This diploma thesis is concerned with the Robert Mundell's theory of optimum currency area (OCA) and its relation to European monetary union (EMU) or (if you like) Eurozone. The OCA theory belongs to one of the most comprehensive approach to evaluate whether adoption of a common currency by a certain block of countries is beneficial of not. Thus this paper tries to apply OCA theory to the current Eurozone member countries and is focused especially on three main attributes -- the symmetry of economic shocks, the labor market flexibility and the economic integration of international trade between the member states of the euro area. Results of this analysis are then applied to the new member states and the immediate candidate EU member states -- especially to the Czech Republic. The work assesses the feasibility of the OCA theory for classification the candidate countries and their readiness for entering the Eurozone and finally offers alternative criteria by which the readiness for adoption of the Euro should be measured. The text is based on available theoretical and empirical sources supplemented by the author's analyses.

The echoes of Eurozone debt crisis brought into question the sovereign risk of advanced economies. Understanding factors that influence this risk is key to avoid similar crisis of public debt financing in the future. The main aim of this thesis is to identify which factors influence sovereign entity financing and how the problems of public debt financing arise. This is reached through analysis of debt crisis development and its causes in the GIPS economies.

The subject of this thesis is an analysis of causes and impacts of credit risk transfer through credit derivatives on the world economy. It deals with the theoretical view of credit derivatives and their definition. A significant part of the work is devoted to a description of the current credit derivatives market and to motives for trading them. In the continuous process of derivative products innovation selected types are described. Those types that were spread during last two decades. In another part are introduced credit derivatives market participants and special attention is given to the banking sector. Important part is the description of an economic situation in countries in crisis. The aim of this work is to give a complete description of all sectors that were influenced by credit derivatives market.

When debt crisis fully started in the Eurozone, the attention was concentrated not only on states of southern Europe in debt, but also on Germany. If we consider that Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and its policy is tightly connected with EU, the decisions of the German government are important in the process of European integration. The thesis talks about actual role of Germany in today's crisis of the Eurozone. Because of the size of the problem the thesis is concentrated on last three years and it is focused on key events, whit caused the biggest discussion. The goal of the research is to find out which role Germany plays within EU and if it becomes or has already become a regional hegemony. In the analysis was partly used the role theory and also neomramscianism, that works with the hegemony concept. Results of the research shows that Germany becomes more self confident player. Player which today leaves the strategy of restraint and takes the role of a regional leader. The question of hegemony stays open, even though Germany refuses to identify itself with this role.

This diploma thesis focuses on changes in the external balance of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain in the period of financial and economic crisis after 2008. The theoretical framework is based on an exact definition of external balance, ultimately as neither surplus nor deficit of a relevant balance in terms of balance of payments. Potential impacts of monetary and fiscal policies on the external balance are described there as well, using the IS-LM-BP model. The second part of the thesis, which employs this theory, is mainly based on an analysis of relevant balances of payments of the aforementioned countries, focusing on their external balance in the period before as well as during the economic crisis. The aim of the analysis is to identify the main causes of external imbalance in the Southern European countries and to find out whether these played a key role as a trigger and accelerator in their recession after 2008. Specific changes during the crisis identified in balances of payments will also be depicted in the IS-LM-BP model. Leading to the conclusion, the outcomes of a correlation analysis are used as well, looking into causal relationships between specific balance of payments variables on the one hand, and macroeconomic variables on the other. A minor part also deals with the role played in this context by the TARGET2 payment system and answers the question to which extent this system took part in the elimination of the external imbalance of the Southern European countries during the crisis.

