In 2002, the euro as a common currency did replace the national currencies in the EU member-states that did choose to take part in the EMU. It was then viewed as one of the greatest accomplishments ever to be made by the EU. However, during the latest years, the economic situation has deteriorated in several EMU member-states. This affected the whole euro-area and the current situation is referred upon as the euro-crisis. In 2011, at the time of the euro-crisis, the Heads of State or Government of the euro-area did reaffirm their full commitment to strengthen EMU. This essay seeks to answer why the EMU is maintained despite severe economical difficulties. The purpose of this essay is to reveal that path dependence is seen in the EU decision-making about the EMU. To fulfill the purpose the method used is process-tracing. To study the EU decision-making this essay applies the theoretical framework provided by Allison and Zelikow. This theoretical framework studies decision-making from three different vantage points. The findings of this essay reveal that in each vantage point an institution can be found that shape behavior and results in path dependence.

This master’s thesis offers a descriptive investigation of how public Euroscepticism has changed during the economic crisis. By regarding Eurosceptic opinions as positions on a scale as well as differentiating between opposition towards policy (concrete decisions and measures) and polity (the EU as a political system), the results show that overall, European citizens have not only become negative towards how the EU handled the crisis in terms of policy output. Policy opposition also tends to spill over into the polity area, entailing increasing preferences for reducing EU competences and for leaving the union all together. The policy-polity distinction is a perspective on Euroscepticism as opposition, that has largely been set aside in previous research. Furthermore, the paper describes how support for the EU polity and its policies has changed in different member states through a cross country analysis. The results show that there is great and unexpected variation between countries that would be assumed to display a similar development in the light of previous research. In addition, there are similarities between countries that were expected to develop differently. This indicates a limited understanding in this research field of how national factors influence public attitudes towards the European Union. A topic that needs to be investigated further.

Switzerland and the European Union share common values and have peaceful and well functioning economic and political agreements. Nevertheless, the Swiss banking secrecy is definitely a thorn in the EU's flesh, especially because of tax fraud or money laundering. Since the existence of the Swiss banking secrecy it has been associated with holocaust money, tax evasion, potentates' money etc. and also has been confronted with espionage attacks by foreign authorities and various other disputes. Recent global events have shed light on the Swiss banking secrecy's wider international agenda. A newly debate about the Swiss banking secrecy started with the global economic crisis and the Euro crisis. Finally, not a day goes by where there is no report or article in the media regarding the banking secrecy, the Swiss banks and its issues concerning the European Union or the United States. This writing focuses on the relationship between Switzerland and the European Union which is affected by Swiss banking secrecy: By explaining the history and importance of the Switzerland as a financial centre, its banking secrecy and the differences to other systems, possible issues and conflicts can be outlined. This thesis covers existing issues with EU member states. What regulations and restrictions were enforced by the...

The current euro crisis is shaped by urgency and actuality. Since it affects a lot of people and different countries, it is also denoted by transboundary effects. Considering these circumstances, the call for quick crisis solution occurs. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate the leadership issue during the euro crisis. Based on theoretical principles of crisis leadership, we examine the role and behavior of Germany in the euro crisis. Due to the fact that Germany is currently in a significant position, we narrow down the crisis leadership aspect to this specific view. Providing an overall and thorough picture, we investigate Germany’s leadership in the euro crisis from different perspectives. In order to achieve this purpose, we determine this issue from a political, economical and societal perception, which seem to be the most influencing factors in the case of the euro crisis. By assembling the crucial findings of these separate categories, we gain a broader perspective and hence a generalized evaluation and understanding of the German leadership style.

This appendix contains supplementary material to the paper "A sectoral net lending perspective on Europe". It includes information on the data provenance and processing, the statistical and algebraic framework applied in the study as well as supplementary figures for all countries in the sample. Moreover, it provides robustness checks for the cyclicality analysis of sectoral net lending flows. / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

Yes / The global economy has experienced considerable turbulence since 2007. The financial crisis has been viewed as the trigger for a prolonged period of economic decline. This decline remains an issue for all member states of the European Union, the eurozone and beyond. We argue genesis of this crisis lies in the integration negotiations of 1991, ratified in 1992. These produced a flawed economic model within the eurozone. Given the seeds of decay were planted at origin; we argue the solution can be found through a reconstructed eurozone via looser integration, where countries less equipped to deal with the realities of closer integration will be economically independent.

