TEC Director Amir Eshel weighs in on the strength and ability of Europe to overcome its fiscal problems in his blog article "Europe, beyond bashing."  In it, he reminds us that "the highly educated, democratic, and often quite-transparently-and-efficiently governed European Union houses 500 million citizens who earn three and a half times the average world GDP per capita. Crises come and go, but Europe’s foundation stands strong."  To read more, please visit Professor Eshel's website.

With Spain as the current hotspot in the European financial crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the broader features of the Spanish predicament, which, I submit, was political and cultural before it emerged as financial. One reason for the dramatic escalation of the risk premium on Spanish bonds is the government’s low credibility - itself the consequence of a heady mix of self-contradiction, lack of transparency, and downright lying. On November 20, 2011, after years of corrosive opposition, Mariano Rajoy rose to the presidency of the government on assurances that he understood the crisis and knew how to handle it.  He now feels trapped in a situation he cannot control, not least because much of the damage is of his own party’s making. To be sure, the socialists contributed mightily to the public debt, exacerbated it by denying the crisis when it was already in evidence, and worst of all, did not act to control the housing bubble, which left in its wake banks filled with toxic assets and a severe credit crunch. But at the root of the housing and mortgage bubble were the dangerous liaisons between the banking system and regional governments such as those in  Madrid and Valencia, that have long been steeped in the Partido Popular’s reckless politics and corrupt practices (epitomized by Bankia’s lurid ambitions and costly rescue.)

The banking crisis is dragging down the Spanish economy and bringing the country’s financial structure into uncharted territory. This is a seemingly paradoxical outcome for a country that a few years back boasted a positive balance and a higher growth rate than its neighbors. What happened to upend the triumphant rhetoric of presidents Aznar and Zapatero? To a certain extent the markets appear to have overreacted, and their knee-jerk response to rising debt caused in part by investors’ demand for higher interest on Spanish bonds threatens to bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Before the market developed these jitters however, Spain’s public debt was in fact lower than Germany’s, even as the latter functions as the basis against which the financial risk of other countries is measured. In the last week of June 2012, the distance between Spain's and Germany's debt risk was 504 basis points, while that between the US and Germany was only 13. In relation to GDP however, Spain’s public debt remains significantly lower than that of the U.S. At the end of 2011, Spain’s public debt was 68.5% of its GDP, while the US’s was 110.2%.  In spite of this, the US continues to have no trouble financing its debt, and the American dollar has been rising in recent months and continues to be regarded as a safe haven, while the euro is at risk.

Why all the fuss about Spain? The answer lies in a combination of causes.  In the first place, there is the big hole punched into Spanish banks by the large-scale default on loans irresponsibly pushed on overly optimistic borrowers; and then there is the unlikelihood of an economic recovery vigorous enough to guarantee the debt’s financing. Saddled with debt, subjected to salary cuts, and adrift in a dwindling job market, Spanish consumers will hardly be able to fuel a meaningful recovery for some time.  At present, the combined debt ofSaish families is nearly 100% of national GDP. Corporate debt is even larger. And it is not the private sector alone that is stuck. The loss of confidence also affects the Bank of Spain. For a long time the country’s central banking authority turned a blind eye to the bad lending practices of private institutions, and so it shares the blame for the illusion of an ever-expanding and ever-appreciating housing sector. When the fantasy receded, thousands of families, as well as the owners of small and middle-sized companies, were left stranded in a financial desert; and once the economy actually began to shrink, the government increasingly lost its ability to finance the debt.

Is Spain at risk of leaving the Eurozone? While this cannot be ruled out, it is unlikely. The possibility of going back to the peseta is precluded by the fact that foreign, mostly German and Chinese, investors, whose money helped pump up the housing bubble, now make up the bulk of Spain’s creditors. They will hardly sit by and allow Spain to devalue its way out of the mess. Although he dragged his feet, Rajoy has finally applied to Brussels for rescue funds and will submit to European oversight.  The proposed solution will undoubtedly involve further dismantling of services, salary cuts, and higher unemployment.  This is a bitter pill that will test Spain’s already shaky social cohesion. Rajoy will dispense it because he has no alternative, or rather because the alternative—letting the sick banks fail instead of nationalizing their losses—is not acceptable to the financial markets. Adding to the markets’ nervousness is the fact that Rajoy has proven to be singularly maladroit at administering the medicine.  This is where politics and culture come into the picture.

