The Capital: A Novel


Book Description

“A dark comedy of manners packed with urgency” (H. W. Vail, Vanity Fair), The Capital is an instant classic of world literature. A highly inventive novel of ideas written in the rich European tradition, The Capital transports readers to the cobblestoned streets of twenty-first-century Brussels. Chosen as the European Union’s symbolic capital in 1958, this elusive setting has never been examined so intricately in literature. Translated with "zest, pace and wit" (Spectator) by Jamie Bulloch, Robert Menasse's The Capital plays out the effects of a fiercely nationalistic “union.” Recalling the Balzacian conceit of assembling a vast parade of characters whose lives conspire to form a driving central plot, Menasse adapts this technique with modern sensibility to reveal the hastily assembled capital in all of its eccentricities. We meet, among others, Fenia Xenopoulou, a Greek Cypriot recently “promoted” to the Directorate-General for Culture. When tasked with revamping the boring image of the European Commission with the Big Jubilee Project, she endorses her Austrian assistant Martin Sussman’s idea to proclaim Auschwitz as its birthplace—of course, to the horror of the other nation states. Meanwhile, Inspector Émile Brunfaut attempts to solve a gritty murder being suppressed at the highest level; Matek, a Polish hitman who regrets having never become a priest, scrambles after taking out the wrong man; and outraged pig farmers protest trade restrictions as a brave escapee squeals through the streets. These narratives and more are masterfully woven, revealing the absurdities—and real dangers—of a fracturing Europe. A tour de force from one of Austria’s most esteemed novelists, The Capital is a mordantly funny and piercingly urgent saga of the European Union, and an aerial feat of sublime world literature.




Private Equity and Venture Capital in Europe


Book Description

Global financial markets might seem as if they increasingly resemble each other, but a lot of peculiar aspects qualify different markets with different levels of development. Private equity investors can take advantage of these variations. Structured to provide a taxonomy of the business, Private Equity and Venture Capital in Europe, Second Edition, introduces private equity and venture capital markets while presenting new information about the core of private equity: secondary markets, private debt, PPP within private equity, crowdfunding, venture philanthropy, impact investing, and more. Every chapter has been updated, and new data, cases, examples, sections, and chapters illuminate elements unique to the European model. With the help of new pedagogical materials, this Second Edition provides marketable insights about valuation and deal-making not available elsewhere. - Covers new regulations and legal frameworks (in Europe and the US) described by data and tax rates - Features overhauled and expanded pedagogical supplements to increase the versatility of the Second Edition - Focuses on Europe - Includes balanced presentations throughout the book




Legal Capital in Europe


Book Description

Europe has known very different systems of company laws for a long time. These differences do not only pertain to the board structures of public companies, where single-tier and two-tier structures can be distinguished, they also pertain to the principles of fixed legal capital. Fixed legal capital is not a traditional ingredient of English and Irish company law and had to be incorpo-rated into these legal systems (only) for public limited companies according to the Second European Company Law Directive of 1976. Both jurisdictions have never really embraced these rules. Against this background, the British Accounting Standards Board (ASB) and the Company Law Centre at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) have initiated and supported a study of the benefits of this legal system by a group of experts led by Jonathan Rickford. The report of this group has been published in 2004. Its result was that legal capital was costly and superfluous; hence, the Second Directive should be repealed. The British government has adopted this view and wants the European Commission to act accordingly. Against this background a group of German and European company law experts, academics as well as practitioners, have come together to scrutinise sense and benefits of fixed legal capital and all its specific elements guided by the following questions: What is the relevant legal concept supposed to achieve? What does it achieve in reality? What criticisms are there? Which proposals or alternatives are available? From the outset the group of experts has endeavoured to cooperate with foreign colleagues, which resulted in very fruitful and pleasant exchanges. This volume contains, besides an executive summary of the results, 16 essays on specific aspects of legal capital in Germany covering also neighbouring fields of law (e.g. accounting, insolvency);7 reports on fixed legal capital in other jurisdictions (France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.S.A.) addressing the same questions as the essays on German law. The British initiative disapproves of the Second Directive. The Directive does only deal with public limited companies in Europe, which is reflected in the analysis presented here. It is only concerned with the fixed legal capital of public limited companies, not with capital issues of private companies. The study has arrived at a result that differs completely from that of the Rickford group. It verifies the usefulness of the concept of fixed legal capital and wishes to convince the European Commission of the benefits of the Second Company Law Directive.




Orienting Istanbul


Book Description

Looking at the globalization, urban regeneration, arts events and cultural spectacles, this book considers a city not until now included in the global city debate. Divided into five parts, each preceded by an editorial introduction, this book is an interdisciplinary study of an iconic city, a city facing conflicting social, political and cultural pressures in its search for a place in Europe and on the world stage in the twenty-first century.




Human Capital and Regional Development in Europe


Book Description

Human capital is of utmost importance for the future of our knowledge economies and societies. However, it is unequally distributed in Europe, contributing to marked spatial patterns of economic prosperity within and across countries. In many cases, these patterns have a long history. To understand them better, it requires to go back in time, when mass schooling was starting to become a reality across Europe. Taking a long-run perspective over more than 150 years, this book shows the development and the distribution of human capital in the regions of Europe and its connections with the economy. It provides insights into recent research findings in this area, including theoretical advances and the use of new empirical data.




Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires


Book Description

Exploring the urban and planning history of cities across Central and South-eastern Europe against a background of rising nationalism, this book contains fourteen studies of individual cities. Introductory chapters in the book outline the political history of the area and how the developments in the different countries were interconnected.




