The ECB's neglected secondary mandate: An inter-institutional solution

The ECB’s secondary mandate requires it to the support broader economic policies by and in the EU. Until recently absent from the ECB strategy, the secondary mandate features prominently in the ECB’s 2021 review of its monetary policy strategy. This report asks: How should the ECB interpret the many objectives that the secondary mandate mentions? And how should it act on them? A more prominent role for its secondary mandate fits well with the new, more political role of the ECB, but it should not act on the secondary mandate alone. Why is that? The requirements that the legal text imposes on the ECB are paradoxical and difficult to reconcile. We explain the paradox in terms of three features. Firstly, the secondary mandate is binding on the ECB so that it must support the EU’s economic policies where this is possible without prejudice to price stability. However and secondly, the secondary mandate is also highly indeterminate because there are many relevant secondary objectives and ways to support them. Acting on the secondary mandate requires prioritising objectives and designing new instruments. Yet, thirdly, the ECB lacks the competence to develop its own policies to pursue the secondary objectives. For the ECB to simply choose its own secondary objectives and act on them raises severe legal and democratic objections. To resolve this paradoxical situation, we propose that the specification of the secondary objectives should take place via high-level coordination with the political institutions of the EU. Unlike direct instructions which are illegal under EU law, coordination would be compatible with central bank independence and strengthen the ECB’s ability to pursue price stability. We propose three main avenues to give shape to such interinstitutional coordination.

A Transitional Year Residency Program Provides Innovative Solutions for Unmatched Medical Students

ABSTRACT Background The transition to residency is competitive with more medical students applying for residency positions than slots available, and some will face challenges securing a position in their desired specialty. Our institution created a transitional year (TY) residency program in 2016 to help meet the needs of our medical students who did not initially secure a position in the main residency Match. Objective This report provides a brief overview of the TY program and analysis of the program's value from the inaugural 3 years (2017–2020). Methods The TY program is based at a midsized, urban, academic health center and features a tailorable curriculum emphasizing preparation for residents' specialty career plans. We used participatory action research and appreciative inquiry strategies as part of the annual program evaluation to examine TY residents' perceptions of the program's value. Stakeholder perceptions were also elicited from a purposive selection of 4 program directors and 2 key medical school education leaders. Results Internal evaluations revealed a high rate of resident satisfaction with the TY program and self-reported benefits such as increased confidence, clinical proficiency, and professional enculturation. Stakeholders valued the program as a potential pipeline for increasing physicians in the state and providing valuable direction to students' career trajectories. Conclusions Creating a TY residency program to meet the needs of unmatched medical students was feasible to implement, acceptable to residents in meeting their academic and career needs, and provided a sustainable institutional solution with benefits to multiple stakeholders.

A Permanent Constitutional Assembly

This chapter presents an institutional proposal for how citizens could be enabled—in the dual role of European and national citizens—to exercise constituent power in the EU. To explain in abstract terms what an institutional solution would have to involve, it draws on the notion of a sluice system, according to which the particular value of representative bodies consists in their capacity to provide both transmission and filter functions for democratic processes. On this basis, the chapter critically discusses the proposal that the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) should transform itself into an inter-parliamentary constitutional assembly. As this model allows constituted powers to continue to operate as the EU’s de facto constituent powers, it cannot be expected to deliver the functions of a sluice system. The chapter goes on to argue that a more convincing solution would be to turn the Convention of Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union into a permanent constitutional assembly composed of two chambers, one elected by EU citizens and the other by member state citizens. The chapter outlines the desirable features of such an assembly and defends the model against a number of possible objections.

Road Management in Denmark and Sweden

Management of roads and the institutional solution chosen is dependent on a number of factors – regulatory tradition, road network scale etc. It is likely that some solutions are more efficient than others, and in this article the Danish and Swedish institutional solutions regarding road management are compared an analysed. The aim is to explore and briefly evaluate the systems in terms of economic efficiency. It is observed that the chosen solutions on national and municipal level are much alike and appears efficient. However, for common private roads, the institutional designs are very different and seem to be based on two diametrically contrasting views on how to govern this kind of roads.

