsors of the pact, the European Union is keenly interested in stability and peace among its next-door neighbours, some of whom are covered by the pending eastern enlargement. This enlargement is intended to transcend centuries of civilisational and religious divisions in Europe, the causes of many political and armed conflicts in the past. The vision of Europe in the 21st century, reaching all the way to the borders of the former Soviet Union, is that of a multicultural community encompassing states with diverse civilisational, religious, ethnic and cultural characteristics.
Topic:
Security, Globalization, International Cooperation, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, and Eastern Europe

142. Drifting Apart or Growing Together?

Author:
Joseph P. Quinlan
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Transatlantic Relations
Abstract:
One of the defining features of the global economic landscape over the past decade has been the increasing integration and cohesion of the transatlantic economy. Globalization is happening faster and reaching deeper between Europe and America than between any other two continents. The data in this study suggest that the past decade was not primarily about U.S. companies spreading their operations to the four corners of the globe. Rather, it was a time when the transatlantic economy became even more intertwined and interdependent. Failing to understand this dynamic can lead to serious errors of policy and cause significant damage to U.S. and European interests.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

143. Globalization and the Development of Welfare States in Post-Communist Europe

Author:
Mitchell Orenstein and Martine R. Hass
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How has globalization influenced welfare state development in postcommunist Europe? We focus on the leading East-Central European accession states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, and show that these states have experienced radically different welfare state developments since 1989 from their neighbors in the former Soviet Union. The first pa rt of the paper proposes that these divergent paths can be explained by a “Europe effect”. We argue that the effects of globalization have differed greatly, depending on a country's position in the international economy and geopolitical relations. We demonstrate that countries closer to the European Union have used welfare state programs to compensate citizens for the traumas of system transition and economic openness, while the welfare systems in the former Soviet states have collapsed to a far greater extent, in terms of spending and effectivness.
Topic:
Communism, Globalization, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, and Czech Republic

144. Equity Prices, Household Wealth, and Consumption Growth in Foreign Industrial Countries: Wealth Effects in the 1990s

Author:
Carol C. Bertaut
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Although most recent empirical research regarding the size and significance of the impact of changes in wealth on consumption has looked for such effects in the United States, equity prices in the 1990s rose considerably in most other industrial countries as well. This paper investigates the strength of the wealth effect across countries. Using a variety of methods, I find evidence of significant wealth effects in the United Kingdom and Canada of a size comparable to that in the United States, reflecting the importance of equities in aggregate household wealth in these countries. A significant wealth effect is also evident in Japan, but because household wealth has changed little on balance in Japan in recent years, this channel has been less important in explaining Japanese consumption growth in the second half of the 1990s. Despite a rapid appreciation in equity prices and an increase in equity ownership in the major continental European countries since 1995, equities remain a less important form of household wealth in most of these countries, and the consumption response to changes in wealth remains limited. However, in some smaller European countries where equity issuance is more common, the emerging evidence suggests that wealth effects may be more important.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada

145. International Coordination of Macroeconomic Policies: Still Alive in the New Millennium?

Author:
Joseph E. Gagnon, Dale W. Henderson, Brian M. Doyle, and Laurence H. Meyer
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
In this paper we provide two building blocks for an analysis of international policy coordination: (1) a survey of models of policy coordination, and (2) an account of experience with policy coordination among the G-7 countries and within Europe since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System. Using these building blocks, we investigate the correspondence between the models and experience and attempt to draw lessons for both the modelers and the practitioners. We find that the correspondence is close enough that the models help in analyzing several instances of actual policy coordination, but that the correspondence could be even closer. As for lessons for modelers, we suggest that they devote more attention to the analysis of information exchange, a key feature of practical policy coordination; to the coordination of different types of policies; to the ramifications of political divisions within countries; and to the implications of market irrationality and speculative bubbles. As for lessons for policy makers, we suggest that they give more consideration to the choice of their ultimate objectives, in particular to whether the current account should always be close to balance; to achieving better internal policies; and to the greater use of fiscal policy as a stabilization tool.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

146. How does globalisation affect local production and knowledge systems? The surgical instrument cluster of Tuttlingen, Germany