Spain’s troubles go back to the origin of its current regime in the late 1970s. They are rooted in a faulty transition that was expected to convert a country without democratic traditions into a full-fledged western democracy. But today all of Spain’s core institutions have fallen into disrepute: after years of covering its scandals, the monarchy has finally disgraced itself irreparably; the Supreme Court is affected by corruption at its core; the president of Madrid's regional government (a militant and vocal member of the extreme right wing of the Partido Popular) is calling for the dissolution of the Constitutional Court (i.e. for a return to undisguised authoritarian rule); and the tone of the debates in Congress could hardly fall to a lower level. Spanish democracy is ailing, but for anyone who has observed it with attention since its inception, the confirmation of what was once merely an inkling can hardly be cause for surprise.

In the 1970s, Spain’s bid for democratic legitimacy and admission to the European Community required the restoration of Basque and Catalan self-government, which Franco had suppressed. At the time, the provision of institutional guarantees for these nationalities was seen as a requirement of justice meant to correct decades of persecution. The Basque Country and the semi-Basque region of Navarre emerged from the transition with an important privilege. They collect their own taxes. From this revenue they transfer an amount to Madrid and use the rest as they see fit. Fiscal independence in the hands of a responsible government led to a clear improvement in the Basque standard of living and, and, not incidentally, to a certain insulation from the current crisis. Catalonia, with a larger economy, was denied that privilege. In fact the opposite occurred: its economy was made hostage to a state that, under the pretext of redistribution, severely impaired its growth and development.  Since Franco’s death, Catalonia’s leading position within Spain and its capacity to compete globally (it still accounts for 25% of all Spanish exports) have been eroded through an unfair fiscal burden and hostile decisions in matters of territorial development. Year after year, Spain’s government has defaulted on the execution of public works approved for Catalonia in the former's budget, thus retarding the latter's modernization and straining its finances to the breaking point.  Rajoy’s government will not even honor the state’s appropriations for Catalonia mandated by current fiscal law. In a display of cynical reason, the central Spanish government now blames regional governments for Spain’s public debt, obscuring the fact that the combined debt of the 17 autonomous communities is only 16% of the total, while that of the central government accounts for 76%. The remaining 8% is municipal debt. By shifting the responsibility for the crisis to the regional governments, Rajoy is patently using the current emergency as an opportunity to dismantle the structure of regional autonomy enshrined in Spain's current constitution.  The result of course would be to abrogate the limited degree of self-government that Spain only grudgingly conceded to Catalonia in the former's hour of democratic need.

As usual, propaganda is based on plausibility. It is true that Spain’s system of regional governments is costly, and a revision is long overdue. Most autonomous communities were invented ad hoc by the central government for the purpose of generalizing the autonomy principle and dissolving Catalonia’s historic claim to autonomy within a so-called “autonomous common regime” that as popularized at the time as “coffee for all.”  While history required the articulation of a state with two or three autonomous regions based on tangible cultural differences, Madrid’s politicians created 17 “autonomous communities” by administrative fiat. And since Madrid was unwilling to slim down the state’s bureaucracy, parallel administrations were created, adding to the cost of government. Since the beginning, the unwieldy system of “autonomous governments” was financed through the transfer of funds from the most productive to the least productive regions with a regularity and volume that ended up crippling the donors. These have been, with predictable monotony, the regions on the Mediterranean seaboard that possess a distinct culture and language: Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. So striking is the fiscal imbalance that for decades Spanish governments have refused to publicize the figures, even though this refusal constitutes the violation of a standing congressional order to make them available. But how the cookie crumbles is made evident by the president of Extremadura’s admission that a new fiscal deal for Catalonia would be catastrophic for his region. Catalonia suffers from a political paradox. As a “wealthy region” in a “poor country,” it never benefited from the European structural and cohesion funds of which Spain was the largest recipient, but instead became a net contributor on a level higher than France. Economists calculate that the Catalan fiscal deficit, that is, the percentage by which taxation exceeds allocations, rests anywhere between 8 and 10% of Catalonia’s GDP (roughly $20 billion annually for a region of 7,000,000 people.) Over time, the magnitude of such siphoning of resources impacts an economy, leading to obsolescent infrastructure, the impoverishment of the service sector, the deterioration of the educational system, and the inevitable loss of competitiveness. Catalonia’s public debt in 2011 was $52 billion, approximately 20.7% of the Catalan GDP. Two and a half years of a balanced fiscal relation with the rest of Spain would have sufficed to mop up all Catalan public debt.

