Stanford University

Agriculture

Sheep and Socio-Economic Growth in Europe

Although sheep are only one of the important domesticates exploited in many parts of the world, it has played a near-paradigmatic role throughout the emergence and spread of European civilization. Domestic sheep and goat unambiguously originate from Southwest Asia where their wild ancestors live. Therefore sheep distributions across Europe represent an element of evident diffusion in the otherwise complex neolithization process. The numerical increase in sheep remains can be spectacular at Early Neolithic sites in Central Europe, even in habitats less than favorable for sheep. In various instances mutton outcompeted locally available pork in the diet as shown by animal remains from archaeological sites across Eurasia. Reasons for this trend seem to be diverse, ranging from greater pastoral mobility through secondary products (wool and dairy) to side effects of religious regulations such as the Iron Age taboo imposed on pork first documented in Judaism. Concomitant strict regulations concerning the “proper” way of slaughtering livestock link the increased dietary importance of sheep to the emergence of metallurgy, i.e. availability of quality blades.

Image of László Bartosiewicz


László Bartosiewicz has worked as an archaeozoologist since 1979. He has studied animal-human relationships during various time periods in several countries of Europe and some in the Near East as well as South America. His research often has a cultural anthropological focus viewing animals as material culture. Recently he has specialized in animal palaeopathology. He published three books and over 350 academic papers. Following teaching positions at the Universities of Budapest (Hungary) and Edinburgh (UK), he currently heads the Osteoarchaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University (Sweden). He was twice elected president of the International Council for Archaeozoology (2006–2014).

 

 

This event is part of the Origins of Europe Series and is sponsored by the Stanford Archaeology Center and co-sponsored by The Europe Center.

Archaeology Center, Building 500

László Bartosiewicz Speaker Stockholm University
Lectures

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

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Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, biology, and history, Ian Morris, author of the best-selling Why the West Rules--for Now, explains why. The result is a compelling new argument about the evolution of human values, one that has far-reaching implications for how we understand the past--and for what might happen next.

Fundamental long-term changes in values, Morris argues, are driven by the most basic force of all: energy. Humans have found three main ways to get the energy they need--from foraging, farming, and fossil fuels. Each energy source sets strict limits on what kinds of societies can succeed, and each kind of society rewards specific values. In tiny forager bands, people who value equality but are ready to settle problems violently do better than those who aren't; in large farming societies, people who value hierarchy and are less willing to use violence do best; and in huge fossil-fuel societies, the pendulum has swung back toward equality but even further away from violence.

But if our fossil-fuel world favors democratic, open societies, the ongoing revolution in energy capture means that our most cherished values are very likely to turn out--at some point fairly soon--not to be useful any more.

Originating as the Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University, the book includes challenging responses by novelist Margaret Atwood, philosopher Christine Korsgaard, classicist Richard Seaford, and historian of China Jonathan Spence.

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Princeton University Press
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Ian Morris
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978-0691160399

The Europe Center October 2014 Newsletter

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The Europe Center Graduate Student Grant Competition

Call for Proposals:

The Europe Center is pleased to announce the Fall 2014 Graduate Student Grant Competition for graduate and professional students at Stanford whose research or work focuses on Europe. Funds are available for Ph.D. candidates from across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to prepare for dissertation research and to conduct research on approved dissertation projects. The Europe Center also supports early graduate students who wish to determine the feasibility of a dissertation topic or acquire training relevant for that topic. Moreover, funds are available for professional students whose interests focus on some aspect of European politics, economics, history, or culture; the latter may be used to support an internship or a research project. Grants range from $500 to $5000.

Additional information about the grants, as well as the online application form, can be found here.  The deadline for this Fall’s competition is Friday, October 17th. Recipients will be notified by November 7th. A second competition is scheduled for Spring 2015.
 

Highlights from 2013-2014:

In the 2013-2014 academic year, the Center awarded grants to 26 graduate students in departments ranging from Linguistics to Political Science to Anthropology. We would like to introduce you to some of the students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured students this month are Michela Giorcelli (Economics) and Orysia Kulick (History).

