Sovereign bond pricing in the euro area: When legal clauses matter

a column by Marcos Chamon, Julian Schumacher and Christoph Trebesch for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Do investors care about the legal characteristics of sovereign debt?

Focusing on the euro area, this column compares sovereign bonds issued under domestic law to those issued under a foreign jurisdiction, which are harder to restructure in a debt crisis since they are out of reach of the borrowing country’s legislature.

This legal protection means that foreign law bonds trade at a premium (with lower yields), but only in situations of severe distress such as Greece or Portugal in 2011/2012. In the midst of a crisis, governments can borrow more cheaply by issuing in foreign law.

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Migrant protest in times of crisis: politics, ethics and the sacred from below

an article by Özgün E. Topak (York University, Toronto, Canada) published in Citizenship Studies Volume 21 Issue 1 (January 2017)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the 300 Migrant Hunger Strikers event in Greece to explore the material conditions of possibility for migrant politics in times of crisis. It identifies three elements that played determinant roles in the articulation of the event: the politics of equality enacted by migrants, the ethics of hospitality and witnessing enacted by the Greek activists and host populations and the sacredness of the event.

Critically engaging with the theories of Rancière, Derrida, Agamben and Durkheim, this paper demonstrates how these elements encountered and how their encounter helped migrants to achieve rights, albeit limited and temporary.

Moving beyond the particularity of the event, this paper also highlights the event’s importance for migrant politics in times of austerity, and increased surveillance and racism against migrants. Despite its limited and temporary success, the event demonstrates how a politics of equality, ethical openness and respect for human life can form the basis of true cosmopolitan universality.

The event also demonstrates how cosmopolitan universality is constructed from below by the migrants, who despite their undocumented status, engaged in an act of citizenship to demand equality.

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The impact of the austerity measures to confront the economic crisis on the EU objectives and EU values

an article by Despina Anagnostopoulou (University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece) published in International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy Volume 3, Number 2 (2016)

Abstract

According to the EU Treaties, the EU economic policy coordination should serve the objectives of the EU, among which is the promotion of the EU values.

The paper demonstrates that:

• the EU values and objectives as well as the Charter of Fundamental Rights are binding on the EU institutions, even when they are acting outside the EU legal order (e.g., when drafting the MoUs);
• democratic principles are lacking in the EMU patchwork, especially in the case of member states under adjustment programmes;
• the national constitutional courts have recently ruled that equality and dignity were infringed by the laws implementing the MoUs, and so did the European Committee of Social Rights as far as social rights are concerned.

However, the European Court of Human Rights rules that the right to property is not infringed, while the EU Court of Justice denies competence to rule on the MoUs. Such approaches undermine the European citizenship project, and thus European integration.

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Career Decision-Making Characteristics of Primary Education Students in Greece

an article by Despina Sidiropoulou Dimakakou, Kostas Mylonas, Katerina Argyropoulou and Nikos Drosos (Department of Psychology, National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, Greece) published in International Education Studies Volume 6 Number 5 (2013)

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating career decision-making process of 6th grade students with the use of the Childhood Career Decision-Making Questionnaire (CCDMQ). CCDMQ offers scores for the following three decision-making dimensions:

1. Concerns/ fears regarding career future,
2. Investment on decision-making process, and
3. Knowledge of the World of Work.

The study reports the psychometric properties and the results of an exploratory factor analysis of the CCDMQ in a sample of 531 6th grade students in the region of Attica, Greece. The implications for future research and for career guidance are discussed.

Full text (PDF 11pp)

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Tough Love: The True Nature of the Eurozone Crisis

an article by Holger Schmieding (chief economist of Berenberg Bank) based on an address delivered to NABE's Annual Washington Economic Policy Conference, March 26, 2012 published in Business Economics Volume 47 Issue 3 (July 2012)

Abstract

There are a number of misconceptions about the ongoing Eurozone crisis.

One is that it is a debt crisis: in fact many countries that are considered to be reasonably sound have bigger long-term fiscal deficit problems than even the weakest Eurozone countries.

The crisis partly reflects the pain of front-loaded fiscal repair. But even more so, the crisis has turned into a step-by-step attempt to forge a stronger and more coherent Europe.

The reluctance of the European Central Bank to defuse the tensions which this process creates makes the region vulnerable to bouts of market turmoil. This paper outlines the course of the crisis, the policy responses to date, and the actions that are necessary to resolve it.

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Needs as the determinant of absolute poverty: …

estimating the cost of nutrition, clothing and footwear, and transportation in Greece

 an article by George Labrinidis, Thanasis Maniatis, Aris Oikonomou and Marianna Papadopoulou (affiliation(s) not provided) published in International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy Volume 6 Number 2/1 (2012)

This paper aims at showing that the approach of defining and measuring absolute poverty on the basis of “basic and social needs’ is feasible.

The categories of nutrition, clothing and footwear, and transportation are examined under this light, a basket of use values is formed and subsequently it is priced to provide three corresponding sub-indexes for those constituents of the threshold of absolute poverty for Greece in 2011.

Hazel’s comment:
I have said before, and will no doubt go to my grave still saying, that defining poverty in relative terms is simply wrong. I'm no economist nor am I a statistician (I left the latter behind when I finished my A-levels) but it must be obvious that if you define poverty in relation to average or rich then you will always have poverty. Rich are the people at the top of the tree, average are those around the middle, poor are at the base. People may climb up, people may slide down but the tree will still have people at the top, people at the bottom and at all points in between.
Sorry if that seems too simplistic but I have a very visual style!

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