Forces of Disintegration in the Wider European Economy: a Structural Political Economy Approach
03 July 2017 4:00 pm CEST
Ivano Cardinale, University of London and Michael Landesmann, Former Scientific Director of wiiw
Venue
wiiw, Rahlgasse 3, 1060 Vienna, library (2nd floor)
Description
***Please note: Start time of the event changed!***
External imbalances, diverging developments in export capacity and unbalanced growth patterns have characterized developments in the wider European economy (i.e. the economy of the European Union and its neighborhood) since the onset of the crisis. This talk analyses the major forces that push towards divergence and which generate the strains in the policy frameworks that have been set up in the European Union. A ‘structural political economy’ approach will be adopted to identify congruence and conflicts of interest between national and cross-border economic interests and how these lead to ‘nationalist’ or ‘integrationist’ biases in political-economy developments at national and European levels. Avenues will be explored concerning how the ‘integrationist project’ can be advanced in relation to some of the major challenges faced by national and European policy-makers.
Ivano Cardinale is Lecturer in Economics at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He was previously the Mead Research Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is developing an approach that can be described as “Structural Political Economy”. By using sectoral models of the economy, this approach aims to uncover different conflicts of interests as compared to standard micro and macro analyses; it can also unveil previously unseen convergences of interests. He has applied a Structural Political Economy lens to address historical problems (why rising taxation in eighteenth-century Britain was politically sustainable) as well as contemporary issues (sectoral-level conflicts in the Eurozone). He also explores how economic and institutional contexts influence the decisions of political-economy actors, and are in turn shaped by those decisions. He has recently co-edited The Political Economy of the Eurozone (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2017).
Michael Landesmann is Senior Research Associate and was from 1996-2016 Scientific Director of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (www.wiiw.ac.at) as well as Professor of Economics at the Johannes Kepler University His research focuses on European economic integration, international economic relations, structural change and economic growth, globalization and labour markets and migration. He was a member of the Group of Economic Policy Advisors under the chairmanship of former EU Commission President Romano Prodi and participated in and coordinated a wide range of EU projects on different aspects of European integration. He has a D.Phil. from Oxford University, was a Lecturer, Fellow and Senior Research Officer at Cambridge University and held visiting Professorships at Harvard University, Brandeis, Basel, Osaka, Padova, Jerusalem, Central European University, CERGE-EI Prague, Mumbai, etc.).