Giorc

elli’s project, “The Effects of Management and Technology on Firms’ Productivity: Lesson from the US Marshall Plan in Italy,” explores the role of productivity in the process of economic growth and development. It is typically difficult to isolate the causal effect of management training programs and technology transfer programs on business productivity because these measures are often endogenous to other unobservable factors. To overcome this concern, Giorcelli employed a unique research design to analyze the effects of the Marshall Plan’s transfer of US management and technology to Italian firms in the aftermath of WWII. 

Image of Archivio
Giorcelli collected and digitized balance sheets data for 6,035 Italian firms eligible to receive the US management and technology support between 1930 to 1970. She then exploited an exogenous change in policy implementation that randomly determined which firms actually received Marshall Plan support. Preliminary results show that all firms that received either support significantly increased their productivity. Moreover, firms that received both sets of support simultaneously showed an additional increase in productivity, suggesting that management and technology are complementary in production. (Inset: The archives where Giorcelli conducted her research)

Kulick’s project, “Regionalism in Ukraine and the Long Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1954--2014,” used original historical evidence collected from Ukrainian archives to study the political nexus between party elites in Kiev and in Moscow. For example, Kulick gleaned insights about the political economy of postwar industrial reconstruction from local archives in Dnipropetrovsk, a metallurgical powerhouse in the region. Previously inaccessible primary sources indicate that as the Soviet economy grew more complex, the state apparatus became more independent. Consequently, managerial specialists needed more autonomy to meet deadlines and quotas, making them--rather than the party--the source of innovation in postwar Ukraine. 

According to Kulick, “my research this summer opened up new ways of thinking about the relationship between the party and the institutions that made up the Soviet state and economy.” Kulick used insights from Soviet-era KGB documents to shed new light on the current propaganda emanating out of the Kremlin. For example, she found that the long-term pull toward greater improvisation has had ongoing consequences. The current conflict is not just about Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation; it is also the byproduct of the dissolution of intransigent and poorly understood late Soviet-era institutions. (Inset: Kulick documents military mobilization during her summer in Ukraine)
 

Undergraduate Internship Program: Highlights

The Europe Center sponsored four undergraduate student internships with leading think tanks and international organizations in Europe in Summer 2014.  Laura Conigliaro (International Relations, 2015) joined the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), while Elsa Brown (Political Science, 2015), Noah Garcia (BA International Relations and MA Public Policy, 2015), and Jana Persky (Public Policy, 2016) joined Bruegel, a leading European think tank. Our featured student this month is Laura Conigliaro.

During her time at CEPS, Conigliaro worked on a 68-page research paper on genetically modified organisms (GMO) policy in the European Union. In the paper, she traces E.U. legislation and policy development on GMOs from 1990 onward, and also offers conclusions for the future trajectory of the E.U.’s GMO policy. Conigliaro argues that the evolution of the E.U.’s GMO policy is a topic of extreme relevance--and difficulty--because it is the source of high-level trade conflicts between Europe and the United States. Consequently, the study of GMO policymaking can help advance our understanding of E.U. institutions, E.U. “comitology” (policy process), and E.U.-U.S. bilateral relations. 

Image of CEPS signage.
Conigliaro plans to incorporate the summer fellowship experience into her Stanford academic career, for example, by presenting research findings at Stanford’s Symposia of Undergraduate Research and Public Service (SURPS). Looking ahead, she writes: “I hope to use the knowledge and experience gained of the E.U. Institutions and policy process through the lens of the GMO issue to broaden and diversify my potential career opportunities and areas from my traditional area of concentration, East Asia, to also include the European Union.”

Recap:  Panel on Europe-Russia Relations and EU expansion

On September 30, 2014, Miroslav Lajčák, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, participated in a panel discussion in which he shared his thoughts and opinions about Europe’s relationship with Russia, and about the E.U.’s management of its future membership and associations. The Minister’s viewpoints were of particular interest, given his role in the E.U. foreign policy establishment, and the Slovak Republic’s role in the E.U. and NATO.

