We analyze how the impact of a change in the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio on economic growth depends on the level of debt, the stress level on the financial market and the membership in a monetary union. A dynamic growth model is put forward demonstrating that debt affects macroeconomic activity in a non-linear manner due to amplifications from the financial sector. Employing dynamic country-specific and dynamic panel threshold regression methods, we study the non-linear relation between the growth rate and the debt-to-GDP ratio using quarterly data for sixteen industrialized countries for the period 1981Q1-2013Q2. We find that the debt-to-GDP ratio has impaired economic growth primarily during times of high financial stress and only for countries of the European Monetary Union and not for the stand-alone countries in our sample. A high debt-to-GDP ratio by itself does not seem to necessarily negatively affect growth if financial markets are calm. (authors' abstract)

La tesi intende fornire un’analisi critica dello sviluppo dell’Unione Economica e Monetaria (UEM) alla luce della crisi del debito sovrano. A partire dal 2009 sono state progressivamente attuate diverse riforme che hanno limitato l’autonomia degli Stati Membri nell’esercizio delle loro prerogative sovrane ed hanno fornito alle istituzione europee nuovi poteri nell’ambito di diverse politiche. La ricerca investiga i trasferimenti di sovranità in corso dal livello nazionale a quello europeo focalizzandosi sulle trasformazioni sia dell’Unione Economica che di quella Monetaria. Nel primo capitolo la tesi analizza i carattere originali dell’UEM dalla sua creazione fino alla ratifica del trattato di Lisbona. Il secondo capitolo considera la creazione dei meccanismi di stabilizzazione introdotti per salvare i paesi a rischio default e garantire la stabilità finanziaria della zona euro nel suo complesso. Il terzo capitolo studia gli interventi della Banca Centrale Europea durante la crisi, analizzando in che modo la necessità di proteggere la moneta unica abbia sviluppato il ruolo della BCE ed esteso il suo mandato. Il quarto capitolo studia la riforma della governance economica tramite il rafforzamento della disciplina fiscale degli Stati Membri. Il quinto capitolo analizza la riforma della governance bancaria e la creazione dell’Unione Bancaria, che è stata finalmente introdotta per interrompere il circolo vizioso tra crisi del debito e crisi bancaria. Nello sviluppo della tesi le diverse riforme verranno analizzate dal punto di visto della loro legalità, efficacia e legittimità democratica. / The thesis aims to provide a critical analysis of the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the light of the sovereign debt crisis. Since 2009 a number of measures have been progressively implemented, which have limited the autonomy of Member States in exercising their sovereign prerogatives and have granted EU institutions new powers in key policy areas. The research will investigate the ongoing transfers of sovereignty from national to European level focusing on the transformation of both the Economic and the Monetary Union. In the first chapter, it will consider the original features of the EMU, from its introduction at the intergovernmental conference of Maastricht until the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The second chapter will focus on the creation of rescue and stabilization mechanisms put in place to save Member States from imminent default and to ensure the financial stability of the Eurozone as a whole. The third chapter will study the interventions of the European Central Bank during the crisis considering how the necessity to protect the single currency has developed its role and extended its mandate. The fourth chapter will focus on the reform of the economic governance through the fiscal discipline of Member States. The fifth chapter will take into consideration the reform of the banking governance and the establishment of the European Banking Union, which was finally introduced to stop the vicious cycle between the debt and banking crisis. By developing the thesis, the analysis will consider each reform from the point of view of its legality, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

In this thesis, we aim to find the effect of economic crisis announcements arising from the US subprime mortgage crisis and European sovereign debt crisis on the market volatility in theBRIC countries. We implement a GARCH model in order to compare the effect of individual news announcements and find that the US crisis had a bigger impact on BRIC market volatility than the European crisis. Of particular note, we find the US bailout had a higher impact than the failure of Lehman Brothers or any European crisis dates that were considered. We then examine the volatility transmission mechanism by implementing a VAR model to create a spillover index. Following, we apply a rolling window approach, creating spillover plots which show that both return and volatility spillovers are affected by crisis announcements. The importance of our results are related to investor decision making, particularly the relationship between market return and risk in developing country markets. Far to our knowledge, no recent literature has compared the two crises in the way we have nor with the datasets we have used.

