She asked me:

What does the economy do?

In your opinion, what does the economy do? Answers either by email or in the comments.

"One of the reasons this is so outrageous is that the promise of such bonuses was in fact one of the very factors that caused our current problems, creating incentives for managers of AIG to get out of solid insurance underwriting and into hedge fund gambling. If anyone had supposed that AIG had "learned its lesson", this report seemed to dash that hope against the wall like a plate of china."
On a slightly lighter note, here's MIT's Ricardo Caballero on more constructive solutions to the crisis.

Most Irish people drive past the blue signs along new roads up and down the country, indicating that "This project was co-financed by the EU".  Since joining in 1973, the difference between what Ireland paid in and what the EU paid out is about €55 billion euros.

EU funding has gone into into every aspect of Irish life: building the economy; improving transport and communication networks; increasing trade; creating employment; promoting cultural diversity, peace and understanding; cleaning up the environment; restoring tourism amenities; sustaining a country life and protecting human rights.

Thanks to Ireland's economic success we no longer qualify for the same volume of EU funding as in the past. For the funding period 2007-2013, Ireland will receive Structural Funds of €750.72 million : €375.36 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and €375.36 million from the European Social Fund (ESF).

This lecture examines Ireland's changing position within Europe since 1973 to 2008, against the backdrop of everything we have learned in lectures to date. We'll also talk about...

...The Exam

For the exam, read the assigned readings, listen to the lectures again, make sure to have a go at the sample exam, the past exam, redo your problem sets, and spend some time working on breadth and depth of coverage of the course, because I'll be examining both.

Other than that, good luck, and thanks.

Related articles

• EC4333 Lecture 9: Inequality in the EU
• Ireland Rejects Treaty of Lisbon
• EU's ageing trend to rise sharply

Over the weeks we've seen a series of increasingly analytical approaches to exploring European integration. This week we'll look at putting two approaches together: a descriptive, political economy framework for describing the system as a whole, and an analytical model describing the potential effects of trade policy on integration for the accession countries.

In May 2004, 10 new countries joined the EU, and Bulgaria and Romania became members in 2007. Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia are candidate countries. The EU is considering the possibility of further enlargements to countries in the Western Balkans, which could eventually include Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Albania.  

Image via Wikipedia

The ongoing EU enlargement process raises fundamental questions about the future of the Union. Will expanding membership lead to a change in identity of the EU? Is widening on this scale compatible with deepening? Will the EU be condemned to endless arguing about the relative size of contributions to and receipts from the Community budget? Will an expanded membership require fundamental changes in EU economic and cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy after 2013 (when a new financial perspective begins)?  Will the Lisbon Treaty be ratified, and will it provide the EU with an institutional framework that enables it to avoid deadlock in decision-making, and at the same time increase its transparency and democratic accountability? The EU is committed to further enlargements, but where should its borders end?

Lecture Slides

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Handout. (Right click to download)

Further Reading/Viewing

Antonis Adam and Thomas Moutos, The Political Economy of EU Enlargement: Or, Why Japan is not a Candidate Country?

Friedrich Heinemann, The political economy of EU enlargement and the Treaty of Nice

Baldwin, Richard, Joe Francois, and Richard Portes, 1997, The costs and benefits of EU enlargement to the East, Economic Policy 24, 125-176,

(You must be in college to download these papers)

Catherine Drew and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, EU Enlargement in 2007: No Warm Welcome for Labor Migrants

Related articles

• EC4333, Economics of European Integration, Module Outline 2008
• UK businesses back EU expansion
• In the slow lane
• Montenegro gets boost for EU bid
• EU: Poland threatens Sarkozy's scheme to rescue Lisbon treaty
• EU deal will last a decade, says Brown
• Sarkozy warns EU on treaty debate

Nice one.

Embedded Video

Blogged with Flock

Here is the Solow spreadsheet to use in question 1. Click here to download it.

Instructions

• This problem set is worth 15\% of your final grade.
• Work in groups, but hand in your own work.
• Submit your work via email to neal.kilbane@ul.ie, and in hardcopy to the departmental office, KB 3-22a, by Monday November 24th at 4pm.
• Call the file you send Neal yourname_yourstudentnubmer_EC4333_ProblemSet3.doc.
• Label the hardcopy of your work with your name and student number.

Related articles

• Economics of European Integration Problem Set 1

EC4333 students should check it out here.

(HT, Slugger O'Toole)

The origins of EU social policy can be found in all three of the original treaties founding the European Communities. Article 46 of the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community refers to the improvement of the living and working standards of workers in the coal and steel industries. The Euratom Treaty sets out provisions for the health and safety of workers in the civilian atomic energy industry. By far the most extensive treatment of social policy is to be found in the Treaty of Rome, which refers to:

• Free movement of workers (Articles 48–51);
• Improvement in working conditions and in standards of living (Articles 117–128);
• Equal opportunities for men and women (see Box 14.1) (Article 119); and
• The creation of the European Social Fund (Article 123).

In this lecture, I aim

• To examine the role of the social cohesion funds in the development of economic integration
• To discuss their history and potential economic effects and affects.
• To develop the Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves for individual countries and discuss the role of income distribution and redistribution

Activity

Students will construct a hypothetical Lorenz curve in class.

Michie, J., `Unemployment in Europe', in Amin and Tomaney, eds. Behind the Myth of European Union: Prospects for Cohesion}, Routledge Press, 1995, pgs. 51--82. 337.14 AMI.

Watch the Lecture

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Download the Handout

Just click the image below.

