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Featured researches published by Ferdi De Ville.


Journal of European Public Policy | 2017

Why TTIP is a game-changer and its critics have a point

Ferdi De Ville; Gabriel Siles-Brügge

ABSTRACT The heated scholarly and public debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has centred predominantly on two questions. Firstly, is there something particularly special about TTIP, other than the fact that it involves the world’s largest trading partners? And, secondly, is the concern about TTIP’s deleterious effects justified? The starting point for our argument is that understanding an agreement like TTIP requires an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of reality. TTIP is ultimately novel in terms of the regulatory scope of its provisions, and it is problematic because it subtly promotes the (socially constructed) interests of those who merely see regulation as inefficient ‘red tape’.


New Political Economy | 2015

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Role of Computable General Equilibrium Modelling: An Exercise in ‘Managing Fictional Expectations’

Ferdi De Ville; Gabriel Siles-Brügge

Negotiations between the worlds two largest trading partners, the European Union (EU) and the USA, on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been ongoing since July 2013. Anticipating the controversy the agreement has sparked, EU trade policy-makers in the European Commission have put considerable effort into discursively framing the agreement on their terms. Drawing on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models of the agreements likely impact, the central claim has been that the TTIP promises to deliver much-needed ‘growth and jobs’ without stretching the public purse at a time of austerity. Our main argument in this article, drawing on the insights of the economic sociologist Jens Beckert, is that these CGE models – and the figures they have produced – represent an important exercise in ‘managing of fictional expectations’. The models make overly optimistic predictions about the ability of the EU and the USA to eliminate regulatory barriers to trade – which are unlikely to be realised in the face of considerable political opposition – and also downplay the potential deregulatory impact of an agreement. Rather than act as a reliable guide to future outcomes, we thus show that these models serve the pro-liberalisation agenda of the European Commission and other advocates of the TTIP.


Archive | 2016

Rising powers and economic crisis in the Euro area

Ferdi De Ville; Mattias Vermeiren

In this book Ferdi De Ville and Mattias Vermeiren examine the linkages between the economic crisis in the euro area and the rise of Brazil, India and China (BICs) in the global monetary and trading system. It draws on the insights of the comparative capitalism literature to show that the latter development has been a key source of the escalation of trade imbalances in the euro area, which are widely seen as an important cause of the financial and economic crisis in the region. By pointing to the external sources of these imbalances and the divergent institutional capacity of the euro area countries to deal with the intensified competition associated with the rise of the BICs, De Ville and Vermeiren go beyond the focus on the divergence in unit labour costs as the driving force of these imbalances. As such, this book also offers a comprehensive policy critique of the EU’s export-led growth strategy based on declining unit labour costs.


Journal of European Integration | 2016

EU trade policy: persistent liberalisation, contentious protectionism

Yelter Bollen; Ferdi De Ville; Jan Orbie

Abstract How has EU trade policy responded to the protracted economic crisis starting in 2008? Unlike during the Great Depression of the 1930s, politicians have not resorted to protectionist measures to try to contain the downturn. The response has been just the opposite, with the dominant discourse arguing that in times of austerity and private deleveraging, trade liberalisation is indispensable for restoring growth. Adopting a historical-institutionalist perspective, we argue that the crisis has had an asymmetric effect on the two most important subsystems of EU trade policy. On the one hand, the EU took a leap forward on the path of bilateral free trade liberalisation by starting negotiations with the US, Canada and Japan. On the other hand, proposals to continue with permissive reforms for the adoption of trade defence measures and to give the EU more leverage vis-à-vis emerging economies have been blocked. We thus conclude that EU trade policy after the crisis has shown asymmetric continuity, where the liberalisation trend has been resumed more radically while accompanying defensive reforms to ease the potential pain of liberalisation have run into a stalemate.


Journal of European Integration | 2012

Explaining the Genesis of a Trade Dispute: the European Union’s Seal Trade Ban

Ferdi De Ville

Abstract Why has the European Union (EU) enacted a trade ban on seal products provoking a trade dispute with Canada, while it is the most ardent supporter of the multilateral trade regime and was about to start free trade negotiations with Canada? Rational functionalist explanations of compliance with international trade rules suggest that trade officials in the EU concerned with reputation costs and exporters concerned with the risk of retaliation should have prevented the ban. This article shows from an institutionalist perspective that if the European Parliament and the Council are little concerned with reputation costs and exporters do not mobilize against regulation under uncertainty that their exports will be affected by retaliation, the agenda‐setting power of the Commission is insufficient to ensure World Trade Organization (WTO) consistency. Compliance with WTO rules is contingent on domestic political processes, and in the EU, it is dependent on inter‐ and intra‐institutional tradeoffs of WTO consistency and non‐trade objectives.Why has the European Union (EU) enacted a trade ban on seal products provoking a trade dispute with Canada, while it is the most ardent supporter of the multilateral trade regime and was about to start free trade negotiations with Canada? Rational functionalist explanations of compliance with international trade rules suggest that trade officials in the EU concerned with reputation costs and exporters concerned with the risk of retaliation should have prevented the ban. This article shows from an institutionalist perspective that if the European Parliament and the Council are little concerned with reputation costs and exporters do not mobilize against regulation under uncertainty that their exports will be affected by retaliation, the agenda-setting power of the Commission is insufficient to ensure World Trade Organization (WTO) consistency. Compliance with WTO rules is contingent on domestic political processes, and in the EU, it is dependent on inter- and intra-institutional tradeoffs of WTO consistency and non-trade objectives.


