This book examines public debt hoarding within the Euro Area, which is one of the most complicated challenges regarding modern fiscal policy-making. The author offers an up-to-date analysis of the fiscal situations of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. The book describes key mechanisms of debt transmission, discusses the potential establishment of fiscal and debt union in the EU, identifies numerous implications, and connects the fiscal positions of the examined countries with the structural flaws of the Euro Area and the monetary policy of the European Central Bank. Moreover, the work presents an estimation of structural budget balances, including a comparison with the estimates of major international institutions such as the IMF, OECD, and European Commission. A separate chapter is devoted to analysing the fiscal policy determinants, using time series since the late 19th century, and the issue of fiscal policy efficiency. Finally, the work provides an overview of debt resolution options. Overall, this book offers eight core chapters intended for the public, professional economists, and policymakers.

This volume is the first of its kind to discuss social welfare issues using case studies from a broad range of Southern European countries, both large and small, a decade after the financial crisis. It identifies similarities and differences in the ways in which Southern European countries engage with specific welfare issues and examines whether Southern European welfare is distinct from that of the rest of the continent. The book also engages with the impact of COVID-19 on the social welfare issues under investigation. The volume is divided into four sections, each examining in detail issues including employment, education, health, sexuality, globalization, social movements and migration. With its contributions from experts in the field, the volume is recommended for academics, researchers and students of sociology, social policy, economics, education, politics and social movements.

Large or small, old EU member or new, and even EU member state or not – political economies across Southern Europe have been increasingly but distinctively ‘Europeanised’. In political, public and scholarly debates on processes of Europeanisation, Southern Europe invariably features as the area of concern. These concerns have been all the more heightened when the current sovereign debt crisis disproportionately hit this ‘flaky fringe’. This volume systematically investigates the dynamics of Europeanisation in the ‘Southern Periphery’ by tracing the domestic constellations of ideas, interests and institutions over the course of the 2000s which came to a close with the crisis. Bringing together a multidisciplinary team of leading specialists, the volume focuses on the political economy of public policy reform in Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. In order to allow for cross-case comparisons, these original country studies follow a common template framed by what the Editors call the ‘Europeanisation as research programme’. The volume casts empirical light on the causes of the crisis in these cases as well as the past legacies conditioning their responses to the crisis. Its conclusions point to variegated patterns of Europeanisation in different policy areas across Southern Europe. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of European integration, European political economy, European public policy and comparative politics as well as specialists of Southern Europe. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Taxes are a constant part of life for every company and a constant element of economics, finance, and financial law. Any changes observed in the science and theory also apply to the importance and position of taxes in the practice of corporate finance, public finance, and economic growth. Beside this, a new meaning of taxes in the economies of countries in the world and the European Union is introduced. Taxes will always introduce risks and uncertainties in business, due to the high volatility and uncertainty of tax law. Moreover, being a category that affects the economic growth, they cause disturbances in stability and welfare of the state. Therefore, while considering the essence of taxes in a country, one should not consider this category in isolation from corporate finance and social welfare. Two things are certain in the world: death and taxes.

This book looks at the implications of financial liberalization for three southern European countries - Greece, Portugal and Spain. These countries have been carrying out their own financial liberalization and have also to respond to pressures for financial liberalization emanating from EC-wide measures. This book examines the relationship between domestic and international financial liberalization. In particular, it considers the implications for the real economy, for the stability and structure of the financial system and for macroeconomic policy in these countries.

This thoroughly updated second edition of Advanced Introduction to European Union Law provides an essential overview of the diverse fields of EU law and their relevant politics. In precise but accessible language, Jacques Ziller analyses the latest developments in EU law following Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war, focusing on the main fields of action for the EU: the internal market, area of freedom, security and justice, and external action.

A collection of papers from leading thinkers to celebrate the work of the late Wynne Godley, and his enormous contribution to the field of monetary economics. Chapters include in-depth discussions of the revolutionary economic modelling systems that Godley introduced, as well as his prescient concerns about the global financial crash.

Effective and transparent government budgeting is vital to any democracy. In South Africa, massive poverty, inequality and unemployment remain, despite the successful political transformation, citizens and Parliament have a particularly important role to play in shaping budget policy and overseeing its implementation. South Africa reached a crossroads in fiscal governance when it passed the Money Bills Amendment Act in 2009, a law which granted Parliament strong powers to amend the budget prepared by the executive. This publication explores the content of the new law as well as the challenges and opportunities arising from it. It also discusses the role of Parliament in ensuring pro-poor budgeting. Good fiscal governance is too important for the wellbeing of South Africans to not be a part of our public conversations.

Neoliberal economic theories are powerful because their domestic translators make them go local, hybridizing global scripts with local ideas. This does not mean that all local translations shape policy, however. External constraints and translators' access to cohesive policy institutions filter what kind of neoliberal hybrids become policy reality. By comparing the moderate neoliberalism that prevails in Spain with the more radical one that shapes policy thinking in Romania, Ruling Ideas explains why neoliberal hybrids take the forms that they do and how they survive crises. Cornel Ban contributes to the literature by showing that these different varieties of neoliberalism depend on what competing ideas are available locally, on the networks of actors who serve as the local advocates of neoliberalism, and on their vulnerability to external coercion. Ruling Ideas covers an extended historical period, starting with the Franco period in Spain and the Ceausescu period in Romania, discusses the economic integration of these countries into the EU, and continues through Europe's Great Recession and the European debt crisis. The broad historical coverage enables a careful analysis of how neoliberalism rules in times of stability and crisis and under different political systems.

The last twenty years have seen an increase in European integration and the emergence of the technological revolution. Although tighter integration coupled with technological innovation should facilitate cross-regional convergence, some European regions have managed to jump ahead while others have been left behind. This book examines the regional characteristics that favour growth and analyses the relevance of innovation, socio-economic and structural factors in shaping regional economic disparities. In this book, particular attention is devoted to the EU enlargement towards the East, to its consequences on Europe’s traditional North-South divide, and to the increasing regional disparities in new member states after the transition. It demonstrates the growing importance of innovation and human capital in explaining the increase in income and employment disparities in old EU members, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis. It also shows that for newcomers, regional disparities are essentially linked to socio-economic factors as capital regions approach Western standards, while others - mainly old industrial regions and peripheral ones - lag behind. This book integrates theoretical discussion with empirical evidence and will appeal to regional scientists interested in regional inequalities, and to policy makers concerned with devising effective strategies to tackle regional disparities in Europe.