The EU's multi-level system continuously renegotiates the influence of the European institutions on national sovereignty. Social policy has traditionally been the domain of the member states. But is ...it still possible to speak of the political autonomy of the nation-states, or is the European level gaining in importance through social and budgetary policy measures, some of which are restrictive? Jana Windwehr vividly analyzes Europeanization processes within social policy in the context of the euro crisis, using five member states as examples. This makes the book an indispensable contribution to the discussion on national social policy autonomy in the EU multi-level system.
Das EU-Mehrebenensystem verhandelt den Einfluss der europäischen Organe auf die einzelstaatliche Souveränität fortlaufend neu. Sozialpolitik gilt dabei traditionell als Domäne der Mitgliedsstaaten. Kann man jedoch an dieser Stelle noch von politischer Autonomie der Nationalstaaten sprechen oder gewinnt die europäische Ebene durch sozial- wie haushaltspolitische, teils auch restriktive Maßnahmen vielmehr fortlaufend an Bedeutung? Jana Windwehr analysiert Europäisierungsprozesse innerhalb der Sozialpolitik im Kontext der Eurokrise anschaulich am Beispiel von fünf Mitgliedsstaaten. Das Buch wird dadurch zu einem unverzichtbaren Beitrag zur Diskussion um nationale sozialpolitische Autonomie im EU-Mehrebenensystem.
The book seeks to link theoretical debates on the relevance of trust in economic outcomes with the current arguments about the origins and lessons of the subprime crisis. By what mechanisms does ...trust influence economic outcomes? Under what conditions do these mechanisms prevail? How do debates about trust help our understanding of the subprime crisis in the European Union? By integrating insights from Post-Keynesian, Austrian and new institutional economics, the central proposition of the analysis is that the presence or absence of institutional trust creates virtuous and vicious cycles in law-abiding, which critically influence the possibility for economic agents to have realistic long-term plans.
In this article the concept of weather regimes is used to assess the flow‐dependent skill of the European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) ensemble predictions at the late ...medium‐range. The flow patterns leading to more or less accurate predictions are identified and the variations of skill in these situations are quantified. The focus is on the Euro‐Atlantic sector during the extended winter period when the atmospheric regime structure is most pronounced. Verification results show that, in the medium range, forecasts initiated in the negative phase of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO−) are the most skillful. For these forecasts the ensemble spread over Europe is lower than average, showing that the ensemble spread provides useful information about the error of the ensemble‐mean forecast. The performance of the ensemble is further assessed by stratifying the cases according to their initial conditions, as well as by their accuracy at forecast day 10. Results indicate that the least skillful predictions are mainly associated with missing the transitions to a blocking regime circulation. Forecasts also underestimate the blocking persistence, whereas they overestimate the persistence of zonal flows. Transitions to a positive phase of the NAO are also overrepresented.
ABSTRACT
Gridded precipitation data sets are frequently used to evaluate climate models or to remove model output biases. Although precipitation data are error prone due to the high spatio‐temporal ...variability of precipitation and due to considerable measurement errors, relatively few attempts have been made to account for observational uncertainty in model evaluation or in bias correction studies. In this study, we compare three types of European daily data sets featuring two Pan‐European data sets and a set that combines eight very high‐resolution station‐based regional data sets. Furthermore, we investigate seven widely used, larger scale global data sets. Our results demonstrate that the differences between these data sets have the same magnitude as precipitation errors found in regional climate models. Therefore, including observational uncertainties is essential for climate studies, climate model evaluation, and statistical post‐processing. Following our results, we suggest the following guidelines for regional precipitation assessments. (1) Include multiple observational data sets from different sources (e.g. station, satellite, reanalysis based) to estimate observational uncertainties. (2) Use data sets with high station densities to minimize the effect of precipitation undersampling (may induce about 60% error in data sparse regions). The information content of a gridded data set is mainly related to its underlying station density and not to its grid spacing. (3) Consider undercatch errors of up to 80% in high latitudes and mountainous regions. (4) Analyses of small‐scale features and extremes are especially uncertain in gridded data sets. For higher confidence, use climate‐mean and larger scale statistics. In conclusion, neglecting observational uncertainties potentially misguides climate model development and can severely affect the results of climate change impact assessments.
Krisenhafte Erfahrungen mit der eigenen Währung hinterlassen Spuren: Banken-, Finanz-, Wirtschafts- und Währungskrisen prägen politische wie wirtschaftliche Systeme, den Umgang mit Geld auf ...gesamtgesellschaftlicher wie privater Ebene, den Aufbau und die Organisationsstruktur von Institutionen sowie nicht zuletzt nationale Identitäten, politische Kulturen und Systeme.
The European Sovereign Debt Crisis Lane, Philip R.