Spain’s troubles were political before they became financial, but politicians will not resolve them. The country needs to be further integrated into the European structure through a common fiscal policy and a commonly regulated banking system; more importantly however, Spain needs to be politically accountable to Brussels and meet European standards of justice and democratic procedure.  This would do much to bring about economic rationality. A country on the brink of default cannot afford to build unprofitable fast-speed trains to provincial destinations, boondoggle expressways in a radial system stemming from Madrid, or airports without air traffic.  Nor should it insist on an extravagant freight train route that requires drilling through the thick of the Pyrenees instead of building a cheaper and commercially sensible coastal itinerary, a plan that, without Brussels' better judgement, the Spanish government would have rejected for the ostensible purpose of isolating Barcelona’s harbor, the busiest in Spain.  The senseless megalomania and castigation of specific territories cannot be explained along traditional ideological lines — such projects have been developed by socialists and conservatives alike — but by long-term cultural continuities. The recent bout of megalomania was buoyed by billions in structural funds, while the territorial grievances, notorious to anyone who is conversant with Spanish history, went on as before, shielded by Spain’s membership in the core Western institutions.

Spain would gain much from trading sovereignty for rationality, and from being forced to invest for economic rather than merely symbolic payoff. A dishonored monarchy, a politicized justice, and a corrupt party system are as much toxic assets as those the banks hold, and if intervention is inevitable, the discipline mandated from outside ought to touch the country to the quick. If and when Brussels decides to put the Iberian house in order, it ought to recognize which administrations have practiced fiscal restraint and are capable, under good governance, of meeting European standards. Spain could well be the last ditch of the European monetary union and of the political union itself. But timely political reform in Spain could be the last opportunity not only to keep the country within the EU but also to hold it together as a meaningful political project.

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) congratulates Landry Signé for his recent awards in recognition of his pioneering work to advance democratic causes and community leadership in North America. Signé is a 2011-2013 Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at CDDRL where he researches the conditions that create, maintain and sustain democracies and economic development. His Banting fellowship is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Prior to joining CDDRL, Signé was a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on African Studies.

On May 19, Signé received the Outstanding Visionary Leadership Award during the 2012 African Network Conference in San Jose, California. Signé was recognized by The African Network for his pioneering role in promoting entrepreneurial opportunities, accountable governance, and economic development for Africa in the Silicon Valley and North America. Signé has been helping to redefine Africa as a continent of economic opportunity through an innovative course he teaches at Stanford Continuing Studies bringing Silicon Valley executives and Stanford students together to spur business and investment strategies.

A week earlier, Signé was awarded the Jury’s Favorite Award for Vision and Inspiration by the African Business Network during their Excellence Vision and Inspiration Gala in Montreal, Canada. Signé was bestowed with this award for his work with the Political Commission of Montreal, the United Nations Association of Canada-Montreal, and the United Nations Missions Committee in New York to champion projects to advance political, economic and social development. One of the projects he supported reinforced the importance of art for economic development, and resulted in a $26 million grant allocated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Art by the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada.

Signé dedicated the award to, “All the people and institutions who - undercover or in the spotlight - contribute through their visionary actions to improve citizen involvement, to create more individual and collective opportunities, and to generate a better and happier life for the current and next generations.”

Signé completed his PhD in political science in 2010 with the Award of Excellence from the University of Montreal, and has been bequeathed the Award for Best International PhD Dissertation of 2011 by the Center for International Studies and Research. Signé is a member of the Stanford University Provost's Advisory Committee on Postdoctoral Affairs and is the co-chair of the Stanford University Postdoctoral Association whose mission is to represent and advocate for the interests of the postdoctoral scholar community, and to enrich their experience at Stanford University.

A frequent commentator on issues of African governance and economic development, Signé has appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, and Afrik-News.

During the annual China-Japan-Korea summit, held mid-May in Beijing, Premier Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, and President Lee Myung-bak announced their intention to begin negotiating a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA).

The news closely followed the implementation of the Korea-U.S. FTA and negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA championed by the Obama administration, both taking place in March. It potentially places Japan and Korea on awkward footing as they balance relations with China, an important regional leader, and the United States, an ally of many decades’ standing.

What could this proposed East Asia FTA mean for the United States, for the three countries pursuing it, and for global economics and security?