The paper investigates net lending and net borrowing flows of the institutional sectors in Europe since the introduction of the Euro in 1999. Applying a simple statistical apparatus, this paper is novel in describing the sectoral behavior leading up to and during the crisis. We find that (1) many countries of the Northern group were characterized by low public deficits or even budget surpluses, current account surpluses and a private sector in a net lending position. In countries of the Southern periphery, in the Anglo-Saxon countries as well as in many Eastern European Economies private sector net borrowing coincided with a budget deficit and substantial current account deficits. (2) With the onset of the crisis private net lending soared in all countries while all governments incurred deficits, consistent with the notion of a balance sheet recession. (3) Private net lending is pro-cyclical, reinforcing the economic downturn, while public net lending is countercyclical in all countries. (4) Household net lending tends to lead the business cycle, while corporate net lending tends to lag it especially in the Northern group. (5) Prominent concepts asserting causal relationships in sectoral net lending, such as Ricardian equivalence and the twin deficit hypothesis are not supported by the data. (authors' abstract) / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

Die Dissertation untersucht verschiedene Einflussfaktoren auf die Finanzierungskosten von Staaten. Dabei werden die Eurokrise, Rohstoffpreise und Klimawandel als drei wesentliche Einflussfaktoren herangezogen und deren empirische Wichtigkeit statistisch untersucht. Ein weiterer Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der Integration von Finanzmärkten auf die Ausbreitung von Konjunkturzyklen.:Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation: The Curious Case and Multiple Facets of Sovereign Debt . . . . 1 1.2 Outline and Contribution of this Thesis to the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A.1 Appendix to Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 References to Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Chapter 2: Avoiding the Fall into the Loop: Isolating the Transmission of Bank-to-Sovereign Distress in the Euro Area 19 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.2 Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.3 Data Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.3.1 Deriving Country-Specific Bank Distress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.3.2 Instrumenting Bank Distress using Exposure-Weighted Stock Market Returns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 2.3.3 Set of Dependent and Explanatory Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.3.3.1 Dependent Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.3.3.2 Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.4 Empirical Specification and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.5 Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.5.1 Comparison of IV and OLS during Eurozone Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.5.2 Alternative Versions of the Dependent Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.5.3 Alternative Versions for Bank Distress Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.5.4 Alternative Versions for Instrumental Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.5.5 Strengthening the Exclusion Restriction of the Instrument . . . . . . . 46 2.5.6 Weekly Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.5.7 Alternative Control Variables and Time Fixed Effects . . . . . . . . . 49 2.5.8 Wild Cluster Bootstrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 A.2 Appendix to Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 A.2.1 Drivers of Bank-to-Sovereign Distress Transmissions . . . . . . . . . . 54 A.2.1.1 Macroeconomic Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A.2.1.2 Government Bond Issuances, Redemptions and Holdings . . 62 A.2.1.3 Banking Sector Structure and Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 A.2.1.4 Political Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 A.2.2 Additional Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 References to Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Chapter 3: What drives the Commodity-Sovereign Risk Dependence in Emerging Market Economies? 87 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.2 Data, Variables and Summary Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.2.1 Dependent Variable: Sovereign Default Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.2.2 Deriving Country-specific Commodity Performance . . . . . . . . . . . 94 3.2.3 Set of Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 3.3 Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.1 Baseline Specification and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 3.3.2 Alternative Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 3.4 Drivers of the Commodity-Sovereign Risk Dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.4.1 Commodity-related Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 3.4.2 Macroeconomic and International Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 3.4.3 Policy Measures against Commodity Dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 3.5 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 3.5.1 Dropping Countries with Liquidity Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 3.5.2 Alternative Specifications for EMBI and Commodity Performance . . 129 3.5.3 Alternative Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 3.5.4 Alternative Fixed Effects, Frequency, Clustering and Time Series Results131 3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A.3 Appendix to Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 References to Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Chapter 4: Financial Linkages and Sectoral Business Cycle Synchronization: Evidence from Europe 145 4.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 4.2 Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 4.2.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 4.2.2 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 4.3 Estimation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 4.3.1 Results for Overall Output Fluctuations (GDP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 4.3.2 Results for Industrial Output Fluctuations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 A.4 Appendix to Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 References to Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Chapter 5: Physical Climate Change Risks and the Sovereign Creditworthiness of Emerging Economies 182 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 5.2 Physical Climate Change Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 5.2.1 Physical Climate Change Risk in Contrast to Transition Risk . . . . . 187 5.2.2 Physical Climate Change and Sovereign Creditworthiness . . . . . . . 189 5.3 Data and Descriptive Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 5.3.1 Sovereign Creditworthiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 5.3.2 Temperature Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 5.4 Empirical Specification and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 5.5 Channels of Temperature-Sovereign Risk Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 5.5.1 General Warmness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 5.5.2 Seasonality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 5.5.3 Month and Season Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 5.5.4 Economic Sector Specialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 5.5.5 Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 5.5.6 Combining relevant Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 5.6 Robustness Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 5.6.1 Changing the Fixed Effects Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 5.6.2 Changing the Dependent Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 5.6.3 Changing the Lag Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 5.6.4 Changing the Historical Temperature Average Period . . . . . . . . . . 222 5.6.5 Dropping Countries with lower Data Coverage and larger Landmass . 226 5.6.6 Other Temperature Anomaly Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 5.6.7 Analyzing Debt Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 5.6.8 Testing for Transition Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 5.6.9 Changing Economic Sector Specialization Measures . . . . . . . . . . . 231 5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 A.5 Appendix to Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 References to Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Abstract Title: A union, a collaboration and a currency crisis- a quantitative study of the media coverage of the euro crisis within the European Union in Spanish and Swedish newspapers. The purpose of this study was to see whether Sweden and Spain ́s differences in media climates and relations to the euro crisis would affect how the story was portrayed from a narrative perspective. Did the coverage differ between the two countries and who got to comment on the situation in the media were two of the questions I strived to answer. I also wanted to see how the coverage reflected on the situation that the euro crisis has created. In this study I used a number of theories that I based my research on. The main theories I focused on was about different media systems and Sweden and Spain ́s relation to the euro crisis. Other theories that this study rests on are narrative theory and media logic. The method I used was a quantitative text analysis from a narrative perspective. I formed variables that I tested against all of the articles. To limit the research to a manageable level I chose to analyze the articles of one newspaper from each country. The two newspapers that I analyzed were Dagens Nyheter from Sweden and El País from Spain. The results showed that the two countries, despite what the theories might have implied, portrayed the story in similar ways. The differences between the countries media climates and their relations to the euro crisis where not apparent in the newspapers storytelling. In almost all of the articles in both countries people in powerful positions got to make their voices heard whilst the citizens affected by the crisis rarely got the same opportunity. Spain reported more on the situation that followed the crisis and Sweden wrote more often about a solution to the problem.