Related articles

• Economics of EU Integration Lecture 8: Industrial Policies in the EU
• EC4333, Economics of EU Integration: What was the Lisbon Treaty, Why did it Matter, and Why did it Fail?
• Thinking more Harderer about Higher Education Funding, Part 1
• EU Agency Workers Directive
• The Gini Coefficient
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
• http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch4en/meth4en/gini.html

EC4333 students, take a look at the page I'm linking to here, it's very important for the course.

European Commission - Economic and Financial Affairs - Economic Forecast autumn 2008: growth comes to a standstill in the wake of the financial crisis

Central to the analysis of the likely benefits of integration are the cost and price reductions that were expected to accrue.
There is a risk that restrictive practices between otherwise independent firms, or the behaviour of dominant (or monopoly) firms, might prevent these price reductions from being realized. Integration is also expected to lead to increased competition, and to meet these additional pressures firms might be induced to form cartels or undertake mergers in order to reach dominant market positions. National governments may be tempted to help their firms face the additional competitive pressures by granting them state aids.
To prevent such developments undermining competition, EU policy therefore covers:

■ Antitrust measures, or the fight against cartels and restrictive practices (Article 81) and against dominant position (Article 82);

■ Mergers (Reg. 4064/89 of 1989); and

■ State aids and regulated industries (Articles 86–88).

To prepare for EU enlargement, the EU introduced new rules on competition policy from 1 May 2004.

We'll spend the lecture talking about these new rules and discussing how the simple monopoly/perfect competition model can be adapted to allow us to understand cartelisation and industrial policy.

You can watch the lecture below and download the slides, and there will be a podcast after the lecture.

| View | Upload your own

Download the handout by clicking the image below.

From calculated risk via Delong. 

Image via Wikipedia

In this lecture, we talked about the history of the CAP, its current status, and looked at a measure of just how much individuals are getting from the CAP in places like Limerick and Dublin using farmsubsidy.org. Most of you felt that individual farmers shouldn't have their names made public. I disagreed, but 5 of you changed your minds on the issue, so that's something  

Right click this link to download the handout.

EC4333 students, click here to read an article describing the Lisbon treaty's possible effects on energy security in the EU. From the article: 

A wider and deeper understanding of this state of affairs on the part of the citizens of Europe and their respective member states and the urgent need for the EU to address this mutually volatile state of affairs is long overdue.

Without ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU does not have the necessary institutional and policy competences to do this effectively. This lack of competence threatens both energy security and greater stability in the geopolitical system in terms of stable relations with Russia and, more generally, the stability of the international political system as a whole.

Related articles

• Irish Vote Scuttles Treaty Of Lisbon
• Constantinos Simitis: The rebirth of European integration
• Ireland Rejects Treaty of Lisbon
• Ireland's 'no' vote plunges the European Union into new crisis
• Defiant Ireland set to quash Europe-wide constitutional moves

Lecture6_Handout

Lecture 6 Slides

Related articles

• EC4333, Economics of European Integration, Module Outline 2008
• EC4333 Lecture 1: Defining Integration
• Nicolas Sarkozy pledges to force through EU Treaty
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• EU seeks better way of setting its table
• EU looks to cut farming subsidies

In this lecture, I'll show you several of the costs of joining an EMU, after recapping on the benefits. These costs are all linked around the idea of a loss of potential flexibility in response to a crisis, much like the one we're in right now.

How labour markets react to changes in demand for services, or how currencies are effected when devaluations are not possible, is a secondary concern of this lecture. We'll look at the costs again, very briefly, and develop the criteria for an Optimal Currency Area (OCA) to form. We'll present evidence that the EU almost certainly is NOT an OCA, and discuss reasons for this. Finally, we'll talk about Germany, France, and Ireland's bailout of the banks, and discuss why this was a good idea done for the wrong reason.

Further Reading

Hansen, J.D., European Integration: An Economic Perspective, Oxford University Press, 2001, 1st ed. pgs. 163-189, 337.142 DRU.

Click here to read Mundell's original 1961 article on OCAs. You must be on the college network to read this.

Slides & Handout

Click below to watch the slideshow.

Download the handout by right clicking the image below and choosing 'save target as'.

In this lecture, I'll show you several of the costs of joining an EMU, after recapping on the benefits. These costs are all linked around the idea of a loss of potential flexibility in response to a crisis, much like the one we're in right now.

How labour markets react to changes in demand for services, or how currencies are effected when devaluations are not possible, is a secondary concern of this lecture. We'll look at the costs again, very briefly, and develop the criteria for an Optimal Currency Area (OCA) to form. We'll present evidence that the EU almost certainly is NOT an OCA, and discuss reasons for this. Finally, we'll talk about Germany, France, and Ireland's bailout of the banks, and discuss why this was a good idea done for the wrong reason.

Further Reading

Hansen, J.D., European Integration: An Economic Perspective, Oxford University Press, 2001, 1st ed. pgs. 163-189, 337.142 DRU.

Click here to read Mundell's original 1961 article on OCAs. You must be on the college network to read this.

Slides & Handout

Click below to watch the slideshow.

Download the handout by right clicking the image below and choosing 'save target as'.

Here's why.

Wikipedia should be the first port of call when researching a topic; not the last. So when looking for Trade Creation, use the wikipedia page to find the basic references, and then go there and search further. Don't stop at wikipedia.

So when it is OK to directly reference wikipedia? When you take a direct quote or a diagram from there. Even then, be sparing. Your objective in the essay is to show me you understand some of the nuances of European economic history as they apply to the models we've seen in class and the Lisbon treaty.

You're going to have a hard time convincing me  of this if all I see are wikipedia links.

So: use wikipedia, but as the gateway to other, deeper material, not as the final destination.