Search Results (4)

Crises, as critical moments in the process of European integration, are particularly conducive to the increased politicisation of the European Union (EU) and its contestation. The year 2015 saw the peaks of the Greek and the refugee crises, the two crises that put the two flagships of the European project—the Euro and the Schengen zone—into imminent peril, causing a prolonged EU legitimacy crisis. Building on the literature that considers Euroscepticism as a context-dependent and discursive phenomenon, this study analyses Facebook debates that emerged in response to the Greek and refugee crises, trying to identify how the EU was evaluated and how these evaluations were justified. To answer this question, this study involved the qualitative content analysis of over 7000 Facebook comments related to the Greek and migration crises published in 2015 on the pages of the European Parliament and the European Commission. Contrary to the literature that explains popular Euroscepticism by utilitarian or cultural factors, the findings of this study show that the most recurrent justification for negative EU polity evaluations is the lack of democratic credentials. Furthermore, the commentators mostly assessed the EU’s current set-up and, to a much lesser extent, the principle and the future of European integration. Moreover, the Facebook public extensively commented on the level of inclusiveness, particularly bemoaning the lack of inclusiveness of “ordinary” people in EU decision making. Nevertheless, the commentators frequently referred to themselves as “we Europeans” or “we people”, opposing themselves to EU, national, or financial “elites”. Despite its populist elements, this sense of “we-ness” incepted in social media suggests the capacity of transnational online discussion to foster European digital demos. Full article

Sustainable economic growth is considered a fundamental problem due to the effects that can be felt on the society as a whole, along with the phenomenon of banking integration that can influence the development of a country’s economy. This research aims to investigate the impact of banking market integration on sustainable economic growth in EU countries, especially in the context of financial integration, a good consolidation of the banking market is needed. We also identified the main factors by which the development of the banking market influences economic growth. The analysis was carried out for the period 2004–2018 in EU countries as a sample. According to the results obtained, we can say that European banking integration has a positive influence and has many benefits on the growth and sustainable development of the economy. The main factors by which banking integration significantly and positively favors economic growth are convergence of asset returns, convergence of interest rates, cross-border lending to the non-banking sector, foreign assets and foreign liabilities), the ratio of international banking activities, the ratio between assets and GDP, and the net interest margin (only when maintaining a low level) with some differences between the pre-crisis and the post-crisis period, the countries in the Euro Zone outside the euro, and the new EU member states and the old EU member states. Full article

The current paper studies equity markets for the contagion of squared index returns as a proxy for stock market volatility, which has not been studied earlier. The study examines squared stock index returns of equity in 35 markets, including the US, UK, Euro Zone and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries, as a proxy for the measurement of volatility. Results from the conditional heteroskedasticity long memory model show the evidence of long memory in the squared stock returns of all 35 stock indices studied. Empirical findings show the evidence of contagion during the global financial crisis (GFC) and Euro Zone crisis (EZC). The intensity of contagion varies depending on its sources. This implies that the effects of shocks are not symmetric and may have led to some structural changes. The effect of contagion is also studied by decomposing the level series into explained and unexplained behaviors. Full article

As the future movements of financial time series like the European Central Bank’s benchmark rate are exposed to uncertainty, financial market participants regularly have to rely on professional analysts’ forecasts. Not surprisingly—and for decades already—the quality of survey forecasts has been evaluated, with heterogeneous results. In addition, forecasters’ performance can change through the course of time. This may happen not only due to wrong or inadequate underlying models. Especially in times of financial turmoil or monetary crisis—like the European debt crisis—the interest rate moves made by central bankers may become even harder to predict (at least the direct reaction to the crisis). Because of this, we evaluate the performance of survey forecasts for the three months rate in the Euro zone performed by financial professionals and test for structural breaks to evidence for crisis related changes and the corresponding forecast errors. Full article