Suchergebnisse

Jean Pisani-Ferry and André Sapir believe that the euro has proved attractive as a fair-weather currency for countries and investors well beyond its borders. But it still remains to be seen if its governance is strong enough for it to succeed as a stormy-weather currency. The authors already detect, howevever, that the crisis shows the euro-area governance system lacks some crucial properties: speed of reaction, policy discretion and centralised decision-making.

Senior Non-Resident Fellow Jürgen von Hagen offers his recommendations for the proper monetary policy to lead the eurozone out of the crisis. He argues that the tentative recovery in the euro area indicates that both monetary and fiscal policy can be normalised soon. However, because delaying fiscal consolidation would result in greater debt burdens whereas monetary policy can be quickly adjusted to respond to unforeseen developments, there is less risk involved if a fiscal exit comes first. In any case, the two strategies must be coordinated and the European Central Bank must be very clear on its interest rate policies. This paper was prepared as part of testimony for the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

In 2005, the President of the Bank of Italy blocked the cross-border acquisition of two Italian banks for prudential reasons and formal errors. Because it became later public that both deals were not blocked for prudential reasons, but to protect domestic banks from foreign investors. A survey of the EU Commission indicates that the misuse of supervisory powers and political interference is not only a barrier to cross-border consolidation in Italy, but in other EU countries as well. Systematic empirical evidence on the role of merger control as barrier to M&A is, however, still missing. The main problem is the lack of data on the scope for politicians and supervisors to block M&A during merger control. The main contribution of this paper is to collect this data and to construct indices on the political independence of the supervisory authorities and the transparency of merger control. The main source of information is a questionnaire that was sent to the supervisors in the 25 EU member countries between October 2006 and March 2007.

Die Runden Tische, die in der DDR 1989/90 ins Leben gerufen wurden, verstanden sich nicht als demokratische Institutionen, sondern als dringend benötigte Instrumente zur Bewältigung der Krise und für Demokratisierung. Die Verfasserin untersucht den Beitrag der Runden Tische zum Demokratisierungsprozess. Es geht um die Ziele, Verfahrensweisen und Erfolgschancen der 15 Organisationen sowie um die Zusammenarbeit mit den staatlichen Institutionen. (ICEÜbers)

Water politics and political change in China / David M. Lampton.- S. 122-125 Shifting openings and trap doors in the maze of China's hydropower policy processes / Anna Brettell. - S. 126-132 Anti-dam campaigns and transforming state-society relations: citizen action and policy change in China's hydraulic society / Teh-chang Lin . - S. 137-140 China's warriors are handicapped / Yawei Liu. - S. 137-140 Breaching the dam / Peter Ford. - S. 141-142 Author's response: China's water warriors - returning to the scene of battle / Andrew Mertha. - S. 143-150