This dissertation investigates how legal and policy professionals have legally constructed the economic policy and governance of the EU since the beginning of the Eurozone crisis onwards. It follows the legal and policy professionals who received the mandate to enable and consolidate solutions, as well as defend these solutions in court. By tracing the practices and trajectories of these agents, I show how, during an unfolding crisis, economic policy and governance becomes legally constructed and changes the terms of legitimation for EU economic governance. The stakes involved for the professionals involved also change. In this way, the dissertation speaks to the question of how intrusive political power has been legitimated during the Eurozone crisis and what this means for the legitimacy of European governance. Theoretically, this thesis develops a Bourdieusian field approach that is adapted to the transnational and diachronic context of the Eurozone crisis, as it unfolded from the end of 2009 until the adjudication of key high-profile court cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Drawing on boundary work, bricolage, and network interactions to analyse the practices of legal and policy professionals, the process of enabling and consolidating solutions is elaborated. Attention is given to how this process engenders stakes for the professionals in this emerging euro-crisis law field, and what this means for emerging legal terms of legitimation for economic governance.Methodologically, field-based and social network analysis are combined in two distinct ways. First, by employing a temporally-focussed network analysis, which caters for change by measuring the shifting centrality of legal and policy professionals over time, I show which professionals have had a high-level of involvement in dealing with crisis issues. This then permits the construction of a referral network based on how these professionals refer to their peers. The involvement of the professionals is further articulated as their accumulated symbolic capital: i.e. their involvement together with being perceived to know well. From this, I infer a species of symbolic capital unique to being part of the Eurozone crisis policy response: juridical capital.This dissertation adds to scholarship on the Eurozone crisis by creating a theoretical framework based on Bourdieusian fields, which utilises a network analytical approach to show how the practices and interactions of legal and policy professionals reconfigure the transnational contexts that are implicated in the crisis policy response. Moreover, it is shown how these professionals’ practices enable solutions that are contested before the Court of Justice of the European Union, putting the Court in a position where it has to bring the definitional power of the law to bear on the actions of EU institutions and the Eurogroup. The Court must decide how responsibility should be attributed. The dissertation shows how legal and policy professionals developed practices, using jurisdictional and constitutionalising logics, and deployed at different times during the crisis, enabled and consolidated processes of legal integration and differentiation. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The inception of the economic and monetary union (EMU) in January 1999 created new conditions for government debt. By eliminating currency exchange rate risk between the member states, the hope was to achieve a more sustainable and integrated government debt market in the euro area. Even though we witnessed relative stability for several years, the financial turmoil starting in 2008 and more so the European government debt crisis starting in late 2009 led to higher and more volatile yield differentials between the member states. This thesis explores the European government bond market to find the fundamental determinants of yield spreads and to see if the impact of these determinants changed since the start of the debt crisis. Financial theory suggests that there are three main fundamental drivers of government bond yields and as such lay the framework for finding the explanatory variables. By using a fixed-effect panel regression model the empirical findings of this study show that credit risk, liquidity risk, risk aversion all play a significant role in explaining yield spreads in the euro area. Furthermore, we find evidence of increasing marginal effects of all explanatory variables except for global risk aversion since the start of the crisis. We also consider the effect of the statement by the ECB President in 2012 where the ECB committed to quantitative easing as an important reason for the decrease in yields and illustrate this by expanding our model. The contribution of this study is centered around the use of longer timeseries data that provides the significant advantage of fully incorporating the European debt crisis which is something that previous studies were lacking. / Införandet av den ekonomiska och monetära unionen (EMU) i januari 1999 skapade nya villkor för statsskuldmarknaden. Genom att eliminera valutakursrisk mellan medlemsstaterna var förhoppningen att skapa en mer hållbar och integrerad statsskuldmarknad i euroområdet. Trots flera år av relativ stabilitet ledde finanskrisen 2008 och eurokrisen i slutet av 2009 till högre och mer volatila ränteskillnader mellan medlemsstaterna. Denna uppsats undersöker den europeiska obligationsmarknaden för att hitta de grundläggande determinanterna för räntespreads och för att se om effekterna av dessa determinanter har förändrats sedan skuldkrisens början. Genom att använda en “fixed-effects” regressionsmodell visar de empiriska resultaten att kreditrisk, likviditetsrisk, riskaversion spelar en viktig roll för att förklara räntespreads i euroområdet. Vidare finner vi bevis på ökande marginaleffekter för alla determinanter med undantag för global riskaversion sedan krisens början. Vi undersöker också effekten av ECB-Presidentens uttalande 2012 som indikerade en hängivenhet till kvantitativ lättnad som en viktig orsak till fallet i räntespread och illustrerar detta genom att utöka vår modell. Bidraget från denna studie är centrerad kring användandet av längre tidsseriedata som ger den stora fördelen att inkorporera den europeiska skuldkrisen vilket är något som tidigare studier ofta saknat.