The first part of this dissertation examines the presence of the financial contagion across European stock markets with respect to the Greece sovereign debt crisis by estimating the time-varying conditional correlations of stock returns between Greece and other European countries over 2001 to 2012. We find that the correlations vary over time and reach the peaks in the late 2008 during theU.S.subprime crisis, and in the beginning of 2010 of the height of European debt crisis. Further, the correlations between stock index returns of Greece and Spain, France, Ireland, Netherlands are significantly increased by Greek sovereign credit rating downgrade announcements. The second part of this dissertation examines the correlations of gold, dollar and U.S. stock returns over 2001 to 2012 using ADCC-GARCH model. The conditional correlations of gold-dollar returns are negative during all sub-sample periods and significantly increase in magnitude during both subprime crisis and sovereign debt crisis. The conditional correlations of gold-stock returns are positive on average over time. However, gold-stock correlation falls below zero during subprime crisis and sovereign debt crisis. Gold-stock correlation is significantly negatively affected by positive CPI announcements. And gold-dollar correlation is significantly negatively affected by negative GDP announcements and positive unemployment announcements. The effects of macroeconomic announcements are stronger during economic recessions.

Modern states are committed to the implicit assumption that one generation has the normative power to bind later generations through laws and contracts. My dissertation explores this assumption through two case studies: constitutions and sovereign debt contracts. I show that in both cases the assumption of transgenerational binding shapes the legal practices and doctrines of modern states. It informs, for instance, the ratification of eternity clauses, the interpretation of constitutions, and the doctrines of sovereign immunity and odious debt. But although these practices of transgenerational binding are prevalent in modern states, they stand in tension, I argue, with the liberal moral commitments of these states. Liberals are committed to moral individualism, according to which only individual human beings (and some nonhuman animals) are moral persons. Moral individualism, I show, is incompatible with the assumption of transgenerational binding and its accompanying practices and doctrines. By contrast, moral statism, according to which states themselves are moral persons, can easily justify those transgenerational practice. But moral statist justifications are illiberal because they assign states intrinsic moral status above and beyond individual human beings. I argue that liberals must engage in revisionism whichever theory of political obligation they pick - whether it is a theory of agreement, restitution, justice, reciprocity, or instrumentalism. If liberals assume moral individualism and combine it with any of these theories, they will be forced either to declare some transgenerational practices and doctrines illegitimate or to revise the justification and scope of transgenerational binding in light of instrumentalism. If liberals choose moral statism, they will be able to justify the transgenerational doctrines and practices of constitutions and sovereign debt contracts - but only at the cost of illiberalism. The dissertation's analysis thus shows that liberals face a trilemma between illegitimacy, instrumentalism, and illiberalism.

In 2009 the sovereign debt crisis started in the European Union. Every member state was involved in the financial turmoil, in particular Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain. Why were these countries effected more so? Were they still committed to core ideas of the European Union? This paper will review this topic through the perspective of Portugal. Being a former colonial power, once having an authoritative government, and now a full-fledged member of the European Union, Portugal has a unique story to tell about the crisis at hand. This paper will evaluate different European Union principles involving gender equality, tertiary education, politics, and economics while comparing how Portugal ranks in Europeanization to the European Union specifically during the sovereign debt crisis. This paper will conclude by summarizing these topics, analyzing triumphs and setbacks, and hypothesizing Portugal's future in regard to their Europeanization of European Union standards and the current sovereign debt crisis the country faces today.

Over the past decade, the European Union has been characterized by an explosion of expenditure, insufficient revenue, high deficits and a lack of budget discipline. Financial markets in Europe are currently dealing with enormous government debts, poor government balance sheets and a weakening banking system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the origins of the current Euro-crisis and specifically identify the extent to which it will affect the nation of Italy going forward. To understand Italy's stance amid the Euro-crisis, we proceed as follows: First, a historical background section will develop the fundamental issues that have developed in Europe over time leading to the current situation. Next, a discussion about Italian economics and politics will identify Italy's central policy issues placed in the context of the Euro-crisis. Subsequently, Italy's issues with tax evasion will be covered illustrating its history and enforcement addendums going forward. The final section of this paper will present a forward-looking prediction about the fate of Italy and the Euro-zone and will include some of the necessary steps toward avoiding an international economic collapse.

