The Bagwell Center for the Study of Markets and Economic Opportunity at Kennesaw State has several research fellows for this academic year.
Lukas Ollivier, a sophomore finance major, is focusing on the possible unification of European countries into one common federal state, similar to the United States.
As a research student, Ollivier has worked diligently all semester on his project; he chose this topic because of his direct connection to Europe.
“Being from two [European] countries, it had a big part in why I chose this project because it is good to be aware of the world you grew up in,” Ollivier said.
He said doing research for this project helped him fulfill some of his educational, career and personal goals for the future.
In Ollivier’s research, he states the challenges and conflicts with establishing a single European state include state debt unification and monetary and fiscal policies.
One of the main issues of his project surrounds the economic difference between northern and southern Europe.
“You have the northern countries of Europe and their history of low government debt and higher GDP growth, and they [are] expected to join southern countries with higher unemployment rates and debt,” Ollivier said. “Why would the northern countries agree to that?”
Another issue is Germany would have to borrow money with the same interest rates as other countries like Greece. That would have consequences including increasing Germany’s rates and decreasing Greece’s.
A union includes countries with the same fluctuations in terms of macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP growth, inflation rates, unemployment rates and state debt issuance.
Ollivier realized his passion for finance because he likes helping people. He said he would like to contribute to society by advising people to make better financial decisions and investments.
Ollivier described Dr. James Boudreau, Associate Professor of Economics and his academic advisor, as a great and intelligent person who made great contributions toward his research and introduced him to Stata, a software that Ollivier used to get his empirical results.
Ollivier said he hopes to finish collecting information soon to complete his research.