The Journal of economic perspectives,
07/2012, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The origin and propagation of the European sovereign debt crisis can be attributed to the flawed original design of the euro. In particular, there was an incomplete understanding of the fragility of ...a monetary union under crisis conditions, especially in the absence of banking union and other European-level buffer mechanisms. Moreover, the inherent messiness involved in proposing and implementing incremental multicountry crisis management responses on the fly has been an important destabilizing factor throughout the crisis. After diagnosing the situation, we consider reforms that might improve the resilience of the euro area to future fiscal shocks. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
Observational gridded products are commonly used to evaluate the performance of regional climate models. To this aim, gridded datasets should be comparable to the output of these models and, ...thus, should represent grid‐cell area‐averaged values and, whenever possible, they should be defined on the same spatial domains as the models, in order to avoid re‐gridding or re‐projection. In this study, we present an update of the Spain02 gridded observational dataset for daily precipitation and mean temperature building on the grids defined for the EURO‐CORDEX initiative. In order to assess and intercompare different interpolation approaches, we analysed (1) two standard methodologies (ordinary kriging and thin plate splines), (2) three horizontal resolutions: 0.11°, 0.22° and 0.44° (matching the rotated EURO‐CORDEX and ENSEMBLES grids), (3) two different approaches to guarantee either area‐averaged or point representativity of the resulting grid values and (4) including/excluding orography as a covariable in the interpolation procedure. Besides introducing the new gridded datasets, in this work we also present some preliminary results on the sensitivity of temperature and precipitation (both mean and extreme regimes) to all these factors.
ABSTRACT
As a result of climate change in recent past and unsustainable land management, drought became one of the most impacting disasters and, with the projected global warming, it is expected to ...progressively cause more damages by the end of the 21st century. This study investigates changes in drought occurrence, frequency, and severity in Europe in the next decades. A combined indicator based on the predominance of the drought signal over normal/wet conditions has been used. The indicator, which combines the standardized precipitation index (SPI, which accounts for anomalous low rainfall), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI, which accounts for high temperatures and scarce precipitations), and the reconnaissance drought indicator (RDI, similar to SPEI but more affected by extreme events), has been computed at 3‐ and 12‐month accumulation scales to characterize trends in seasonal and annual events from 1981 to 2100. Climate data from 11 bias‐adjusted high‐resolution (0.11°) simulations from the EURO‐CORDEX (coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment) have been used in the analyses. For each simulation, the frequency and severity of drought and extreme drought events for 1981–2010, 2041–2070, and 2071–2100 have been analysed. Under the moderate emission scenario (RCP4.5), droughts are projected to become increasingly more frequent and severe in the Mediterranean area, western Europe, and Northern Scandinavia, whereas the whole European continent, with the exception of Iceland, will be affected by more frequent and severe extreme droughts under the most severe emission scenario (RCP8.5), especially after 2070. Seasonally, drought frequency is projected to increase everywhere in Europe for both scenarios in spring and summer, especially over southern Europe, and less intensely in autumn; on the contrary, winter shows a decrease in drought frequency over northern Europe.
We investigate future European drought trends using EURO‐CORDEX bias‐adjusted data. Under the RCP4.5 scenario, droughts are projected to become increasingly more frequent and severe over the Mediterranean, western Europe, and Scandinavia, whereas the European continent – except Iceland – will be affected by more frequent extreme droughts under RCP8.5, especially after 2070. Drought frequency is projected to increase everywhere in Europe in spring and summer (less intensely in autumn), especially over southern Europe, but to decrease in winter over northern Europe. Drought frequency (DRF), extreme drought frequency (ExDRF), and drought severity (DRS) are projected to largely increase over most of Europe in the far future compared to recent decades for both moderate (RCP4.5) and more extreme emission (RCP8.5) scenarios.
We investigate the effects of a US economic policy uncertainty shock on some Euro area macroeconomic aggregates via Structural VARs. We model the indicators of economic policy uncertainty recently ...developed by Baker et al. (2013) jointly with the aggregate price indexes and alternative indicators of the business cycle for the two above indicated economic areas. According to our SVARs, a one standard deviation shock to US economic policy uncertainty leads to a statistically significant fall in the European industrial production and prices of −0.12% and −0.06%, respectively. The contribution of the US uncertainty shock on the European aggregates is shown to be quantitatively larger than the one exerted by an Euro area-specific uncertainty shock.
•We quantify the possible spillovers going from the US to the Euro area economics.•We focus on shocks to the US economic policy uncertainty.•We document a negative and significant reaction of Euro area price and quantity indicators.•The contribution of US uncertainty shock is estimated to be larger than that of a Euro-area specific uncertainty shock.
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