Analysis of FIVE key terms from an article published

in the European Research Studies Journal

The article I went through was published in the European Research Studies
Journal, in 2013, vol. XVI, issue 3. The subject of this article is based around
the global economic crisis and how it's affecting mainly the European Union.
The study takes it to all the way to the social level, with the focus being put on
today's economy and how many countries are at the top of the game. After
showing each paragraph, there is a point of view regarding it.
The first term I found to be of substantial importance in the article can be found
on the second to last paragraph on page number 3. The paragraph is : "Another
interesting contribution is that of Hemerijck and Vandenbroucke (2012), who
revisit social policy as productive factor" and link the euro crisis to the
imperative of defining a social Europe. They assert that the current challenge is
to make long-term social investments and medium-term fiscal consolidation
mutually supportive and sustainable under improved financial and economic
governance."
The European Commission proposes a series of actions with a view to
improving the European social model. This model is designed to promote full
employment, economic dynamism and greater social cohesion and fairness in
the European Union. It is based on a series of measures designed to reinforce
social policy as a productive factor: employment and quality of work, the
knowledge-based economy, the social situation in the Member States,
enlargement and internationalisation.
The second and third term can be found at page number 12 in the following
paragraph : "Two main effects of the global economic and financial crisis can be
identified for the social security systems: (1) due to higher unemployment, the
expenditures of social insurance are increasing and (2) tax and contribution
revenues are falling as a consequence of lower economic growth. They
constitute a serious stress test for the European welfare states and for the EU
principle of social solidarity.".
The key terms here are "stress test" and "social solidarity".

Stress testing has become an essential and very prominent tool in the analysis of
financial sector stability and development of financial sector policy. Starting
with 2010 stress test led by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors
(CEBS), and reinforced by 2011 stress test and the bank recapitalization exercise
led by the European Banking Authority (EBA), the output of EU wide stress
tests has been viewed as essential information on the health of the system. The
2014 ECB stress test model will regain the confidence and trust of the
population, investors and as well the bank shareholders future commitment in
the European banking system.
Informal organizations do not want to act in a fashion complementing statedriven social protection. They reject the state and charity activities of the
business sector, they want to treat the beneficiaries of their activities as
participants in the collective production and distribution of social assistance, and
view social solidarity in the context of the economic crisis as part of a wider
political movement to construct alternative forms of social and economic life.
In brief, since 2010 the economic crisis has functioned as a catalyst which has
revitalized Greek civil society, particularly with regard to social solidarity, and
has allowed new informal types of civic-minded activity to emerge.
The fourth term can be found at page number 6 and is the following : "The level
of GDP was also used for an image of the general economic situation. The
complete list of these indicators is presented in Table 2. Our objective is to
identify to which classical social model (described by Sapir, 2005) the EU states
belong in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. The classical European
social (sub) models are presented in Annex 1.".
The international economic crisis that evidently hit Europe especially hard,
threatening the very survival of its single currency, the Euro, and possibly the
European Union (EU) itself, has cast in a new light the central issues dominating
debates over Europe's diverse social models in the two decades prior to the
crisis. The term "social models" is commonly understood as referring to the
constellation of institutions comprising employment relations, social policy, and
skill formation regimes. The main idea is about how these institutions jointly
influence the functioning of labor markets. The issues in the controversies over
how they do so have concerned two broad categories of labor market outcomes.
One is employment, particularly the respective roles of social models and
macroeconomic conditions in causing unemployment. The other is inequality,
particularly the effects of social models on the distribution of protection against
the life risks inherent in dependence on labor market participation. The issues
involved in both are inescapably linked, ultimately converging to pose the basic
question of whether there is inevitably a trade-off between promoting

employment and curbing inequality or if both can be advanced in ways that are
mutually reinforcing. Critiques of the different various social models as flawed
from either or both perspectives have framed much of the debates over them, at
least in policy arenas and academic contexts, and have provided much of the
rationale, if not always the actual motives, for the considerable amount of
change that has occurred in the social models over the past quarter century.
The fifth and last term is based around the european social submodels and is the
following : "Annex 1: The European social submodels - Four classical social
submodels can be identified in the EU, covering four different geographical
areas: The Nordic or Scandinavian social-democratic model, the Anglo-Saxon
liberal model, the continental (corporatist) model and the Mefiterranean
model."
Sapir (2005) proposes as a general mean to evaluate the different social models, the following
two criteria:
1) Efficiency, that is, whether the model provides the incentives so as to achieve the largest
number possible of employed persons, that is, the highest employment rate.
2) Equity, that is, whether the social model achieves a relatively low poverty risk.
Some economists consider that between the Continental model and the Anglo-Saxon, the
latter should be preferred given its better results in employment, which make it more
sustainable in the long term, whereas the equity level depends on the preferences of each
country. Other economists argue that the Continental model cannot be considered worse than
the Anglosaxon given that it is also the result of the preferences of those countries that support
it. This last argument can be used to justify any policy.