The discussion on the causes of the Greek crisis has focused on the twin deficits: the fiscal and current-account deficit. The objective of this paper is to examine how the twin deficits came about implicating structural features of the Greek economy which contributed to the loss in...

While the old systems competition took place with closed borders, globalisation has brought about a new type of systems competition that is driven by the mobility of factors of production. The new systems competition will likely imply the erosion of the European welfare state, induce a race to...

Empirical evidence suggesting that a considerable amount of horizontal strategic interaction exists amongst governments is important in light of recent devolutionary trends of many important public programs. The empirical approach in these studies typically relies on estimating reaction...

The fiscal decentralization impulse now sweeping the world often leads to partial decentralization, where subnational governments are funded by central transfers, rather than leading to full local autonomy. Despite the practical importance of this arrangement, the literature contains no economic...

We study competition among market designers who create new trading platforms, when boundedly rational traders learn to select among them. We ask whether efficient platforms, leading to market - clearing trading outcomes, will dominate the market in the long run. If several market designers are...

This paper discusses rising enrolment rates, access, governance, underperformance in research and teaching, lack of internationalisation, private returns to education and the funding problems of European universities. Our proposals for reform are based on more autonomy for universities, higher...

This paper studies how to design a fiscal constitution that, by capitalizing intergenerational spillovers into land values, is able to protect future generations from expropriation and to generate optimal investment in intergenerational public goods. In particular, we study how to accomplish...

In many theoretical public finance models, school quality plays a central role as a determinant of household location choices and in turn, of neighborhood stratification. In contrast, the recent empirical literature has almost universally concluded that the direct effect of school quality on...

The forces of the market and systems competition bring about economic and social convergence in Europe. There is no need for social policies at the EU level. Social harmonisation would distort migration flows and slow down the speed of economic convergence. National welfare states will be...

International comparisons of labour market institutions and their transfer across boundaries have gained in importance. The paper deals with the question of the best way to proceed in making such comparisons. At the same time the question of the possibilities and limits to institutional transfer...

Delayed Integration is a rule for assigning mobile individuals to jurisdictions for the purpose of taxation, social security, and social assistance. It is a compromise between the Origin Principle and the Employment Principle. Individuals are assigned to the jurisdiction to which they move only...

While the old systems competition took place within closed borders, globalisation has brought about a new type of systems competition that is driven by the mobility of factors of production. The new systems competition is likely to lead to the erosion of the European welfare state, induce a race...

Germany is in a dilemma. Low wage competition via product and factor markets increases the demands on the welfare state, but increased systems competition in the context of international factor mobility reduces the possibilities of maintaining it. The welfare state has important allocative...

We incorporate arguments from the Tiebout model into the regulatory competition equilibrium and study cross-fertilization in the productivity growth of banks between those in a state and others in this state's neighboring states. Empirically, we focus on two time periods: before (i.e.,...

Against a background of global competition to seize the opportunities promised by Artificial Intelligence (AI), many countries and regions are explicitly taking part in a ‘race to AI'. Yet the increased visibility of the technology's risks has led to ever-louder calls for regulators to look...

Ein Blick auf die Welt -- Konfrontation statt Kooperation in der Welt vor Covid-19: Vom Systemwettbewerb zum Systemkonflikt -- Ökonomische Einordnungen zu Covid-19: Globalisierung im Lockdown -- Transformation im Systemkonflikt: Die Stunde der Hierarchien -- Perspektiven der Globalisierung:...

The real dynamics of U.S. regulatory competition in corporate law are often misunderstood. As convincingly demonstrated by some authors (Kahan and Kamar), most States are not actively engaged in the market for charters, and Delaware's position is substantially unchallenged. From this starting...

One of the newer suggestions for the design of public economic units refers to Functional Overlapping Competing Jurisdictions (FOCJs), which are instruments to shape cooperation of jurisdictions, e.g. municipalities.The study clarifies important types of FOCJ. It concentrates on FOCJs where the...

The Common European Sales Law (CESL) is the Commission's most recent policy initiative for European contract law. It aims to address the problem that differences between the national contract laws of the Member States may constitute an obstacle for the European Internal Market. This paper...

Several countries have recently introduced national capital standards exceeding the internationally coordinated Basel III rules, which is inconsistent with the 'race to the bottom' in capital standards found in the literature. We study regulatory competition when banks are heterogeneous and give...

Regulation and competition policy are two alternative modalities by which the state intervenes in the market. In order for either to deliver welfare gains, there must first be a pre-existing market failure. We first present different varieties of market failures and identify those for which...

I examine the environmental race to the bottom argument by studying whether state susceptibility to interstate economic competition helps explain which U.S. states engage in environmental regulatory competition. Specifically, I create a susceptibility index using four state economic attributes...

The impact of regulatory competition on the evolution of corporate law has generated an intense and long lasting debate in the United States. Although both federal and provincial legislators can enact corporate statutes which can be used by firms across the country, Canadian corporate law has...

Several countries have recently introduced national capital standards exceeding the internationally coordinated Basel III rules, thus suggesting a "race to the top" in capital standards. We study regulatory competition when banks are heterogeneous and give loans to firms that produce output in...

Several countries have recently introduced national capital standards exceeding the internationally coordinated Basel III rules, thus suggesting a 'race to the top' in capital standards. We study regulatory competition when banks are heterogeneous and give loans to firms that produce output in...

"Institutional bypass is a reform strategy that creates alternative institutional regimes to give citizens a choice of service provider and create a form of competition between the dominant institution and the institutional bypass. While novel in the academic literature, the concept captures...

Institutional bypass is a reform strategy that creates alternative institutional regimes to give citizens a choice of service provider and create a form of competition between the dominant institution and the institutional bypass. While novel in the academic literature, the concept captures...

A growing literature documents the existence of strategic political reactions to public expenditure in one jurisdiction on either neighboring or reference jurisdictions. The latter might give raise to downward expenditure spiral, or "race to the bottom". However, in ascertaining the empirical...

"Race-to-the-bottom" deregulation is to be expected when markets operate across the borders of countries that independently choose and enforce labor policies. Less obviously, in pre-crisis EMU reforms of labor market policies were uneven and related to international imbalances. That pattern is...

We show that, in competition between a developed country and a developing country over environmental standards and taxes, the developing country may have a ‘second-mover advantage.' In our model, firms do not unanimously prefer lower environmental-standard levels. We introduce this feature to...

“Race-to-the-bottom” deregulation is to be expected when markets operate across the borders of countries that independently choose and enforce labor policies. Less obviously, in pre-crisis EMU reforms of labor market policies were uneven and related to international imbalances. That pattern...

We examine empirically cross-fertilization in the productivity growth of banks between a state and its neighboring and non-neighboring states before (1971-1977) and during (1982-1995) the interstate multibank holding company (IMBHC) deregulations, upon which, cross-border bank M&As, mainly among...

The latest election for the European Parliament in May 2014 resulted in substantial gains for EU-skeptical parties across the EU. We argue on economic grounds that more flexible integration within the EU could increase the support for the integration process across the heterogeneous group of...