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The authors explore the stories, myths, ideologies and rhetoric surrounding concrete processes of globalization and seek to explain the parochial interests that give rise to them and the extent to which they impact globalization rather than simply describe it

"This full-term study of the Western European Union (WEU) brings to life the history of Europe's search for a co-operative security and defence order, from its post World War II origins to the present day. Establishing the WEU as a support organization, designed to promote the two security 'ideas' of collective defence and integration through the primary organizations of Alliance and Community, this book offers a window onto the challenges faced in the development and management of NATO and the evolving EC/EU over time. As the WEU's historical journey unfolds, the frequently competing visions of the future organization of the European security space are exposed in the fluctuating nature of its own functional evolution and devolution. A hybrid organization driven by its dual support role, the constructively ambiguous and conveniently autonomous WEU was to provide a mechanism through which divergent interests could converge and inherent tensions be relieved, preventing NATO and EC/EU stagnation. This book offers fresh insight into the means by which the gradual transformation of the institutional framework of European security was enabled, and stakes the WEU's claim as a fundamental and life-long contributor to the stability of the European security system."

Should South-Mediterranean economies continue their financial integration in the world economy, considering their current stance and in view of the experiences of developed economies with the global financial crisis? The economies of the North-African rim, that is Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt have become more exposed to the global economy during the decades 1990s and 2000s. The same holds to some extent for the Middle Eastern economies Palestine and Syria, while Jordan and Lebanon have become very open economies. In light of the unprecedented developments in the financial sectors of developed economies in the years 2008-2009 and in view of the current political Arab upheaval, this paper reviews the pros and cons of financial integration. It analyses financial integration indicators, as well as financial stability, and compares the South-Mediterranean region with other regions worldwide. In the global perspective of other regions worldwide, this group of South-Mediterranean economies is unique. From this study follows that most countries of this group have high cross-border bank assets in combination with limited bank liabilities, high inflows of FDI and remittances and relatively high outflows of remittances. Apart from their low degree of cross-border bank indebtedness, they are more financially integrated in the world economy in comparison with Asia, the CIS, Latin-America and the Sub-Sahara. The relatively low degree of trade and financial integration in the region and world economy sheltered these economies to a large extent from the negative external shocks during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. At the same time, the South-Mediterranean region has foregone the economic dividend that developed regions worldwide reaped thanks to growing financial sectors. At the moment of the writing of this paper, that is 2012, so after the global crisis and after or during the upheavals or revolutions in some countries, these South-Mediterranean economies are at a crossroad. This paper studies the status quo, the achievements of the last years and sheds light on the pros and cons of further financial integration, regionally or worldwide.

ABSTRACT
The current non-compliance with United Nations (UN) and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements protecting transnational public goods, military aggression among WTO members, violent suppression of human and democratic rights, global health pandemics, climate change, ocean pollution, overfishing, and other biodiversity losses reflect 'governance failures' (e.g. to limit 'market failures') and 'constitutional failures' (e.g. to protect human and democratic rights and the sustainable development goals). The geopolitical rivalries among totalitarian governments and democracies render constitutional UN and WTO reforms unlikely. They entail 'regulatory competition' (e.g. among neoliberalism, state capitalism, and ordo-liberal constitutionalism) and plurilateral responses aimed at limiting abuses of power (like collective countermeasures against Russia's illegal wars and war crimes) and at protecting transnational public goods (like plurilateral 'climate change mitigation clubs', appeal arbitration among WTO members, regional human rights and security agreements). The power politics disrupting the UN and WTO legal systems is bound to promote regionalization of economic law, re-globalization of supply chains, and geopolitical rivalries resulting from conflicting value priorities and neglect for the human rights underlying the sustainable development goals.

This dissertation encompasses four essays, which deal with issues related to the cross-border financial integration and the financialization of economies. The first essay analyses whether foreign bond buying of euro area securities had an impact on euro area long-term interest rates. Capital flows into the euro area were particularly large in the mid-2000s and the share of foreign holdings of euro area securities increased substantially between the introduction of the euro and the outbreak of the global financial crisis. The essay shows that the increase in foreign holdings of euro area bonds in this period is associated with a reduction of euro area long-term interest rates by about 1.55 percentage points, which is in line with previous studies that document a similar impact of foreign bond buying on US Treasury yields. These results are relevant both from a euro area and a global perspective, as they show that the phenomenon of lower long-term interest rates due to foreign bond buying is not exclusive to the United States and foreign inflows into euro area debt securities may have added to increased risk appetite and hunt-for-yield at the global level. The second essay studies the composition of cross-border flows and their relationship with credit and money aggregates. While previous studies have focused on the relationship between international capital flows and domestic credit growth, highlighting the importance of the equity/debt mix, this chapter shows that there are also important implications of flows going to different domestic recipient sectors, especially concerning money dynamics. In particular, cross-border banking flows display a strong comovement with credit but none with broad money; in turn, flows of domestic non-banks display comovement with both credit and money. For this reason, banking flows correlate with the decoupling of these two variables ? the Great Leveraging ?, a stylised fact documented for several economies in the past decades and associated to the rapid expansion of banks non-monetary liabilities. These results thus shed light on the mechanisms through which the international banking activity might have consequences for the composition of the domestic bank balance sheet. The third essay looks at the interaction of financial flows and asset prices dynamics and how they contribute to shaping sectoral balance sheets and leverage for a set of OECD plus a few other mostly European countries. While debt instruments exhibit small holding gains and losses, equity instruments are subject to significant asset price changes. Importantly, these equity holding gains and losses display a significant positive comovement with investment in debt instruments. These patterns imply that, overall, favourable price valuations go hand in hand with the active build up of debt (and vice-versa), as well as tend to mask the increase in leverage when one considers measures based on market prices. Furthermore, this relationship is distinct across different sectors and financial corporations are the main drivers of this procyclical behaviour. Finally, the fourth essay establishes how financial accounts data allow for the computation of interlinkages across financial sectors and document how intra-financial assets of financial corporations have been growing considerably in recent times in a set of mostly advanced economies. How is this increase in financial sectors interconnectedeness associated with credit provided to end-user non-financial sectors? While intra-financial assets growth displays no significant comovement with credit provided to non-financial corporations and the general government, it does with credit provided to households. Moreover, this relationship stems mostly from claims among non-bank and across non-bank and bank financial corporations, and not from intra-bank claims. These results suggest that the expansion of the financial corporations? interlinkages has been mostly associated with residential mortgages and consumption lending which, through activities such as securitization, contribute to the growth of links across the different financial sectors. Finally, general conclusions from this dissertation are presented in the last chapter. ; TARA (Trinity?s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.ie

The Eurasian Economic Union, launched in 2015, is often seen with suspicion for ostensible domination by the Kremlin over those former Soviet republics that seek various benefits from reestablishing close links with Russia. Yet the very idea of intergovernmental integration implies that Russian influence can no longer be applied directly but has to be channeled through supranational institutions. In the context of globalization the Eurasian project can also be seen as an attempt to boost economic competitiveness of its members by reorienting the region from inherently unstable resource-based models into more sustainable ones, based on vibrant domestic industries. In practice, however, the EAEU has not yet demonstrated much economically, especially as far as mutual trade and investment are concerned, and after the recent resignation of the Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbaev as one of its earliest and most influential enthusiasts, there may also be political challenges to the very survival of the project.