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5111. Europeanization and the Retreat of the State

Author:
Volker Schneider and Frank M. Häge
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Is the state on the retreat? We examine this question through an analysis of changing patterns of government involvement in infrastructure provision, which is generally considered to be one of the primary functions of the modern state. Based on an analysis of the extent of privatization of infrastructure companies between 1970 and 2000 across twenty-six OECD countries, we find that there is indeed a general trend towards less public infrastructure provision visible in all of the countries and that the main factors associated with the extent of privatizations are EU membership and government ideology. We argue that the trend of privatizing infrastructure companies was triggered by a change of the prominent economic discourse in the 1970s and that a rightist party ideology and EU membership fostered the adoption and implementation of these ideas in domestic settings.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

5112. Spain in the EU: fifteen years may not be enough

Author:
Miguel Sebastian
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Europe has been the driving force of economic policy in Spain over the last four decades and the key factor behind the modernization and globalisation of the Spanish Economy. The accession to the EEC in 1986 was a crucial step in the process of economic and political integration.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe

5113. Temporary work agencies and equilibrium unemployment

Author:
Michael Neugart and Donald Storrie
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
A striking feature of OECD labor markets in the 1990s has been the very rapid increase of temporary agency work. We augment the equilibrium unemployment model as developed by Pissarides and Mortensen with temporary work agencies in order to focus on their role as matching intermediaries and to examine the aggregate impact on employment. Our model implies that the improvement in the matching efficiency of agencies led to the emergence and growth of temporary agency work. We also show that temporary agency work does not necessarily crowd out other jobs.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

5114. Building the Dual Earner/Dual Carer Society: Policy Developments in Europe

Author:
Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
A new model of work and family life is emerging out of contemporary debates on social citizenship and the characteristics of the “woman-friendly” welfare state. The dual-earner/ dual-carer model refers to a social and economic arrangement in which men and women engage symmetrically in both paid work in the labor market and in unpaid work in the home. Parents' ability to balance family and market responsibilities, and to allocate employment and childcare-giving equally between mothers and fathers, could be facilitated by a package of state policies. Three areas of supportive policy – all invarious states of development across Europe – include: (1) family leave schemes that provide job protections and wage replacement for parents of young children; (2) affordable, high quality early childhood education and care, to a limited extent for very young children and to a much larger extent for children aged three to school-age; and (3) labor market regulations aimed at shortening the standard work week and strengthening re-muneration for reduced-hour employment. In this paper, we review European policy provisions, and then turn our attention to the United States case. We suggest that embracing the vision of the dual-earner/ dual-carer society may help to draw diverse but unified support for family policy development in the United States.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

5115. Three Worlds of Working Time: Policy and Politics in Work-time Patterns of Industrialized Countries

Author:
Brian Burgoon and Phineas Baxandall
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Given the underdeveloped attention to political and policy origins of aggregate work time patterns in the work-time literature, and the lack of any significant attention to work-time in the broader comparative political economy literature, this paper has pursues a broad mandate: to bring more politics into the study of work-time, and work-time into the study of politics. Using data allowing better comparison among OECD countries, we argue that study of working time needs to consider annual hours per employee and per working-age person, shaped by a range of social as well as direct work-time policies. We also argue that union interest in work-time reduction is more ambiguous than customarily supposed, with union interests likely mediated by a range of other conditions, especially female labor market participation and female union membership. Finally, we argue that attention to party systems and policy clusters should begin with consideration of Social Democratic, Liberal and Christian Democratic worlds of work time. We support these arguments with cross-section time-series study of 18 OECD countries, and brief qualitative studies of work-time in Finland, the United States, and the Netherlands.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Netherlands

5116. Economic Policy Coordination in EMU: Institutional and Political Requirements

Author:
Stefan Collignon
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
This paper looks at the macroeconomic performance of EMU since it started in 1999. It argues that Euroland has benefited from a benign environment, appropriate monetary policy and structural reforms. However, there is no institution clearly in charge of formulating coherent economic policies in Euroland and this is reflected in the euro's external value. The paper then evaluates the need for policy coordination, distinguishing between weak and strong forms of coordination failure. It shows that intergovernmental coordination may be an answer to the latter, pareto-improving multiple equilibria. However, overcoming weak coordination failure requires further policy delegation to the EU-level, particularly for the definition of an aggregate fiscal policy stance. Yet, this is only possible if the democratic deficit resulting from intergovernmental cooperation is closed by a European-wide policy consensus. To achieve this should be the objective of a European constitution.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

5117. European Monetary Union: between the stakeholder and the stockholder models of capitalism

Author:
Carlos A. Rozo
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
From the mid-1980s on a new attitude towards self-determination appeared in Western European integration. With the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and, later, with the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 the member countries of the European Community manifested their determination to be active players in the new international order. Accepting and instituting the single market and monetary union constituted, however, a challenge of compatibility between the traditional model of welfare European capitalism and the impositions coming from globalization under the neo-liberal model of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. This issue is examined here under two perspectives. The first reviews the implications which globalization has had on the European model of capitalism and the second the complications for monetary management as Europe moves from a nationally regulated to a union regulated financial structure.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe

5118. The Measure of India: What Makes Greatness?

Author:
Joydeep Mukherji
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
I join you tonight to consider India on the scales of greatness. In other words, to ask: by what standards do people regard a state as great? And how does India conform to those standards? I must say at the outset, that these are not questions on which I personally would fixate. Greatness in terms of power is not a standard that moves me as a human being. My impulse when looking at countries is to say, “what's so great about being great?” I think a country's taxi drivers tell us more about it than the number of nuclear bombs it might possess. The number of Ph.D. holders, engineers, and writers driving taxicabs in a country, and where they came from, tells me a lot about the country we're in and the country from whence they came. The taxi driver in Iran who complains bitterly about the ayatollahs and wants to talk about pop music and freedom, tells me something about Iran. The engineer who fled Nigeria for the opportunity possible in America, even if it's driving a cab, tells me something about Nigeria and the U.S. Great power has little to do with it.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
America, Iran, South Asia, India, and Nigeria

5119. India's Slow Conversion to Market Economics

Author:
Joydeep Mukherji
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
According to the Bible, Saul of Tarsus converted almost instantly to Christianity on the road to Damascus. Subsequently, he neither ate nor drank for three days. The conversion of the world's second largest country, India, to a new way of life based on free markets and private enterprise will not be so rapid or disruptive. Nevertheless, India's conversion to market economics will, like Saul's, be thorough and deep. It will increasingly affect all of us in the global village, in which Indians constitute 17% of the inhabitants.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

5120. Privatization: From Policy Formulation to Implementation: The View from the Inside

Author:
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
It is both a privilege and a pleasure for me to deliver this year's Annual Fellows Lecture at the Center for Advanced Study of India. For many years in India, I used to receive an annual update on the activities of the Center when Dr. Francine Frankel visited Delhi and it is therefore particularly pleasant to visit the Center in person.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and New Delhi