Promoting Competition: European Union and the Global Competition Order

Interjurisdictional Competition Within the European Union

Part I of this Essay shows that two central principles of the EC, namely mobility between Member States and decentralization of economic policies (subsidiarity), imply that Member States and other lower-level jurisdictions necessarily are in competition with one another (locational competition). Part II presents an outline of a theory of interjurisdictional competition that suggests, first, tha...

Tax Competition in an Expanding European Union

This paper empirically examines whether expansion of the EU has increased international tax competition. To do so, we use a simple model of tax competition to determine how a given country weights the taxes of others when choosing its own tax. This indicates that the market potential of a country (which includes both domestic consumption and exports) is the appropriate weight. This is an improv...

Broadband prices in the European Union: Competition and commercial strategies

This paper analyses the determinants of broadband Internet access prices in a group of 15 EU countries between 2008 and 2011. Using a rich panel dataset of broadband plans, we show the positive effect of downstream speed on prices, and report that cable and fibre-to-the-home technologies are available at lower prices per Mbps than xDSL technology. Operators’ marketing strategies are also analys...

Fiscal competition and European Union : contrasting q perspectives

This paper has two objectives. First, it provides an overview of the vast literature on fiscal competition. A major theme is that the desirability of such competition depends in important ways on one’s view of how the public sector works. This is a complex issue with some intriguing twists. Second, the paper explores the emerging structure of the public sector in the European Union in the prese...

Membrane Research in a Global Context Requires Collaboration, not Competition!