The long-term sustainability of the euro and the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) depends heavily on their ability to attract widespread public support. The support shown for the euro throughout its first two decades has helped to shield it against populist attempts at the national level to dismantle the common currency. It has granted political legitimacy to the presidents of the European Central Bank to do “whatever it takes” whenever a serious crisis has threatened the viability of the euro. Public Support for the Euro is the second of two open-access volumes presenting a selection of the author's essays on Labor Productivity, Monetary Economics, and Political Economy. This second volume brings together eleven of the author's essays, selected with the aim of providing an overview of his research to date on public support for and the economics and political economy of the euro and EMU.
For several decades now, advanced economies across the globe have been undergoing a process of rapid transformation towards becoming knowledge economies. It is now widely recognized that intangible capital has been a crucial element in the growth performance of these economies and their firms. In the author's view, "intangible capital" serves as the most appropriate umbrella term for capturing several dimensions of capital that are not tangible in nature but are nevertheless fundamentally important for growth. The term encompasses investments in education (human capital) and in informal (social capital) and formal (rule of law) institutions by the public sector and households, as well as investments by businesses aimed at enhancing their knowledge base, such as software, innovative property, and economic competencies. Intangible Capital and Growth is the first of two open access volumes presenting a selection of the author's essays on Labor Productivity, Monetary Economics, and the Political Economy, which represent the first part of his habilitation in economics. This first volume brings together eight of the author's essays, selected to provide an overview of the evolution of his research on intangible capital and growth [Resumen de la editorial]
This paper points out that education should be the central objective of the post-2010 Lisbon Process. Compared to other OECD countries, the member states of the European Union perform poorly when it comes to key indicators of innovative potential, such as the percentage of students enrolled in tertiary education and the educational quality of Europe's students. Education makes a three-fold contribution to a country's economic health. First it is beneficial for employment rates, second it is a key driver for long-term economic growth and third it appears to be beneficial for social cohesion. It will be crucial for European countries to attain higher levels of tertiary education and increase the quality of their education.
The financial crisis had a significant impact on the levels of trust that citizens place in the system and its institutions. Recent data from Eurobarometer show a significant fall in confidence on the part of European citizens in the EU's institutions. For the first time since its creation, a majority of European citizens no longer trust the European Central Bank. However, confidence levels in national governments have actually risen, supporting a contrasting trend between confidence levels in European and national institutions. This decrease in confidence towards the ECB is flanked in the case of Germany by strong anti-capitalist sentiments and a sharp decline in support for the social market economy.
This paper analyses the evolution of public support for the euro from 1990 to 2011, using a popularity function approach, focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis. Exploring a huge database of close to half a million observations covering the 12 original euro area member countries, we find that the ongoing crisis has only marginally reduced citizens' support for the euro--at least so far. This result is in stark contrast to the sharp fall in public trust in the European Central Bank. We conclude that the crisis has hardly dented popular support for the euro while the central bank supplying the single currency has lost sharply in public trust. Thus, the euro appears to have established a credibility of its own--separate from the institutional framework behind the euro.
This paper analyses public support for the euro in Germany. Drawing from the results of regular Eurobarometer surveys, it finds that the ongoing financial and sovereign debt crisis has reduced support for the euro among German citizens, but not dramatically so-- at least not yet. In the 1990s, the German public was sceptical towards the euro. But since the introduction of euro banknotes and coins, a clear majority of citizens supports the euro--despite the financial and sovereign debt crisis. Moreover, on average, support for the euro is at a similar level in Germany as it is elsewhere in the euro area. This salient finding, however, appears to contradict the results of a survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute, an influential public opinion polling centre in Germany, which concludes that an overwhelming majority of Germans do not trust the euro any more. We suggest that this striking difference in findings could be due to three factors: a) the fact that the Allensbach Institute and Eurobarometer were measuring different concepts: trust in the euro and support for the euro, respectively; b) the Allensbach Institute's results might be biased, given the scaling of their trust question and c) the fact that Eurobarometer frames its survey questions explicitly in a European context, whereas the Allensbach surveys have a purely national context.
The financial crisis has severely damaged citizens' trust in public institutions, especially the confidence that European citizens invest in European institutions. Eurobarometer surveys show, for example, that confidence in the European Central Bank reached an historical low at the peak of the crisis during the first few months of 2009. Since then one can observe a partial recovery, but it is not clear whether the previous level can be restored. A variety of other surveys also show that confidence levels in the free market economy have decreased in most of the largest economies and demand for stronger state regulation has increased on both sides of the Atlantic. The key question now is whether this loss of confidence is a temporary or permanent phenomenon, which would have important consequences for the economy and for the proper working of the European institutions.
Broken Bones contains 434 individual cases and 1,101 radiologic images illustrating the typical and less typical appearances of fractures and dislocations throughout the body. The first chapter describes fractures and dislocations of the fingers, starting with fractures of the phalangeal tufts and progressing through the distal, middle, and proximal phalanges and the DIP and PIP joints. Subsequent chapters cover the metacarpals, the carpal bones, the radius and ulna, the elbow and upper arm, and the shoulder and thoracic cage. The cervical spine and the thoracic and lumbosacral spine are covered in separate chapters, followed by the pelvis, the femur, the knee and lower leg, the ankle, the tarsal bones, and the metatarsals and toes. The final three chapters cover the face, fractures and dislocations in children, and fractures and dislocations caused by bullets and nonmilitary blasts.
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