Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Europe Publishing Institution The Cato Institute

31. Estonia and the European Debt Crisis

Author:
Juhan Parts
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Estonia has had a quick recovery from the recent recession and its economy is in better shape than before the crisis. It is now much leaner and significantly more capable of handling international shocks. After a sharp contraction, in which GDP contracted by over 14 percent in 2009, GDP growth rebounded quickly, growing at a rate of 3.1 percent in 2010 and 8.3 percent in 2011.
Political Geography:
Europe and Estonia

32. The Welfare State as an Underlying Cause of Spain's Debt Crisis

Author:
Pedro Schwartz
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The ongoing crisis that so dramatically hit Spain in 2008 was at least in part caused by the countercyclical monetary policy the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank applied in the first years of the new century. Their artificially low interest rates must in part be responsible for the excessive leveraging in banks, businesses, and households. Their unwarranted use of monetary policy to foster growth has recoiled on them with a vengeance. Now central bankers and their political masters find that they cannot perform as expected. A constant feature of financial crises in the past two centuries, as Reinhart and Rogoff (2010) have noted, is that, when banks collapse, companies fail, and families go insolvent they all turn to the central bank and the government to bail them out. The authorities usually find it difficult to answer those anguished calls even when they have the power to print money, so that devaluations and write-offs ensue.
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain

33. Curbing Campaign Cash: Henry Ford, Truman Newberry, and the Politics of Progressive Reform

Author:
John Samples
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
No one has yet written a detailed history of campaign finance regulation, even limited to the United States. In 1988, Robert E. Mutch published Campaigns, Congress, and Courts: The Making of Federal Campaign Finance Law. He then embarked on research seeking to fill out that story in the late 19th century. My own The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform combines public choice analysis with political theory in a way that historians might not recognize. Ray La Raja's excellent Small Change: Money, Political Parties, and Campaign Finance Reform Examines a larger historical tableau from a political science perspective. Paula Baker is apparently at work on a broader history of campaign finance and its regulation. This work began as a case study in that project and grew into a book. I look forward to the broader history, but I am happy to have this work.
Topic:
Reform
Political Geography:
Europe

34. The Gold Standard, the Euro, and the Origins of the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis

Author:
Harris Dellas
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The entry of Greece into the euro zone in 2001 was widely expected to mark a transformation in the country's economic destiny. During the decade of the 1980s, and for much of the 1990s, the economy had been saddled with double-digit inflation rates, double-digit fiscal deficits (as a percentage of GDP), large current-account imbalances, very low growth rates, and a series of exchange rate crises. Adoption of the euro—the value of which was underpinned by the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB)—was expected to produce a low-inflation environment, contributing to lower nominal interest rates and longer economic horizons, thereby encouraging private investment and economic growth. The elimination of nominal exchange-rate fluctuations among the former currencies of members of the euro zone was expected to reduce exchange rate uncertainty and risk premia, lowering the costs of servicing the public sector debt, facilitating fiscal adjustment, and freeing resources for other uses.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe

35. Why the Euro Failed and How It Will Survive

Author:
Pedro Schwartz
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The great hopes that surrounded the euro at its birth have failed to come true. It was intended to be a currency as sound as the deutschemark and also a symbol of European unity. It is now reeling under the blows of a prolonged financial crisis and creating discord among the members of the European Union. Clearly, the design of the new money was defective. What its flaws were has been generally misdiagnosed: I will suggest that even if euro- members had kept by the rules of the game the euro could not have worked as intended.
Political Geography:
Europe

36. The Euro at a Crossroads

Author:
Wolfgang Munchau
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
It was one of the author's predictions in 1998 that the euro zone would end up teaching us more about economics compared to what economics could teach us about the euro zone. While many of the author's predictions of that year did not hold, including the forecast that the euro would challenge the dollar as the world's foremost reserve currency, this particular prediction ultimately turned out to be correct. A monetary union is a hybrid between a fixed exchange rate system and a unitary state, one that is fully captured neither with closed-economy macro models nor classical international macro models of fixed exchange rates.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe

37. Lessons from the European Crisis

Author:
Jurgen Stark
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
It was one of the author's predictions in 1998 that the euro zone would end up teaching us more about economics compared to what economics could teach us about the euro zone. While many of the author's predictions of that year did not hold, including the forecast that the euro would challenge the dollar as the world's foremost reserve currency, this particular prediction ultimately turned out to be correct. A monetary union is a hybrid between a fixed exchange rate system and a unitary state, one that is fully captured neither with closed-economy macro models nor classical international macro models of fixed exchange rates.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Europe

38. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play

Author:
Jason Kuznicki
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
I often tell aspiring libertarians that they both can and should learn from people who are far removed from them ideologically. Indeed, if they fail to do so, then they are neglecting a vital part of their self-education. When asked whom I have in mind, I almost always mention James C. Scott. Two of Scott's earlier books, Seeing Like a State and The Art of Not Being Governed, are fascinating intellectual excursions for people of the libertarian bent, as well as for many others.
Political Geography:
America and Europe

39. The Eurozone Crisis and Global Monetary Reform: A Conversation

Author:
Robert B. Zoellick and Sebastian Mallaby
Publication Date:
06-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Sebastian Mallaby: We are here to talk to Bob Zoellick. I have been in Washington 16 years, Bob is the personification of the kind of silo busting polymathic energy which says, I am not just interested in international economics, I am not just interested in international relations, I am not just a U.S. government official, I am also going to do multilateral diplomacy. So Bob has been on all sides of those various divides. He has a voracious intellect, so it is always interesting to speak with him whether he is in office or out of office.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Washington

40. Alternative Political and Economic Futures for Europe

Author:
William A. Niskanen
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Defeat of a proposed constitution for the European Union by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 should have provided an opportunity to reflect on a broader range of alternative political and economic futures for Europe. But it did not. For the Lisbon Treaty, which became effective in December 2009, implemented most of the provisions of the proposed constitution that the voters rejected more than four years prior. It was important to reconsider the major current European political and economic institutions as well as alternative steps toward further European integration. For the major current institutions were created under different conditions, and the experience suggests that they may not best serve the peoples of Europe under current and expected future conditions.
Topic:
Disaster Relief
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Netherlands