Ziel des Artikels ist, die Entwicklung der Eurokrise im Spannungsfeld von Institutionen und Handeln zu erklären. Dazu rekonstruieren wir im ersten Schritt die Krise in zwei Perspektiven, zum einen als Verkettung ökonomischer und politischer Funktionszusammenhänge, zum anderen als Arena von Verteilungskonflikten. Darauf aufbauend analysieren wir den Verlauf der Eurokrise, den wir in fünf Phasen unterteilen. Im Zentrum stehen dabei folgende Fragen: 1. Welche Akteure werden jeweils in die Problemkonstellation „Eurokrise“ hineingezogen? 2. Welche Relevanz haben die unterschiedlichen Akteure für das Funktionieren der gemeinsamen Währung und wie setzen sie diese Relevanz in den Verteilungskonflikten, die sich aus der Eurokrise ergeben, ein? Es geht also um die Entwicklung der Akteurskonstellation im Zuge der Eurokrise und um die Funktionsrelevanz dieser Akteure als Handlungsressource in den Konflikten um die Verteilung der Kosten der Krise. Im dritten Schritt der Untersuchung fassen wir unsere empirische Rekonstruktion der Eurokrise zusammen. Unser Fazit ist, dass die Eurokrise die defizitäre Institutionalisierung der gemeinsamen Währung manifest macht. Weiter gehende Regulierung, also zusätzliche Institutionenbildung steht aber vor dem schwierig auflösbaren Widerspruch zwischen funktionalen Erfordernissen und Interessen, bzw. zwischen Erwartungsstabilisierung und Interessenverfolgung.

The thesis analyses co-movement of 10Y sovereign bond yields of 11 EU mem- bers (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark) divided into the three groups (the Core of the Eurozone, the Periphery of the Eurozone, the states outside the Eurozone). In the center of attention are changes of co-movement in the crisis period, especially near the two significant dates - the fall of Lehman Brothers (15.9.2008) and the day, when increase of Greek public deficit was announced (20.10.2009). Main contribution of the thesis is usage of alternative methodol- ogy - wavelet transformation. It allows to research how co-movement changes across scales (frequencies) and through time. Wavelet coherence is used as well as wavelet bivariate and multiple correlation. The thesis brings three main findings: (1) co-movement significantly decreased in the crisis period, but the results differ in the groups, (2) co-movement significantly differs across scales, but its heterogeneity decreased in the crisis period, (3) near to the examined dates sharp and significant decrease of wavelet correlation was observable across lower scales in some states. JEL Classification C32, C49, C58, H63 Keywords Co-movement, Wavelet Transformation, Sovereign Debt Crisis, Sovereign Bond Yields,...

DSGE models are as structural models capable of estimating what would have happened if some part of economy or shocks to it had been different. We consider three such differences in the recent Czech history: no financial shocks during the crisis in 2008-2009; eurozone membership during the crisis in 2008-2009; and no foreign exchange interventions of the Czech National Bank in November 2013. For this purpose, we employ a small open economy DSGE model with financial frictions and estimate it with Bayesian inference. Our results show that impact of financial shocks on GDP growth was negligible. Further, eurozone membership would have made crisis more severe; GDP growth in 2009Q1 would have been -6% instead of -3% and economy would have been in deflation for the five consecutive periods. Difference is explained by strong depreciation of exchange rate during crisis that would not have occurred with the fixed exchange rate. Lastly, the Czech National Banks's foreign exchange interventions increased GDP growth by as much as 0.8 percentage point and saved economy from deflation in all following quarters. They worked through depreciation of exchange rate and consequent improvement in trade balance and increase in price of imported goods. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)