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Europe resolved : the drumbeat of strategic autonomy
No full textPublished online: 29 September 2025The transatlantic economy is the most integrated – and prosperous – in the world. That integration, and the prosperity it fosters, is only possible because of the trust between the United States and Europe. That trust has been weakening for some time; under the Trump administration it is breaking, if not already broken. As a result, European governments have little choice but to shore up the vulnerabilities that the Trump administration is exploiting with respect to trade, finance and, most importantly, European security. Those efforts will change Europe fundamentally. They will also transform the transatlantic economy and, by implication, the transatlantic partnership
Retiring in Early Modern Germany : old age provision and social mobility across the life cycle, c. 1600-1800
No full textDefence date: 09 June 2023Examining Board: Prof. Regina Grafe, (European University Institute); Prof. Giorgio Riello, (European University Institute); Prof. Alexandra Shepard, (University of Glasgow); Prof. Marco van Leeuwen, (University of Utrecht)This thesis enriches our understanding of early modern social order by looking at it through a life cyclical lens. How did one’s social rank and position vary over a lifetime? Were social roles much more temporal and life cycle-dependent than we have traditionally admitted? To do so, we investigate a thus far underestimated phenomenon: the downward social mobility individuals could experience when transitioning from middle into old age. When productivity and, therefore, income from labour decreased through ageing, many men and women faced the very real risk of impoverishment in old age, thus losing the social rank and status they had previously enjoyed. The literature on old age public charity and welfare provision is replete with evidence that many elderly were affected. This thesis dwells on this, by showing that ‘downward social mobility’ between middle and old age was a significant social phenomenon, shaping the lives of many elderly individuals as well as the very social structures and perceptions of early modern social order. This thesis studies the phenomenon through the transmission of welfare institutions in several midsized southern German cities in the 17th and 18th centuries (mainly Nördlingen, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Würzburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg). Hospitals in these cities devoted the largest share of their resources to maintaining numerous elderly in what essentially were ‘retirement homes’ ante litteram. By obtaining the right to bread and board until the last of their days in these institutions, an arrangement called corrodies, individuals could protect themselves against being reduced to beggary – most often against a considerable sum to be paid. Numerous administrative documents drawn up by the institutions’ officials upon the elderly’s admission lend themselves to carve out a story on two complementary scales: individual life stories as well as aggregate quantitative material. Unlike many studies based on institutional sources, this work is not concerned with institutional history. Instead, it concentrates on understanding how individuals were rooted in urban society in middle age and what trajectories alongside age-induced physical decline led them to the retirement home’s doorstep. We look at their occupations, their savings instruments, their wealth, and finally, at their portraits to comprehend the social rank these elderly departed in middle age and how their new life in retirement related to their former status. This process was most pronounced among urban ‘middling sort’, such as artisans, who enjoyed decent living standards for most of their adult working lives. Still, some could not maintain this when their working days ground to a halt, thus turning to a retirement home. These observations put together help reconstruct a phenomenon which profoundly shaped early modern social order and the lived experience of countless men and women
Selection or moderation? : three essays on educational inequalities
No full textDefence date: 17 March 2023Examining Board: Prof. Fabrizio Bernardi (EUI Supervisor, Universidad Nacional Española a Distancia); Prof. Leire Salazar (Universidad Nacional Española a Distancia); Prof. Jani Erola (Turku University); Prof. Juho Härkönen (EUI)This dissertation is a collection of three empirical studies motivated by the persistent intergenerational transmission of educational inequalities worldwide. Focusing on the first educational transitions in Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany, this dissertation applies a design-based approach to evaluate family SES’ moderating effects in the prevalence and penalties of grade retention, gendered traits and school entry age. The first study focuses on the prevalence and penalty of grade retention in Spain and its heterogeneity across family socioeconomic status. To study the heterogeneity in its prevalence, it