“The fact is that E.U.-Russia relations have worsened dramatically. That cannot be denied. But it’s not E.U. enlargement that played a major role in this.”  According to the Minister, Russia did not view E.U. enlargement with hostility, in part, because enlargement remained a transparent process. “But it all changed when Europe decided to enter into Russia’s immediate neighborhood...the former Soviet Republics. And this was something that

Miroslav Lajčák
was seen by Russia as a hostile activity, and this was what Russia fiercely resisted.” The Minister spoke candidly about the potential conflicts of concepts between the E.U.’s Eastern Partnership policy, Russia’s Near Abroad policy, and the idea of a Eurasian Union. A fundamental and ongoing source of tension pertains to the geopolitical position of Russia’s immediate neighbors: “The fact is that Russia never accepted the full sovereignty of the former Soviet Republics.” Apart from discussing the escalation of tensions between the E.U. and Russia, the Minister spoke about the role of sanctions and reforms as a path for moving forward and achieving lasting peace in Europe.

Minister Lajčák’s brought a variety of experiences to the panel. He served as the European Union Chief Negotiator for the E.U.-Ukraine and E.U.-Moldova Association Agreements, and was the European Union Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Sarajevo. Additionally, he was previously the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 

After Minister Lajčák spoke, he was followed by comments by Michael McFaul, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute; Norman Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies in the History Department and The Director of Stanford Global Studies; and Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Faculty Director of the Susan Ford Dorsey Program in International Studies.

Introducing “Immigration and Integration in Europe” Policy Lab

The Europe Center would like to introduce a new research project entitled, “Immigration and Integration in Europe:  A Public Policy Perspective,” led by Professors David Laitin and Jens Hainmueller. Duncan Lawrence has recently joined Stanford University to help direct the project. The project is part of the new Policy Implementation Lab at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The social and economic integration of its diverse and ever growing immigrant populations is one of the most fundamental and pressing policy issues European countries face today. Success or failure in integrating immigrants is likely to have a substantial effect on the ability of European countries individually and collectively as members of the European Union to achieve objectives ranging from the profound such as sustaining a robust democratic culture to the necessary such as fostering economic cooperation between countries. Various policies have been devised to address this grave political dilemma, but despite heated public debates we know very little about whether these policies achieve their stated goals and actually foster the integration of immigrants into the host societies. (Inset: David Laitin)

Professor Jens Hainmueller.The goal of this research program is to fill this gap and create a network of leading immigration scholars in the US and Europe to generate rigorous evidence about what works and what does not when it comes to integration policies. The methodological core of the lab’s research program is a focus on systematic impact evaluations that leverage experimental and quasi-experimental methods with common study protocols to quantify the social and economic returns to integration policies across Europe, including polices for public housing, education, citizenship acquisition, and integration contracts for newcomers. This work will add to the quality of informed public debate on a sensitive issue, and create cumulative knowledge about policies that will be broadly relevant. (Inset: Jens Hainmueller)

The Europe Center Sponsored Events

We invite you to attend the following events sponsored or co-sponsored by The Europe Center:

Additional Details on our website
October 8-10, 2014
“War, Revolution and Freedom: the Baltic Countries in the 20th Century”
Stauffer Auditorium, Hoover Institution
9:00 AM onward

Save the Date
April 24-25, 2015
Conference on Human Rights

A collaborative effort between the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School (IHRCRC), the Research Center for Human Rights at Vienna University (RCHR), and The Europe Center. The conference will focus on the pedagogy and practice of human rights. 

Save the Date
May 20-22, 2015
TEC Lectureship on Europe and the World 
Joel Mokyr
Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Economics and History, Northwestern University

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.

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Transparency and timeliness: the monitoring of agricultural policies in the WTO using OECD data

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Transparency in the multilateral trade system is fundamental. Monitoring the compliance of WTO members with their obligations is an important part of that transparency, and timeliness in the notification of compliance is crucial. In the case of domestic support to agriculture, the notifications of compliance with obligations has been slow and opaque. But another database exists that could both illuminate the extent to which policy instruments are correctly notified and provide a convenient way to ensure timely ‘pre-notifications’ in the event that delays occur in the future. This note shows how the OECD database can be used, for example, to shed light on the extent to which payments to producers that require production as a matter of eligibility are presently notified to the WTO as having no effect on production. We also demonstrate the feasibility of using OECD data to construct ‘pre-notifications’ by calculating the (as yet un-notified) domestic support notifications for the EU for the years 2009/10 and 2010/11.

