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| Issue Date | View | Title | Author(s) | Type of Publication | Series/Report no. | Abstract |
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI MWP; 2012/01
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View Abstract
What was the recipe for the success of Raiffeisen’s banking model? What made it possible for imitations of this German rural cooperative microfinance institution to work well in some European countries, but fail in others? This paper answers these questions with a comparison of Raiffeisenism in Ireland and the Netherlands. Raiffeisen banks arrived in both places at the same time, but had drastically different fates. In Ireland they were almost wiped out by the early 1920s, whilst in the Netherlands they proved to be a long-lasting institutional transplant. Raiffeisen banks were successful in the Netherlands because they operated in a niche market with few viable competitors. Meanwhile, rural financial markets in Ireland were unsegmented and populated by long-established incumbents, leaving little room for new players, whatever their perceived advantages. Whereas Dutch Raiffeisen banks were largely self-financing, closely integrated into the wider rural economy and took advantage of socioreligious division, their Irish counterparts did not.
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI ECO; 2012/04
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View Abstract
The recognition that information is, most of the time, incomplete and imperfect is essential in understanding the nature of the formation of beliefs. To understand human behavior in the area of (academic) performance, the beliefs individuals sustain about their ability become crucial. Before performing a certain task, the agent never knows his/her true ability. He/she only has an ex-ante notion of his/her believed ability and the truth is only revealed ex-post. Once the true ability is known and the payoffs realized, we observe different reactions that range from disappointment to happiness. The logical question is then, who would have preferred not to know the truth? This paper deals with the information acquisition decisions of individuals who face uncertainty about their own ability. At a theoretical level (Bénabou and Tirole, 2002), it has been shown that overconfident individuals (people with beliefs about themselves higher than reality) with time inconsistent preferences have more at stake when they face the decision of learning the truth about themselves than more pessimistic agents. To test this prediction, a field experiment is designed and implemented, where students face the decision of learning, or not, their true ability before performing a test. It will be shown that overconfident students indeed more often decide not to learn their true ability.
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI RSCAS; 2012/03; Global Governance Programme-12
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View Abstract
This working paper argues on European Defense issues, considering a triple perspective: Past Legacy, Present Changes and Future Challenges. The first part looks at European defense from an historical perspective; from its European integration origins to the foundation of a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), reviewing its decade in existence. The second part analyzes the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the most significant developments of a Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP): solidarity clauses, mission enlargement, European Defense Agency (EDA), news forms of cooperation, CSDP democratic control. Thirdly, this paper considers future challenges and concludes the need for new developments: at the institutional level, the strengthening of European defense parliamentary control through the creation of a CSDP inter parliamentary assembly and the EU´s external action inter and cross pillar coordination; at the capability level, the need to strengthen EDA and implement new cooperation mechanisms foreseen in the Lisbon Treaty; at the strategic level, the drive to clarify the EU´s international identity and define a new international strategy enabling the EU as a global security producer.
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI SPS; 2012/03
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View Abstract
The literature on ministerial careers has recently been reinvigorated by individual contributions and collaborative projects. However, few studies of ministerial careers have been able to take into account the varying importance of ministerial positions. Fewer still have taken ministerial careers as their unit of analysis. As a result, they have been unable to account for crucial aspects of these careers. This paper seeks to fill these gaps, linking a crossnational data set on ministerial appointments and terminations with country-specific expert survey data that estimate the importance of ministerial portfolios. Among the new possibilities opened up by this data set of 977 ministerial careers is the systematic description of the structure of ministerial careers incorporating measures of ministerial importance. The paper contributes to the study of ministerial careers by introducing several innovations: a simple analytical framework for the analysis of ministerial careers; a new, crossnational data set on ministerial appointments and terminations incorporting data on ministerial importance; an approach to dealing with the problem of unconfirmed right-censoring that is posed by studying ministerial careers; new approaches to describing and measuring ministerial career structures that the ministerial careers framework and the new data set open up; and an agenda for the future development and use of this new data set on ministerial careers.
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2012
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Working Paper
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EUI HEC; 2012/01
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View Abstract
Alan S. Milward was an economic historian who developed an implicit theory of historical change. His interpretation which was neither liberal nor Marxist posited that social, political, and economic change, for it to be sustainable, had to be a gradual process rather than one resulting from a sudden, cataclysmic revolutionary event occurring in one sector of the economy or society. Benign change depended much less on natural resource endowment or technological developments than on the ability of state institutions to respond to changing political demands from within each society. State bureaucracies were fundamental to formulating those political demands and advising politicians of ways to meet them. Since each society was different there was no single model of development to be adopted or which could be imposed successfully by one nation-state on others, either through force or through foreign aid programs. Nor could development be promoted simply by copying the model of a more successful economy. Each nation-state had to find its own response to the political demands arising from within its society. Integration occurred when a number of nation–states shared similar political objectives which they could not meet individually but could meet collectively. It was not simply the result of their increasing interdependence. It was how and whether nation-states responded to these domestic demands which determined the nature of historical change.
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