uses two exogenous traits linked to a higher prevalence of grade retention: gender and school entry age. To study the heterogeneity in its penalty, it uses an Instrumental Variable approach to account for selection bias in educational transition models. Results show selection and moderation effects of family SES, suggesting that grade retention fails as a remediation policy. Using data from the Millennium Cohort Study in the UK, the second study shows how high SES families reduce the prevalence of negative traits associated with the male gender, such as externalising behaviours and school detachment. High-SES families also moderate the male penalty in enrolment into sixth-form colleges, net of students’ prior abilities. The third study investigates the school entry age penalty in Germany using data from the National Educational Panel Study. After accounting for selection into school entry age, we find no moderation in the penalty of school entry age by family SES. Results suggest that school entry age has no consequences for inequality of achievement in Germany. This dissertation brings new empirical evidence on the social stratification in prevalence and penalties in three European contexts. These exemplify two essential mechanisms for understanding the intergenerational transmission of educational inequalities
Contributions toward the remaking of the Arab intellectual scene : informal intellectual collectives in Egypt
No full textDefence date: 24 April 2023Examining Board: Prof. Olivier Roy (EUI); Prof. Agnès Favier (EUI); Prof. Gennaro Gervasio (ROMA TRE); Prof. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies)This thesis is born out of a question was raised by the 2011 revolution in Egypt: ‘why are Egyptian intellectuals silent?’ However, there was a manifest proliferation of cultural and artistic production carried out by a younger generation of artists, journalists, novelists, musicians and others. It was clear that the questions required a methodological lens that was no longer relevant in reading Egypt’s current intellectual milieu. This meant that when we asked: “where are the Egyptian intellectuals?”, we were searching for the now obsolete figure of the Nahdawi intellectual. Instead, this thesis asks a different question: If the figure of the Arab intellectual is absent, where is the debate taking place, who are the agents of these debates – the new intellectuals? What does this new and emerging, intellectual look like? The answers proposed in this thesis were found in three instances of intellectual production: parallel educational initiatives, novels, and political satire shows. This thesis will focus on agents of intellectual critique, who, being under heavy censorship of the state, are turning to the cultural field as an outlet for their intellectual production. First, this thesis traces the social conditions that underlie the genesis of Egyptian intellectual collectives, which are(1) censorship, and (2) critiquing through culture. It will subsequently detail the characteristics of these new intellectuals as (1) belonging to a separate generation, (2) distancing themselves from publicness, and (3) engaging in self-criticism. Lastly, it will explain their social role through (1) carrying out public pedagogy, (2) breaking the fourth wall between audience and politics, and (3) maintaining the revolutionary momentum through structures of abeyance
Counter-terrorism from afar : policies, governance and challenges in the prevention of radicalization and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in the European Union
No full textDefence date: 12 December 2023Examining Board: Prof. Olivier Roy (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Tahir Abbas (Leiden University, external supervisor); Prof. Stephanie Hoffman (European University Institute); Senior lecturer, Javier Argomaniz (University St Andrews)In the 21st Century, P/CVE has become one of the most popular counter-terrorism policy areas. P/CVE, Preventing and/or Countering Violent Extremism, is a pre-emptive approach to impede mobilization against political violence before it happens. It should be obvious that P/CVE constitutes an important departure point from national 20th century approaches to internal security. Firstly, it moves away from traditional counter-terrorism focused on police persecution, punitive or repressive measures, and judicial intervention. But secondly and most importantly, because P/CVE has allowed the European Union a front-row seat to enact transnational influence on a previously only national domain: internal security. Indeed, as part of counter-terrorism strategies globally, P/CVE is supported by national actors even when it implies allowing international institutions, like the European Union, some influence in managing their interior security. This thesis is an analytical account of the development and current governance of P/CVE in the European Union, tracking the transnational institutional involvement and influence of the EU in shaping the policy design of and final national implementation in this area of counterterrorism. It puts forward