Reforms of financial regulation after the crisis of 2007-2009 raise the question of what is the relation between financial regulators and competition authorities. Should competition authorities play a role in financial regulation? Should they co-operate with financial regulators? Or should they...

Against the background of growing discontent over excessive leniency of US and EU competition policy, this article argues that the policy displays characteristics corresponding to those that brought about the social capture of financial policy co-responsible for the late 2000s global crisis. The...

The global financial crisis (GFC) led to increasing distrust in economic research and the economics profession, in the process of which the current state of economics and economic education in particular were heavily criticized. Against this background we conducted a study with undergraduate...

Since five years now, the financial crisis dominates the EU agenda. What started as the tail of the US subprime crisis turned into a “systemic” issue with the freezing of the wholesale funding market subsequent to Lehman Brothers' filing for Chapter 11 protection on September 15, 2008 (at...

Financial crises are unavoidable when hardwired human behavior - fear and greed, or “animal spirits” - is combined with free enterprise, and cannot be legislated or regulated away. Like hurricanes and other forces of nature, market bubbles and crashes cannot be entirely eliminated, but their...

This article investigates the nexus of competition and stability in European banking. It analyzes the European legal framework for competition policy in banking and several cases that pertain to anti-cartel policy, merger policy, and state-aid control. It discusses whether and how competition...

We analyze a large merger in the Dutch banking market during the financial crisis using disaggregated data. Based on a merger simulation model, we evaluate merger-induced changes in the interest rates for savings accounts. We find that the merging banks decreased interest rates by 3 to 5 percent...