A Multimodal Multi-institutional Solution to Remote Medical Student Education for Otolaryngology During COVID-19

During the coronavirus 2019 pandemic, there has been a surge in production of remote learning materials for continued otolaryngology resident education. Medical students traditionally rely on elective and away subinternship experiences for exposure to the specialty. Delays and cancellation of clinical rotations have forced medical students to pursue opportunities outside of the traditional learning paradigm. In this commentary, we discuss the multi-institutional development of a robust syllabus for medical students using a multimodal collection of resources. Medical students collaborated with faculty and residents from 2 major academic centers to identify essential otolaryngology topics. High-quality, publicly available, and open-access content from multiple sources were incorporated into a curriculum that appeals to a variety of learners. Multimodal remote education strategies can be used as a foundation for further innovation aimed at developing tomorrow’s otolaryngologists.

Institutions, contexts, and ethnic violence in comparative perspective

Which combinations of government structures and electoral systems create better frameworks for addressing ethnic violence? Is there any one-size-fits-all institutional solution to violent ethnic conflict? Why or why not? These questions are of substantial importance to scholars and policymakers alike, but the extant literature does not provide a systematic and thorough exploration. In this article, we argue that the effects of political institutions on ethnic violence are moderated by parameters of ethnic configurations. Through a large comparative study, we find that institutions are relevant when ethnic groups are not geographically dispersed, and whether ethnic minorities face a majority group also matters. For concentrated minorities facing a majority, semi-presidential-proportional and presidential-proportional systems are more effective in reducing violence. In cases involving concentrated minorities facing no majority, parliamentary-non-proportional systems are associated with the most intense violence. We conclude that states seeking to alleviate ethnic violence by institutional engineering must take contexts seriously.

Anti-Serb war manifesto or to which aim are so-called non-governmental organizations used: An editorial

The German state propaganda service Deutche Welle (DW), recently published a new anti-Serb war manifesto, also reported by the daily press in the Republic of Croatia. The aim of the document, whose basic ideas do not belong to the person interviewed, is the creation of conditions which would favor the breakout of a new Balkan war, primarily in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, through the dissolution of the Republic of Serbia, treated incorrectly in the text as the "spoils of war" of Serbia. The purpose of the text is the weakening of the geopolitical position of Serbia through the following: 1) the severing of ties with the Serb population living in former Yugoslav republics (B&H, Montenegro); 2) the accepting of an unfavorable institutional solution for the Republic of Srpska through amendments to the Dayton-Paris peace agreement, whose guarantor is Serbia, as the successor of the FRY and Serbia & Montenegro; 3) the accepting of an unfavorable institutional solution for AP Kosovo and Metohija, whose status, until otherwise changed, is determined by Resolution 1244 of the UN Security Council; 4) the dragging of Serbia into North Atlantic integrations despite continued objections of Serbs to the idea and its proclaimed policy of military neutrality; 5) the breaking up of friendly relations and close cooperation of the Republic of Serbia with the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, which would cost our country the loss of the ability to defend almost all its vital state interests, including its territorial integrity and sovereignty, aside from losing the friendship of those who have in various situations come to our country's aid. According to the originator of this anti-Serb war manifesto, coerced, humiliated, and punished (unjustly), Serbia and the Serbs have the right to expect European integrations.

Scalp-taking

At their arrival in North America, travelers from the Old Continent were exposed to a radically different civilization. Among the many practices that captured their imagination was scalp-taking. During a battle, the Native American warrior would often stop after having killed or subdued the enemy and cut off his scalp. In this article, we develop an economic theory of this gruesome practice. We argue that scalp-taking constituted an institutional solution to the problem of monitoring warriors’ behavior in the battlefield under conditions of high information costs.