the following theoretical contributions. Firstly, that the EU re-framed our understanding of terrorism in order to introduce P/CVE as an adequate counter-terrorism solution. That this re-framing of terrorism required of an institutionalization process, most active between 2006 and 2011 and culminating in the creation of the RAN agency. That the success of the institutionalisation and Europeanisation process of P/CVE was possible only because of a collective EU agency. And finally, that the introduction of P/CVE as a counterterrorism policy sub-field indirectly granted the EU indirect governance capabilities on internal security matters. Content wise, the thesis starts with a methodological reflection on remote (telecommunication) methods for qualitative elite interviews. Then, this doctoral research examines, firstly, the institutionalization of P/CVE at the European level. And secondly, it interrogates the capacity of the EU to transnationally orchestrate a certain level of governance of national P/CVE regimes. Finally, this thesis maps an emerging transnational threat, online radicalization and right-wing extremism, long ignored by EU policy and governance, and provides policyactionable research on the topic.Chapter 2 'Remote qualitative methodology : from a back-up plan to a purposeful research design : using remote fieldwork in two EU case studies' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'From a back-up plan to a purposeful research design : using remote fieldwork in two EU case studies' (2022) in the journal 'Politique Européenne'.Chapter 5 'Policy challenges and emerging P/CVE : threats the right-leaning be memeing : Extremist uses of internet memes and insights for P/CVE design ' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The right-leaning be memeing : extremist uses of internet memes and insights for CVE design' (2022) in the journal 'First Monday'
Essays on money-issuing banks
No full textDefence date: 20 June 2023Examining Board: Prof. Piero Gottardi, (University of Essex, supervisor); Prof. Russell Cooper, (European University Institute, co-supervisor); Prof. Oren Levintal, (Reichman University); Prof. Cyril Monnet, (University of Bern & Study Center Gerzensee)This thesis studies the role of commercial banks’ creation of money in influencing macroeconomic outcomes such as aggregate output, credit and employment. The principal way by which money is created in the modern economy is through the act of commercial banks granting loans. In fact, typically more than 90% of countries’ money supply consists of money issued by commercial, rather than central, banks. Yet, the role of commercial banks as creators of money is traditionally abstracted from in macroeconomic models. The fact that banks, unlike other financial institutions, can create the very money they lend is deemed to be of no great significance for the real economy, barring times of financial turbulence. This thesis aims to challenge this view by showing that commercial banks’ ability to create money can have far-reaching, and potentially problematic, macroeconomic consequences through a direct influence on the price of credit, even during financially stable times—quite simply, to matter always. The first chapter presents the main theoretical framework and starts by considering an economy with a constant stock of outside money (i.e., absent a central bank). Using a cashin-advance framework extended to allow for privately issued money, I demonstrate how commercial banks’ creation of demand-deposits which thereafter circulate as a medium of exchange can result in a persistently lower real interest rate—i.e., cheaper credit. This is due to moneycreating banks’ ability to issue more credit, and their willingness to do so at lower interest rates, compared to banks limited to intermediation of existing money units only. Though other agents must be willing to hold the privately issued money, I show that this in itself provides surprisingly little discipline. Further, the drop in the real interest rate changes firms’ production decisions and hence aggregate output, potentially lowering welfare for all. Moreover, the low price of credit creates a ”credit hungry” society, characterised by high levels of indebtedness and low levels of bank capital. Importantly, the impact via credit markets can take place even in the case of a perfectly stable stock of bank-created money. In the second chapter, I extend the analysis to an environment in which a central bank can change the stock of outside money over time. Here, I demonstrate an important interaction effect: the presence of money-creating commercial banks can give the central bank a more persistent role in influencing the real interest rate than hitherto acknowledged. Specifically, the downward pressure on the nominal interest rate stemming from commercial banks’ money creation makes it unable to adequately reflect the rate of inflation, even in the long run. Thus the steady-state real interest rate becomes a function of the central bank’s inflation target, rather than exclusively determined by agents’ rate of time preference as would be the case absent commercial banks’ creation of money. This can change the direction of monetary policy’s impact on aggregate employment and output.1. Money-Issuing Banks and the Market Price of Time --