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World Trade Review
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Timothy E. Josling
Timothy E. Josling
Klaus Mittenzwei
Klaus Mittenzwei
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Worldwide Inflation and International Monetary Reform: Exchange Rates or Interest Rates?

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Ronald I. McKinnon is an applied economist whose primary interests are international economics and economic development-with strong secondary interests in transitional economies and fiscal federalism. Understanding financial institutions in general, and monetary institutions in particular, is central to his teaching and research. His interests range from the proper regulation of banks and financial markets in poorer countries to the historical evolution of global and regional monetary systems. His books, numerous articles in professional journals, and op-eds in the financial press such as The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal reflect this range of interests.

 

 

Event Summary

Professor McKinnon first outlines the two major assumptions behind his paper (available on this page). First, that from December 2008 to August 2011, an inflow of "hot money" to emerging economies resulted from low U.S., European, and Japanese interest rates. Since then, the trend has reversed in the wake of the European banking crisis and bank lending has fallen. Second, the dollar remains the widespread central bank reserve currency despite instability in the U.S. system. 

 

McKinnon voices concern about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's zero interest rate policy, calling it an overreaction to the crisis and a "lose-lose" policy as it deters investment in the U.S. while simultaneously spurring destabilizing hot money flows to surrounding emerging markets. These countries are in turn forced to suppress interest rates to mitigate the inflows, and to build up dollar reserves to keep exchange rates in check. The zero interest rate policy also stimulates carry trades in commodities by speculators.

 

The belief that under a zero interest rate regime, inflation will stimulate the economy by bringing real interest rates to negative levels, is misplaced in McKinnon's view. He argues that this simply adds uncertainty and interferes with efficient bank intermediation, as banks hold high excess reserves and tighten lending, causing a procyclical contraction as has been seen in the United States and Europe. He contrasts this approach with China, which stabilized its economy following the “dot-com” bust by expanding rather than contracting bank credit. He criticizes U.S. pressure on China to appreciate or float its currency, asserting that these strategies would fail to reduce China's trade surplus.

 

McKinnon suggests that international reforms should target interest rates instead of exchange rates.  He recommends coordination between central banks of the major industrialized countries, especially the United States, European countries, and Japan - to collectively raise interest rates to approximately 2%. This would improve overall bank intermediation, and would benefit both central and peripheral countries in Europe.

 

A question and answer session following the talked addressed topics including: the likelihood of a coordinated effort between central banks; the potential effects of Kucinich's monetary reform proposal; the potential negative effects on real growth from carry trades, and whether this is a cause for concern; and the effects of bank borrowing trends in Europe on the European monetary system.

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CISAC Conference Room

Ronald I. McKinnon William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics (Emeritus) Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
European and Global Economic Crisis Series

The European and Global Economic Crisis: "The Eurozone Crisis and Prospects for Future European Integration or Disintegration"

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Synopsis:

Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House, delivered the following talk in The Europe Center series “The European and Global Economic Crisis”.

With measured optimism about the prospect for a way out of the current Eurozone crisis, Dr. Niblett argues that the introduction of the common Euro, seen by many in past years as a vanguard tool for European integration, is now potentially a functional wedge between ‘debtor’ and strongly capitalized nations.  

