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, Daniel Díaz Fuentes (dir. tes.) , Julio Tascón Fernández (secret.) , David Howarth (voc.) Esta tesis doctoral pretende analizar la experiencia europea en la creación de BDR para la promoción de proyectos de integración regional y no solamente inversión y desarrollo económico per se. Nos centramos por lo tanto en la evolución del BEI y su actuación desde su creación a finales de los 50 hasta nuestros días. Esta investigación aspira a ampliar nuestro conocimiento sobre BDR y su potencial papel en las políticas de integración económica a través del estudio del BEI (el mayor prestamista internacional en razón del volumen de préstamos). Nos centramos, por tanto, en la actuación del BEI, contrastando sus acciones con el discurso oficial mediante análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo a fin de obtener nuevas perspectivas sobre el papel que ha jugado (y juega) en el proyecto de integración europeo. Los resultados presentados contribuyen a aumentar nuestro conocimiento sobre el BEI, lo que, a su vez, en un plano más amplio aumenta nuestra compresión de los BDR y contribuye a mejorar las políticas de desarrollo económico e integración regional.
After the Second World War, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) became a crucial instrument supporting investment and economic development. In light of capital constraints and the need to bolster economic growth, and under the example set by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or, today, World Bank), IFIs were increasingly perceived as efficient solutions to these problems. In the European case, this went even further to the inclusion of a third role: the promotion of regional integration. The creation of a regional IFI, or Regional Development Bank (RDB), would provide a mechanism to fight inequalities and enable the European integration project to succeed.
Actually, Europe became the main precedent for the establishment of a RDB in charge of promoting regional integration through investments and the promotion of the economic development of its members with the creation of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in 1957. Shortly afterwards Latin and Central America followed. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) was established in 1959, while the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) was established in 1960. In the European case, the EIB emerged as a clear requirement for the European project to succeed, given that contemporary economists like Nurkse (1953) or Myrdal (1957) had argued that, without measures to avoid it, integration would lead to a polarization or divergence between the development of rich regions and poor ones.
Due to the economic and financial crisis, the lack of funding has raised heightened debate over the role of RDBs like the EIB. The cuts on public expenditure and the need to find efficient solutions to fund long-term productive investments have brought RDBs back to the forefront. In fact, there has been an upsurge in the criticisms on RDBs performance questioning their actions and projects financed. However, despite criticisms, it is surprising the scarce attention addressed to some of these public banks given their importance for the economy. Integration would have hardly been conducted without them and, still, few independent studies have analysed their activities. Nevertheless, studies on the evolution and performance of RDBs have been greatly facilitated in recent years thanks to the requirements imposed upon the banks to make publicly available data on their lending practice. The time is ripe to study the role of RDBs like the EIB and their contribution to regional integration.
Moreover, IFIs (and RDBs) have long lacked a theory of the manner in which these organizations change. The orthodox framework considers markets failures as the reason for IFIs to exist. Their existence is justified by their capacity to fix time-inconsistent preferences, information asymmetries, non-competitive markets, principal–agent problems, or externalities, such as the lack of funds and investors for general interest projects. However, this perspective overlooks IFIs evolution and the role IFIs play in shaping and creating markets (Mazzucato and Penna, 2016). Further research is needed.
In this light, this PhD thesis aims to analyse the European experience in the creation of RDBs for the promotion of regional integration projects and not just investment and economic development per se. We focus, therefore, on the EIB evolution and performance since its creation in the late fifties to our days. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of RDBs and their potential role for economic integration policies by drawing lessons from the EIB (the largest international lender as for loans volume). We focus on the EIB performance as compared to its official discourse and rely on qualitative and quantitative analysis to gain fresh insights on the role it played (and plays) in the European economic integration project.
This PhD thesis is structured as follows. Chapter 1 sets out both the object of study and the aims of the research. In chapter 2, we review the historical background of the EIB and the debates linked to its origins. Chapter 3 provides a first comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of EIB loans from its origins to the end of the Cold War (1958-1995). To do so, lending patterns have been reconstructed drawing on extensive archival work. Instead, chapter 4 focuses on the years 1991 to 2015. The chapter also provides combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of EIB lending, exploring EIB performance under an adapted framework for the comparative study of lending International Organizations (IOs). Hence, building on previous research it contributes to the emerging literature on comparative policy analysis and provides the guidelines needed to analyse and compare highly criticized lending IOs like the EIB. Building on chapters 3 and 4, chapter 5 investigates how the transformation of the European institutional financial landscape with the establishment of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 1991, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, affected the EIB. The chapter aims to analyse EBRD relationship with the older EIB, created in 1957. This doctoral dissertation concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Despite the limitations of this research, discussed within each chapter, our findings may help to increase our understanding of the EIB, which, in turn, may help to understand how RDBs may contribute to improve regional integration policies and economic development policies more broadly. First, our results suggest, overall, that the role of the EIB went beyond that of regional integration (through investment and the promotion of economic development) to become policy entrepreneur (and not only policy-taker). Second, our findings also suggest an evolution of EIB activities. While the EIB would have been the first IFI to place integration and development above the alleviation of capital constraints, we find that this trend changed after the Cold War. Our results reveal there was a progressive mechanization of EIB loans at the expense of securing the institution’s mission. Finally, our results suggest that the intended supplementarity the EBRD was meant to accomplish with the EIB evolved towards a synergy between both institutions (mutually reinforcing their actions). This is in line with growing empirical evidence suggesting that a variety of economic, social and environmental forces, with changes and mutually reinforcing responses at different levels, may exert an influence on RDBs evolution and adaptability. In this light, our findings support, we believe, the increasing claim among the scholars to rethink the performance of RDBs and their potential role within the present economic international scene beyond traditional practices. RDBs are in a unique position to affect policy making and they are not receiving enough attention.