2. Money-Issuing Banks and the Effect of Monetary Polic
The abortion controversy and the German basic law : a socio-legal analysis
No full textDefence date: 13 November 2023Examining Board: Prof. Gábor Halmai (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Monika Baár (European University Institute); Prof. Susanne Baer (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin); Prof. Chiara Valentini (Università di Bologna)How terminations of pregnancies should be addressed in law is a topic that has caused and still causes controversial debates worldwide. Should abortions be criminalized to protect the embryo/fetus? Or should those pregnant against their will be able to decide without legal restrictions? The fora, in which these questions were and are addressed are not only parliaments but also constitutional and supreme courts. While some jurisdictions grant considerable leeway to legislators, others heavily limit parliament’s discretion through constitutional implications. The German one, seems to belong to the latter group. The Federal Constitutional Court struck down a legislated time-limit regulation on constitutional grounds twice (1975/1993). Both times, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the decriminalization of abortions in the first trimester unconstitutional based on the constitutional duty of the legislator to protect the embryo/fetus. But why did the judges decide like this, even though the text of the Basic Law itself is substantially silent in this regard? And why is the constitutional precedent still so influential at a time in which international organizations and constitutional orders increasingly enhance reproductive rights? In the spirit of scholarship that aims to draw a realistic picture of constitutional interpretation processes, this thesis seeks to answer these questions by applying a socio-legal approach to German constitutionalism. This new perspective on German constitutional interpreters, such as constitutional judges, legislators, constitutional scholars, and explicitly feminist lawyers and the politics among them, not only allows contextualization of the constitutional abortion judgments but also highlights the underlying principles of the German constitutional abortion law at different moments. In addition to the analysis of documents and scholarly publications, around 25 semi-structured expert interviews with participants involved in constitutional abortion debates in the 1970s, 1990s, and today were conducted to collect information that the books are silent on
Essays in development and applied economics
No full textDefence date: 05 June 2023Examining Board: Prof. Sule Alan, (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Alessandro Tarozzi, European University Institute, co-supervisor); Prof. Selim Gulesci, (Trinity College Dublin); Prof. Elise Huillery, (Université Paris-Dauphine)The abstract has been temporarily (until 2027) redacted for research purposes.In the first chapter, I study the effect of a conditional cash transfer program in Mexico on early marriage. I estimate the impact of the program leveraging its staggered implementation. The program provides monetary benefits to households, conditional on children’s school attendance. I find that, for female beneficiaries, exposure to the conditional cash transfer increased the probability of getting married. After five years of exposure to the program, beneficiary girls are, on average, almost 7 p.p more likely to be married than the control group. I find no effect for boys. These findings contrast with the previously documented positive effects of the program in education, which is usually associated with decreases in child marriage. I reconcile the simultaneous increase in marriage and education in a conceptual framework in which agents treat marriage as a normal good. I test the hypothesis that these results are driven by an income effect. I exploit the variation in household composition and find that non-eligible children in beneficiary households - who were only exposed to the increase in household income - were between 10 and 18p.p more likely to be married than their counterparts in non-treated villages. In the second chapter, we study the drivers of performance on standardised English tests, focusing on writing tasks. Through a survey experiment, we will understand how different attributes contribute to English writing quality. Understanding performance determinants is critical given that standardised English tests act as gatekeepers since they are often used for exchange programs, admission to undergraduate and graduate programs, internships, and immigration processes. In the third chapter, we look at the effect of a land registration reform on children’s investment in Ethiopia. The land registration reform has potentially increased welfare due to land tenure, allowing for more productive land use and efficient labour