Dr. Niblett, arriving directly from participating in the World Economic Forum in Dubai, and based on Chatham House research, described the “perfect storm” of the past two decades of credit-driven growth, divergence within the EU, rising debt-to GDP ratios of member nations especially in the cases of Italy and Greece.  His analysis combines these economic details with the following:

  • Demographics – high levels of unassimilated immigrants
  • European welfare economies still distributing resources at twentieth-century levels now in the twenty-first century
  • The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-free-trade populist parties
  • The weakening of Europe’s center parties
  • The “Russification” of Europe’s East – especially in recent events in Ukraine
  • The stalled integration of Turkey into the EU

The totality of the above paints a grim portrait of Europe under the weight of nearly impossible conditions.   And yet, Dr. Niblett underlines evidence for measured optimism:

  • Ireland is making strides to reform its economy
  • Ireland’s educated and yet unemployed workforce does have the possibility to immigrate to Europe
  • The UK is finally rebalancing its state budget and market liberalization
  • France is facing, albeit with massive labor protest, its state budget levels
  • Spain will likely turn over its government in the face of its massive youth protest
  • Italy is evaluating in its political process a series of budget reforms

These are the structural side of what Dr. Niblett sees as Europe’s tools for recovery.

On the side of European practice, the Franco-German proposals for European Central Bank “bailout funds” include new rules for transparency of internal government operations. This promises innovation to make the EU into an area of political and financial transparency, and to enable the EU to engage in direct investment, as evidence is beginning to show, in the world’s emerging economies.  In this sense, Dr. Niblett sees for Europe a competitive edge over the US in engaging in world markets.

Perhaps most sanguine of Dr. Niblett’s analysis is his reading of the Eurozone crisis as a force to push the member nations of Europe further towards supra-national economic strategies.  In order to participate in the investment in emerging markets, the Benelux countries, not to mention France, Germany, and neighboring European states, are responding to the crisis by considering policy that promotes investment and outsourcing for service-sector employment, instead of export commodities which have been undercut in recent years.

There is a risk, in Dr. Niblett’s view, that Europe will respond to the Eurozone crisis by fracturing into rival “clubs” of small and large or debt-restructuring and creditor nation-states.  But the European nations, especially those currently participating in the Eurozone, have untapped capacities for growth:

  • Educated youth
  • Underemployed female laborers
  • Outstanding higher educational institutions
  • Pent-up small- and medium-enterprise markets
  • Potential for growth in the service sector labor market
  • Room for more tightly integrating and rationalizing the region’s energy market.

Those interested in further detail and analysis are invited to visit the work and productivity at:

The Europe Center, at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: http://tec.fsi.stanford.edu

Chatham House, at the Royal Institute for International Studies: http://www.chathamhouse.org/

 

Speaker bio:

Robin Niblett became the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International
Affairs) in January 2007. Before joining Chatham House, from 2001 to 2006, Dr. Niblett
was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Washington based
Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). During his last two years at CSIS, he
also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Program and its Initiative for a Renewed
Transatlantic Partnership.

Most recently Dr. Niblett is the author of the Chatham House Report Playing to its
Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World (Chatham House, 2010) and
Ready to Lead? Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World (Chatham House,
2009), and editor and contributing author to America and a Changed World: A Question
of Leadership (Chatham House/Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is also the author or
contributor to a number of CSIS reports on transatlantic relations and is contributing
author and co-editor with William Wallace of the book Rethinking European Order
(Palgrave, 2001). Dr Niblett is a frequent panellist at conferences on transatlantic
relations. He has testified on a number of occasions to the House of Commons Defence
Select Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as US Senate and House
Committees on European Affairs.

Dr Niblett is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust. He
is a Council member of the Overseas Development Institute, a member of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance and the
Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Europe.

He received his BA in Modern Languages and MPhil and DPhil from New College,
Oxford.

CISAC Conference Room

Robin Niblett Director Speaker Chatham House, Royal Institute for International Affairs
Seminars
European and Global Economic Crisis Series

Agriculture

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As the Doha Development Round trade negotiations have stalled, bilateral and regional free trade agreements have become an important alternative. These agreements have proliferated in recent years, and now all of the major trading countries are engaging in serious bilateral trade negotiations with multiple trading partners. This book provides a comprehensive study of recent bilateral and regional trade agreements. There are two main aspects. First, it surveys the most important recent agreements in relation to each substantive topic covered (e.g. intellectual property, investment, services and social policy) and provides an overview of the law being created in these areas. Second, the bilateral and regional trade agreements are explained in the context of economics, international law and international relations.

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Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
Authors
Timothy E. Josling
Timothy Josling
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