New Political Economy | 2017

Assessing the Normative Legitimacy of Investment Arbitration: The EU’s Investment Court System

Lisa Diependaele; Ferdi De Ville; Sigrid Sterckx

ABSTRACT The inclusion of an investment chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has encountered significant opposition, especially in relation to Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). In this context, the EU has proposed several changes to the traditional procedures, including the creation of an investment court. The need to reform ISDS has long been recognised, but the key question remains: What is required for such a dispute settlement mechanism to have legitimate authority? Drawing from insights in legal theory and political philosophy, we examine what could be adequate criteria for the normative legitimacy of ISDS. We argue that ISDS can only be minimally legitimate if there are sufficient procedural safeguards to ensure fair access to the proceedings and equal consideration of their interest for all those affected by investment tribunals’ or courts’ decisions. Furthermore, we emphasize the need to look beyond what potential beneficial and adverse consequences of ISDS are, and explain that the appointment of the judges by the state parties and the reintroduction of some control of the state parties over dispute settlement outcomes are not sufficient to guarantee the normative legitimacy of ISDS.


European journal of risk regulation | 2016

Sustainable development in TTIP: a highest common denominator compromise?

Ferdi De Ville; Jan Orbie; Lore Van Den Putte

The impact of TTIPleaks on the negotiations of and debate about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has been more limited than its name and announcement would lead us to expect. This is, first, because the leaked ‘consolidated documents’ only show the European Unions (EU) and United States’ (US) positions on a number of negotiating areas but does not unveil concessions made by either side in the pursuit of a compromise. Therefore, it contains little surprising information for observers of the negotiations. But a second reason for the lack of uproar is that for only about half of the expected chapters in TTIP a text has been leaked, either because there is no consolidated text yet for the other issues in the negotiations or because Greenpreace did not get hold of it. One of the chapters lacking in the TTIPleaks is on ‘Trade and Sustainable Development’. This is an interesting issue area because the advocates often argue that this chapter will help ensure that TTIP upholds and strengthens social and environmental standards.


Archive | 2016

External Imbalances and Varieties of Capitalism in the Euro Area

Ferdi De Ville; Mattias Vermeiren

This chapter discusses the main diagnoses of the euro crisis and the consequent remedies in the macroeconomics and comparative political economy literature. It is argued that both approaches view the euro crisis as the result of endogenous processes. The defects of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) leading to one-size-fits-none monetary policy at the supranational level and divergent domestic capabilities to keep wages in check are argued to have resulted in inflation differentials between the north and south of the euro area and consequent internal trade imbalances. The varieties of capitalism literature explains why certain member states (coordinated market economies) have been better equipped to retain and strenghten their competitiveness and trade balances than others (mixed-market economies) based mainly on the characteristics of domestic labor market and industrial relations institutions allowing them to excercise wage restraint. We argue that these valuable accounts are too much inward-looking and lack attention for extra-regional imbalances and how these can be explained by and interact with other domestic structural-institutional factors such as skill-formation and innovation regimes and the (resulting) economic structures (export basket, quality and market orientation).


Archive | 2016

CMEs: Profiting from the BICs’ Industrialization

Ferdi De Ville; Mattias Vermeiren

This chapter discusses the impact of the rise of the BICs on the CMEs’ external trade balances. It is shown that the CMEs, and Germany in particular, have accumulated significant trade surpluses not only inside the euro area but also extra-regionally, and that they have been able to re-orient their exports after the crisis toward the rest of the world. We argue that labor cost dynamics and wage-setting institutions cannot satisfactorily explain the remarkable extra-regional trade performances of the CMEs. This success is to significant extent related to non-price competitiveness factors, more specifically their trade structures in terms of product composition and quality, rooted in the specific skill and innovation regimes of northern euro area member states. These factors have allowed the CMEs to suffer less and profit more from the rise of the BICs than the other euro area member states. Indirectly, they have managed to relatively escape the negative effects of the appreciation of the euro as a consequence of monetary policies of emerging markets. Directly, their production has confronted relatively limited export competition from and high import demand by the BICs. After the crisis, their export strength has allowed them to deflect the adjustment burden completely to the southern euro area and shape reform of the EMU in a way that further reinforces their export interests in the short term, while generating negative spillovers and contradictions in the longer term.


Archive | 2016

MMEs: Outcompeted by Low-Cost Economies

Ferdi De Ville; Mattias Vermeiren

This chapter discusses the extra-regional trade performances of the MMEs in the context of the rise of the BICs. We show that trade deficits outside of the euro area have until recent years been almost as important as within the region. These negative external trade balances can be related to the very low export shares of the southern member states, especially vis-a-vis the BICs, which also assume a significant role in their external deficits. While labor costs have risen excessively in MMEs and this can be partly explained by the lack of coordinative wage-setting institutions, this has not been fully translated into loss of price competitiveness. The poor export performances of the MMEs and resulting high trade deficits should also be related to non-price competitiveness factors, more specifically their trade structures (poor export composition, quality and geographical orientation) rooted in skill-formation and innovation regimes. Because of these deficient export bases and underlying institutions, the southern euro area member states have been negatively affected by the appreciation of the euro that was reinforced by monetary policies of the BICs as well as by direct competition from the BICs in those products in which they held comparative advantages. After the crisis, Greece, Spain and Portugal have been able to spectacularly reduce their trade deficits. This has succeeded due to a combination of a reduction of intra-regional imports and increase in extra-regional exports. The rebalancing of unit labor costs (ULC) within the euro area cannot sufficiently explain the reduction of the MMEs trade deficits. Rather, the depreciation of the euro seems to have been the driver for the increase in extra-regional exports but should be considered a necessary but insufficient condition for a sustainable recovery.

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