This paper summarizes the main Optimum Currency Area Theories (AMO), in order to use this branch of regional integration, to verify the configuration, in a cluster scenario, the euro area member countries during the period 2002-2013, from the perspective of macroeconomic imbalances factors, evidenced by the euro crisis, recent. Therefore, making use of statistical methods of multivariate analysis, and, factor analysis and cluster analysis were allowed to result in that during the period before the outbreak of the euro crisis had agreater concentration of countries in the first group, composed of countries more mature and more competitive economy. However, during the most turbulent crisis years, there is a greater amount of the groups formed by making the first less concentrated and dispersed in the composition of the other group. Only in the last two years of observation, 2012 and 2013, we find again a concentration of member countries in a group, then it is observed that in the years most critical crisis, show up macroeconomic disparities in the euro zone countries. Thus, the research contributes in order to verify, by means of multivariate analysis every year, over a period of time, and contrast with the reality that reaches the monetary union in Europe, to confirm that the disparities that existed before the outbreak of the crisis, and continue to exist between the members of the currency area. Confirming that the convergence criteria has not stopped economic disparities were reduced. / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente trabalho faz um resumo das principais Teorias de Área Monetária Ótima (AMO), de modo a utilizar este ramo de integração regional, para verificar a configuração, em um panorama de agrupamento, dos países-membros da área do euro, durante o período de 2002 a 2013, pela ótica de fatores de desequilíbrios macroeconômicos, evidenciado pela crise do euro, recente. Logo, fazendo uso de metodologias estatísticas de análise multivariada, mais precisamente, análise fatorial e análise de agrupamento, permitiu-se resultar em que durante o período anterior à eclosão da crise do euro havia uma maior concentração de países no primeiro grupo, composto por países de economia mais madura e mais competitiva. Entretanto, durante os anos mais turbulentos de crise, observa-se uma maior quantidade de grupos formados, tornando o primeiro grupo menos concentrado e disperso na composição dos demais. Apenas nos dois últimos anos observados, 2012 e 2013, verifica-se novamente uma concentração de países-membros em um grupo, logo se observa que nos anos mais críticos de crise, evidenciam-se as disparidades macroeconômicas dos países da zona do euro. Assim, a pesquisa contribui no sentido de verificar, por meio de análise ultivariada ano a ano, ao longo de um período de tempo, e contrastar com a realidade que atinge a união monetária na Europa, ao confirmar que as disparidades, que já existiam antes da eclosão da crise, e continuam a existir entre os integrantes da área monetária. Confirmando que os critérios de convergência não impediu que as disparidades econômicas fossem diminuídas.