Joseph L. C. Cheng, a visiting professor at Shorenstein APARC and a professor of international business at the University of Illinois where he also serves as director of the CIC Center for Advanced Study in International Competitiveness, suggests the FTA could have a far greater impact beyond boosting economic growth in East Asia. Possible outcomes range from reducing resources for strengthening the U.S. domestic infrastructure to providing leverage for negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program.

In a recent interview, Cheng spoke in-depth about the nuances of the trilateral East Asia FTA.

If the proposed China-Japan-Korea FTA is realized, what could the impact be on the U.S. economy and economic policy?

These three countries are currently ranked the second (China), third (Japan), and fifteenth (Korea) largest economies in the world. With a combined population of 1.5 billion, they account for about 20 percent of the world’s GDP and total exports. In 2011, their three-way trade reached $690 billion, and the United States sold them a total of $213.6 billion worth of merchandise (over 14 percent of U.S. total world exports in 2011).

If realized, the proposed FTA could have both negative and positive effects on the U.S. economy. On the negative side:

• First, cross-border trade and investment would most likely increase among China, Japan, and Korea, but not with the United States. Whether the FTA would result in decreased U.S. trade and investment with these countries and by how much will depend on the range of industries and product categories covered by the FTA and how rigorously it will be enforced. Most of this negative impact from the FTA would be with China. This is because the United States already has an FTA with Korea, and Japan (along with Canada and Mexico) is likely to join the U.S.-led TPP FTA which is currently under negotiation.

• Second, if the FTA did cover the industries and product categories that disadvantage the United States, small-and-medium sized export firms (SMEs) would be the most negatively affected by the decline in U.S. exports to the three member countries. This is because over 90 percent of U.S. SMEs do not conduct manufacturing overseas (and thus cannot produce and sell in these three countries to benefit from the FTA), and their market access is dependent on the U.S. government’s trade initiatives. The SMEs account for about one-third of total U.S. exports and provide most of the domestic job growth.

• Third, not only would the three member countries import less from the United States, they would also invest less in the United States (but invest more in one another). When announcing the FTA talks, China’s Premier Wen expressed hope that Japan and Korea will be the primary destination for China’s outward investment. This decline in foreign investment from the three member countries in the United States could have a negative impact on domestic job growth and funding for business expansion and public revitalization projects (e.g., infrastructure replacement and modernization).

• Fourth, because FTAs disadvantage trade from non-member countries, U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) could be forced to produce and sell goods from their plants in the three member countries (instead of those in the United States) in order to stay competitive. This would mean moving jobs overseas. Also, because these member countries have bilateral FTAs with many other countries in Asia (e.g., the China-ASEAN FTA introduced in January 2010), U.S. MNCs might find it beneficial to increase production there (China, Japan, and Korea) for export to the region. Again, this would result in transfers of jobs overseas and also reduced investment by U.S. MNCs at home (which could help create jobs and grow the domestic economy).

On the positive side, the proposed FTA could result in fewer imports from the member countries into the United States. This would provide an opportunity for U.S. manufacturers, particularly the SMEs, to increase their domestic production to fill the demand-gap and recapture the market-share that has been lost to imports. If U.S. manufacturers could produce unique, high-quality products at an affordable price, they would be able to not only attract new domestic customers and keep them but also open new export markets in other countries, including China, Japan, and Korea.

As for potential impact on U.S. economic policy, the Obama administration might feel the need to speed up the TPP negotiations (which might require making the final FTA less comprehensive and less rigorous than originally proposed) and put the agreement in place ahead of the proposed China-Japan-Korea FTA. Also, the administration might be pressured by the business community to start FTA talks with China, as has been suggested by Maurice Greenberg, chairman of Starr International Company Inc. and former AIG chief. These FTA talks will take years to conclude and implement. In the meantime, the United States should introduce new economic policies to revitalize the domestic manufacturing sector and help position it for enhanced international competitiveness.

Could there be an impact on the struggling economies of Europe?

The proposed FTA would most likely have a similar impact on Europe, namely decreased trade and investment with the three member countries of China, Japan, and Korea (assuming the agreement included industries and product categories that disadvantage Europe). Because of Europe’s worsening debt crisis, the negative impact there would likely be greater than it would be on the United States. Currently, the European Union (EU) has an FTA with Korea, but not with China or Japan. Also, with the exception of Norway, none of the European countries is in FTA talks with China. Switzerland is the only European country with an FTA with Japan. This is not good news for Europe if it wishes to benefit from increased trade and investment with China, Japan, and Korea.

Is there a potential upside for the global economy?