allocation. We hypothesise that increases in welfare allow for more investment in nutrition in the form of better nutrition. We look at four health outcomes: stunting, wasting, underweight and anaemia. We find that children are healthier in regions that took part in the land registration program. They are less likely to be stunted, wasted and underweight. Point estimates are larger for boys than girls. In the same years, some regions in Ethiopia also approved the Revised Family Code, aiming at empowering women by improving their social and economic situation. Overall, we find no significant effect of this revision on the four health outcomes, and there is suggestive evidence that the interaction between the two reforms is harmful to children’s health.1. The Effect of a Conditional Cash Transfer on Child Marriage: Evidence from Mexico --
2. The Effect of Familiarity on Performance and its Implications on Fairness --
References --
2.A Appendix --
3. The Effect of Land Rights on Childre
“Europe will be built through crises…” : Explaining the variation in the outcomes of crises of European integration
No full textAbstract extract from the beginning of the executive summary.Defence date: 31 January 2023; Examining Board: Prof. Ulrich Krotz (Sciences Po Paris, Supervisor); Prof. Adrienne Héritier (EUI); Prof. Christian Lequesne (Sciences Po Paris); Prof. Joachim Schild (University of Trier).This thesis analyzes major political crises and their outcomes throughout the entire process of European integration. Its objective is to provide a theoretically informed and empirically grounded explanation to the main research question: why has there been such variation in crisis outcomes? It finds that the nature of the crisis origin, the level of member-state interdependence, and the presence or absence of French-German leadership determine a crisis outcome. Overall, this thesis compiles a systematic and comparative analysis of major crises and crisis outcomes that so far has been missing in the scholarly literature. The findings show that crises vary greatly in their outcomes and the impact they have on European integration and the polity of what today is the European Union (EU). Other than conventional wisdom might have it, crises have been an inherent part of European integration since the beginning. Moreover, only a few crises led to ‘more’ European integration, notably to an increase in the power of supranational institutions and procedures, while the majority did not. This thesis follows a political understanding of crises and assesses change to the system, that is, to European integration and the EU polity. It scrutinizes why and how crises of European integration came about; how they were dealt with and resolved; and in which way they affected the system
"To holy people and holy ground" : Danish Latter-day Saint immigrant women, 1850-1914
No full textDefence date: 14 April 2023Examining Board: Corinna Unger (European University Institute, supervisor); Lucy Riall (European University Institute); Julie K. Allen (Brigham Young University); Donna Gabaccia (University of Toronto Scarborough)While much scholarship has been done on Danish migration, Latter-day Saints and American women in the nineteenth century, despite their well-documented presence, the voices of Danish Latter-day Saint women remain silent in these narratives. This is somewhat understandable as they do not comfortably fit into the patterns of any of these historical narratives. They do not fit generally accepted nineteenth century Danish migration patterns or motivations. In the narrative of Latter-day Saint women, rural isolation and linguistic challenges create barriers to inclusion. Likewise, this forms a barrier to the narrative of American women, paired with polygamy and religious difference. Relegating Danish Latter-day Saint women to a silent role in the wings, never allowing them a place centre-stage because they are too ‘strange’, creates a significant gap in scholarship where these three spheres overlap. Drawing on a variety of sources, my research fills the gap of these overlapping areas by moving Danish Latter-day Saint immigrant women from the margins to the centre, demonstrating how the voices and experiences of these women, contribute to and enrich these historical narratives. I explore how they operated within, shaped, and challenged three different spheres: the Scandinavian ethnic community in Utah, a community of Latter-day Saint women in Utah and the wider sphere of American women in the nineteenth century. These three layers of community were interwoven in the lives of Danish Latter-day Saint immigrant women as they negotiated their ethnic origin, religion, migration, and gender roles. I demonstrate how Danish Latter-day Saint women shaped and participated in a Scandinavian ethnic community, where their ethnic culture, language, and networks played a significant role in their daily lives. Despite barriers to inclusion, many Danish women were also engaged in wider discourses and movements both in Utah and nationally, on religion, women’s suffrage, women’s health, and medical training