Author:
Gerhard Halder
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and Peace
Abstract:
The recent discussion of the winners and losersfrom globalisation has given prominence to regional development and industrial clusters in the global organisation of production and know-how. Tuttlingen, in southern Germany, is the recognised world leader in the global surgical instruments industry. However, price competition from emerging low-cost locations in South and South/East Asia and Eastern Europe, and rapid technological developments in medical engineering pose new challenges for the Tuttlingen cluster. In the past, institutional joint action was one of the pillars of the cluster's success, but there are doubts as to whether such institutions can face the new challenges. New public-private initiatives suggest a way forward, but it is too early to gauge their impact. In the past there wereimportant examples of small and medium sized firms coming togetherin joint marketing, production, and research and development efforts. While they continue, local competition has become more intense, making inter-firm co-operation more difficult. Some firms do, however, co-operate with suppliers further down the value chain, particularly those in Pakistan and Malaysia. The new challenges are also leading to further differentiation, both amongst firms as well as between producers and traders within the cluster. The most radical forms of product and functional upgrading are being concentrated in the cluster' sleading large firms. Innovation seems to be linked to close ties with end-users, the concentration of knowledge in medical engineering, and changes in surgical practices and health care delivery. Thus, the cluster while the 'big fish' in its own pond of surgical instruments, is having to come to terms with being a 'small fry' in the larger sea that constitutes the global health care sector.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Globalization, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, East Asia, and Germany

147. Disentangling the Reform Gridlock: Higher Education in Germany

Author:
Helga A. Welsh
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
For more than a decade, bemoaning the many roadblocks to reforming important aspect of German politics has become commonplace. Explanations emphasize formal and informal veto points, such as the role of political institutions and the lack of elite and societal support for reform initiatives. Against this background, I was interested in factors that place policy issues on the political agenda and follow up with concrete courses of action; i.e., in factors that lead to a disentangling of the reform gridlock. I emphasize the importance of agenda setting in the emergence of higher education reform in Germany. Globalization, European integration and domestic pressures combined to create new pressures for change. In response, an advocacy coalition of old and new political actors has introduced a drawn-out and ongoing process of value reorientation in the direction of competition, including international competition, and greater autonomy. The result has been a burst of activities, some moderate, some more far-reaching in their potential to restructure German higher education.
Topic:
Education, Globalization, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

148. The Worried Friend, or: Hegemony vs. Globalization

Author:
Claus Leggewie
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
How real is American hegemony, given that only a few years ago talk about the decline of American power dominated discussion? How do allied states deal with a superpower that is no longer so benign? Does the United States still provide security for Western Europe and the rest of the world at all? And is a transnational world in need of Pax Americana, or what should, from a European and transatlantic perspective, take its place?
Topic:
Security and Globalization
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

149. Globalized and Localized Digital Divides Along the Information Highway: A Fragile Synthesis Across Bridges, Ramps, Cloverleaves, and Ladders.

Author:
Carl Cuneo
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
There has been a tendency, especially in North America and Europe, and among technology enthusiasts and some educators, to assume that the whole world is connected to the Internet, and surfs the World Wide Web. Why would we use the term, 'World Wide Web', if we were not talking about a global phenomenon? However, Internet statistics show that only about six to eight percent of the world's six billion population is connected to the Internet. Approximately ninety-two percent of the world is NOT connected to, nor uses, the Internet. 1 The erroneous assumption of universal connectivity is not simply a statistical mistake. Governments, corporations, community organizations, and individuals make many incorrect decisions, with sometimes dramatic and far-reaching consequences, on the basis of the assumption that most of the world is connected to the Internet. Not only is the vast majority of the world not connected to the Internet, most people do not even have the computers, skills, experience, interest, or awareness to become connected. The disconnected are not randomly distributed, but have specific demographic, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender, gerontological, and political characteristics that amount to a systematic bias of exclusion, often referred to as the “digital have-nots”. Similarly, the connected are not randomly distributed, but possess particular demographic, social, economic and political characteristics making up what has become known as the ““Digital Haves””. The separation, chasm, abyss, canyon, gulf, or distance between the ““Digital Haves”” and “digital have-nots” has become known as the “Digital Divide.”
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Globalization, Poverty, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe and North America

150. Multiethnic State, Ethnically Homogeneous State and the Future of the Nation-State in the Balkan.

Author:
Plamen Pantev
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Austrian National Defence Academy
Abstract:
Approaching and testing the capacity and effectiveness of the nation-states in the Balkans is a long-term research necessity for many reasons: First, despite the tendency of making the state boundaries less and less significant in the era of new information technology, global economy and new communications capabilities the nation-state will remain the key organisational unit of the international system and the features of national sovereignty will continue to dominate and influence the management toolbox of international relations and domestic politics. Hence, any form and nuance of the nation-state in the Balkans will have a decisive meaning for dealing with the political and security agenda of the region.
Topic:
Democratization and Globalization
Political Geography:
Europe and Balkans