Most of the expected economic benefits resulting from the proposed FTA will go to the three member countries of China, Japan, and Korea. The Chinese government estimates that the FTA could raise China’s GDP by up to 2.0 percent, Japan by 0.5 percent, and Korea by 3.1 percent. The Korean finance ministry estimates that the FTA could boost the nation’s economic growth by up to 3.0 percent and create as many as 330,000 jobs over a decade. This is consistent with the experience of the introduction of the China-ASEAN FTA in January 2010, which caused trade in the region to increase by about 50 percent in that year.

The expected economic growth in the three member countries (and the Asia-Pacific region) could, in the longer term, lead to increased imports from the United States and other Western countries for goods and services that they cannot produce or do not produce enough of. This might result from increased spending by individual consumers on luxury and unique goods and/or government purchase of advanced technologies for infrastructure projects. The increased imports would certainly help lift the global economy by creating more jobs and generating greater incomes in the exporting countries.

When announcing the proposed FTA in Beijing, the three leaders from the member countries made it a point that they will work together to ease regional disputes and tensions, particularly on the Korean Peninsula. They also expect the FTA to help provide a comprehensive and institutional framework in which a wide range of bilateral and trilateral cooperation would evolve, with the goal of maintaining the Asia-Pacific region as the growth center of the world economy. (Currently over 50 percent of the world’s economic growth is taking place in Asia.) To the extent that this can be accomplished, the proposed FTA will have farther-reaching consequences than being just a regional trade agreement.

What is driving the announcement about the intended FTA at this specific point in time?

It is not clear if the announcement was purposefully timed to meet certain strategic objectives. However, a number of factors and recent developments suggest that the timing is quite beneficial to the member countries.

First, the three countries had been in discussion about the proposed FTA for over ten years prior to the announcement. Two of the three principals, China’s Premier Wen and Korea’s President Lee will be leaving office by year’s end and would certainly like to be remembered as architects of this important treaty by participating in its announcement. 

Second, the deteriorating economic crisis in the EU and the slow recovery of the U.S. economy make it very clear to the three leaders that they need to stimulate internal consumption and investment to maintain economic growth in their respective countries. Announcing the proposed FTA now helps ease concerns about the global economy and signal to international investors that the Asia-Pacific region will remain the center of the world’s economic growth for many years to come.

Third, from China’s standpoint, the recent scandals of Bo Xilai and the blind civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng brought negative attention to the country for the entire month of April. The mid-May announcement of the proposed FTA helps redirect the world’s attention to the economic success of China and its influential role in shaping the future of the global economy.

Finally, the recent threat of a third nuclear test from North Korea might have been another contributing factor to having the announcement made sooner rather than later. China might have thought about the proposed FTA as a message to North Korea that China is now working closely with South Korea and Japan to maintain the Asia-Pacific region as the world’s center of economic growth, and thus any new nuclear provocation from North Korea would be considered an unfriendly act.

What could be the biggest challenges to the ratification of the FTA? Can they be overcome?

Historical animosity and territorial disputes between the three member countries will be the greatest challenges to both the FTA negotiation and its final ratification. Korea has recently suspended the signing of agreements on military cooperation with Japan because of public opposition, particularly from the older generations who have bitter memories of Japan’s colonial rule. Japan and China have long been in dispute over territorial claims in the East China Sea. Both Japan and Korea have also been calling for China to put more pressure on North Korea to stop further nuclear provocations. 

In addition to these historical and political obstacles, there will be opposition from interest groups within each country against the proposed FTA for fear of negative economic consequences. For example, Chinese manufacturers might not want increased imports from Japan and Korea to reduce their market share. Japan currently has a big surplus from trade with Korea; thus Korea might not want to have more imports from Japan. Also, the three member countries are quite unbalanced in terms of the liberalization steps that they have already taken and they also have different visions for their economic future.

It will take great diplomatic skills on the part of the negotiators to overcome these challenges. The FTA talks will be difficult and take many years to produce an agreement. Alternatively, the three member countries might choose to smooth the negotiations by avoiding sensitive issues and making the agreement far less comprehensive and rigorous. This would, however, also make the FTA less economically important and consequential. 

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Li is interested in the design of macroeconomic policies that mitigate financial frictions in firm investments. Her current research focuses on quantifying the cost of resolving insolvent firms and its impact on aggregate output in China and Japan.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Li was a Japanese Government Scholarship holder, and graduated with a BA and an MA in economics from the University of Tokyo.