The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the CommonMediterranean Strategy? European Union Policy from a Discursive Perspective

This article assesses the European Union's Mediterranean policy from a discursive perspective and focuses specifically on the actual, identifiable impact of the Union's security discourse. In doing so it seeks to demonstrate how the Union's Mediterranean security policy has impacted on issues of identity. The implicit reference to sub-regional cooperation in the Union's Common Mediterranean Strategy may be read as a way to facilitate the lack of a clear definition of exactly what type of security or rather insecurity the European Union as a whole is trying to address when dealing with its ‘Mediterranean’.     

(NON‐)RESILIENCY OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES DURING THE 2007–2009 FINANCIAL CRISIS

We study the contraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in the United States during the recent financial crisis and show their unusual non‐resiliency, which depends in part on the global nature of the economic recession, but also on the increases in the cost of financing FDI in the economies in which the flows originate. To formally study the effects of external financial conditions on FDI in the United States, we exploit the three dimensions of a panel of US inward FDI flows organized by recipient US industries, source countries and years for the recorded flows. Changes in the cost of finance in the source countries have little or no effect on total inward flows (the sum of equity, debt and reinvested earnings) over the 2006–2010 period. However, US industries characterized by more financial vulnerability experience statistically significant variations in the debt and equity components of inward FDI flows in response to the changes in the cost of capital that occurred in the source countries during the crisis.     

The Influence of Foreclosure Delays on Borrowers' Default Behavior

This paper conducts loan‐level analysis to investigate the influence of expected foreclosure delay on a borrower's default propensity. We include the actual foreclosure times in the analysis to capture the dynamic nature of foreclosure duration. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find a statistically and economically significant impact of foreclosure delay on borrower default behavior. In the current market condition where many borrowers have negative equity, the increase in delay may make default an optimal choice for more borrowers. The negative effect of increased foreclosure delay may need to be considered when devising policies to aid troubled borrowers.