This paper focuses on stock markets, including Portugal¡BItaly¡BIreland¡BGreece and Spain, and these are named PIGS by economists. Furthermore, we add the other three countries, U.S.A.¡BU.K. and Germany in this paper for investigating the dependence structure in the stock markets between these countries during the period 2001-2011. We implement a regime-switching copula model based on Gaussian copula, which uses a GARCH specification for the marginal distributions and the Gaussian copula for the joint distribution. Our method combines copulas and regime-switching models to demonstrate dependence sructures in stock markets between these countries. Based on this paper, we have two reports for international investors. First, if the dependency changes over time, the returns of portfolio diversification may be prone to diversification disasters, and the international investors' degrees of diversification can cause higher systemic risk in the period of financial crisis. Second, the phonomenon of the asymmetric dependence exists in financial markets, and we conclude that non-diversification may be better than diversification in the period of financial crisis.

The author of this thesis raised question if the insolvency of a State is the legitimate basis for suspension or repudiation on international financial obligations. Since there is no uniform way to deal with the issue, the attention is given to different practices and guidelines of court’s reasoning. In order to answer the legal question, prove or neglect the hypothesis and fulfill goals descriptive, analytical and comparative methods are used. The paper consists of four major parts and proceeds in the following order. Part one provides general understanding of State as subject of international law, gives basic legal characteristics of Sovereign debt, introduces the legal definition of insolvent State and explores responsibility of the State in case of unilateral suspension or repudiation on external public debt. The second part explores the existing judicial regulation, defines the absence of international law containing a uniform or a codified insolvency law of states and outlines the main principles applicable to the dispute resolution between insolvent Sovereign State and its creditors. This section also analyzes the frequent practice of solvency crises resolutions and sifts through main judicial problems. It is concluded that current Sovereign crisis resolution violates the main fundamental principle of the rule of law: that one must not be judge in one's own cause. Author emphasizes that diversity among creditors creates uncertainty among all participants as to how... [to full text] / Darbo tikslas yra atsakyti į klausimą, ar valstybės nemokumas yra teisėtas pagrindas sustabdyti arba panaikinti tarptautinių įsipareigojimų vykdymą. Jam pasiekti naudojami aprašomasis, analitinis bei palyginamasis metodai. Magistro baigiamasis darbas yra sudarytas iš keturių pagrindinių dalių. Pirmiausia yra pristatoma valstybės kaip tarptautinės teisės subjekto samprata, bendra valstybės skolos charakteristika, pateikiamas nemokios valstybės apibrėžimas bei analizuojama valstybės atsakomybė vienašališkai sustabdant tarptautinių įsipareigojimų vykdymą arbą jų atsisakant. Antrojoje dalyje atskleidžiama nemokios valstybės is jos kreditorių santykių reglamentacija, aptariami bendrieji teisės principai taikytini valstybės nemokumui. Analizuojama dabartinė nemokių valstybių problemų sprendimo praktika bei atskleidžiamos pagrindinės teisinės problemos. Trečioji dalys yra skirta sąlygų, kurioms esant nemoki valstybė gali teisėtai atsisakyti vykdyti savo finansinius įsipareigojimus, analizei. Prieinama prie išvados, kad valstybės nemokumas gali būti teisėtas pagrindas sustabdyti arba panaikinti tarptautinių įsipareigojimų vykdymą , tačiau tik esant tam tikroms aplinkybėms – kuomet tarptautinių finansinių įsipareigojimų vykdymas pažeidžia pagrindinius nemokios valstybės piliečių poreikius bei teises. Paskutinėje dalyje pristatomi siūlymai kaip galima būtų teisiškai reguliuoti nemokios valstybės ir jos kretitorių santykius. Pateikti projektai palyginami, aptariamos jų trūkumai ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of macroeconomic  indicators on the government debt of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (PIIGS), based on the data from 1990 to 2010 and employed a panel data model. The research finds that the macroeconomc conditions of the PIIGS are all deteriorated to some extent, and these deteriorations lead the accumulation of government debt. The expansionary fiscal policy is an important factor that accounts for the high debt ratio of the PIIGS. On the other hand, the discrepancy between the unified monetary policy and the separated fiscal policy obstructs the adjustment mechanism by the individual government, and leads the exchange rate and interest rate instruments not efficient.