Planning Europe's Capital Cities


Book Description

During the nineteenth century many of Europe's capital cities were subject to major expansion and improvement schemes. From Vienna's Ringstrasse to the boulevards of Paris, the townscapes which emerged still shape today's cities and are an inalienable part of European cultural heritage. In Planning Europe's Capital Cities, Thomas Hall examines the planning process in fifteen of those cities and addresses the following questions: when and why did planning begin, and what problems was it meant to solve? who developed the projects, and how, and who made the decisions? what urban ideas are expressed in the projects? what were the legal consequences of the plans, and how did they actually affect subsequent urban development in the individual cities? what similarities or differences can be identified between the various schemes? how have such schemes affected the development of urban planning in general? His detailed analysis shows us that the capital city projects of the nineteenth century were central to the evolution of modern planning and of far greater impact and importance than the urban theories and experiments of the Utopians.




Social Capital in Europe


Book Description

ïThis book is a must for anyone interested in the concept of social capital.Í _ Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, University of Oxford, UK ïThe quantitative survey of social capital at the regional level is an original contribution that opens a fresh geographic perspective on the literature in this field. Moving beyond the statistical representation of regional patterns the authorÍs use of case studies illuminates how local culture and historical contexts influence the manifestations of social capital. This volume breaks new ground challenging conventional analysis to advance our understanding of social capital.Í _ Neil Gilbert, University of California, Berkeley, US ïSocial Capital in Europe dismantles Robert PutnamÍs theoretical model by critically discussing the most prominent international literature in the field and by analyzing a large bulk of empirical and historical evidence. According to Putnam, the lack of social capital in the South of Italy dates back to medieval history. His ñhistorical determinismî, that seems to erase every influence of contemporary social phenomena, is largely contradicted by Ferragina.Í _ Piero Bevilacqua, University of Rome, Italy ïThe concept of social capital has enjoyed increasing vogue among social scientists. Historians have been mobilized to support the importance of this concept in various ways, and in turn they have increasingly relied on it. The historian will find in this book both a definitive guide to the theoretical debate behind this controversial concept and an impressive demonstration of how it can be used to produce comparative historical analysis.Í _ Agostino Inguscio, Yale University, US The book investigates the determinants of social capital across 85 European regions capturing the renewed interest among social capital theorists for the importance of active secondary groups in supporting the correct functioning of society and its democratic institutions. Robert Putnam merged quantitative and historical analyses, suggesting that the lack of social capital in the south of Italy was mainly due to a peculiar historical development rather than being the product of a mix of structural socio-economic factors, a conclusion that has been the subject of fierce criticism and debate. Emanuele Ferragina analyses the influence of income inequality, economic development, labour market participation and national divergence. By complementing these socio-economic explanations with a comparative historic-institutional analysis between two deviant cases (Wallonia and the south of Italy) and two regular cases (Flanders and the north east of Italy), the findings suggest that income inequality, labour market participation and national divergence are important factors in explaining the lack of social capital. Furthermore, the traditional historical determinism is refuted with the formulation of the sleeping social capital theory. Sociologists, political scientists, economic historians and scholars interested in comparative methods and European politics and policy will find this informative book invaluable.




Socio-Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities


Book Description

Growing inequalities in Europe are a major challenge threatening the sustainability of urban communities and the competiveness of European cities. While the levels of socio-economic segregation in European cities are still modest compared to some parts of the world, the poor are increasingly concentrating spatially within capital cities across Europe. An overlooked area of research, this book offers a systematic and representative account of the spatial dimension of rising inequalities in Europe. This book provides rigorous comparative evidence on socio-economic segregation from 13 European cities. Cities include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Milan, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. Comparing 2001 and 2011, this multi-factor approach links segregation to four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regimes and housing systems. Hypothetical segregation levels derived from those factors are compared to actual segregation levels in all cities. Each chapter provides an in-depth and context sensitive discussion of the unique features shaping inequalities and segregation in the case study cities. The main conclusion of the book is that the spatial gap between the poor and the rich is widening in capital cities across Europe, which threatens to harm the social stability of European cities. This book will be a key reference on increasing segregation and will provide valuable insights to students, researchers and policy makers who are interested in the spatial dimension of social inequality in European cities. Chapters 1 and 15 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 3.0 license.




The Liberalization of Capital Movements in Europe


Book Description

The member states are facing the choice between either reaping the benefits of increasing integration in a certain area - in this case the capital markets - attended by a significant reduction in national powers of autonomous decision-making and independence, or retaining this national independence enabling them to pursue their own policy objectives with the aid of instruments selected at their discretion. To this question, there is no generally valid answer. The solution is determined by the weight assigned to the benefits, on the one hand, and that assigned to the reduction in national sovereignty, on the other. This, however, is a subjective matter, which is assessed differently in the various countries. OnnoRuding, 1969 1. 1 CAPITAL LffiERALIZATION AND MONETARY UNIFICATION In the 1980s Europe made a leap forward towards the liberalization of capital movements. EEC directives were accepted by all member states obliging them to abolish all remaining exchange controls. This common objective of freedom of capital movements has been consolidated in the Treaty on European Union. Nowadays virtually all restrictions have been lifted. This stands in striking contrast to the state of affairs only a decade ago, when many countries still operated a tight regime. Although the Treaty of Rome provided for the freedom of capital movements, this objective was circumscribed by the clause that such liberalization should only be carried through to the extent necessary to ensure the proper functioning of the Common Market.