A methodological perspective on the Capital Markets Union : using economics to derive effective policy measures

From the economists’ perspective, the Capital Markets Union (CMU) represents a policy experiment that allows studying how legal conditions, economic incentives and financial activity interact. Recent papers provide economic support for the overall objective of CMU, but the robustness of this research is still to be established. Although harmonisation of legal frameworks can help overcome the information and competition problems that discourage market entry, it is difficult to identify which legal determinants are actually holding back the market development. The more detailed and granular the issue to be addressed, the more severe seem to be data gaps and limitations of analytical tools to identify the most effective policy measures and in consequence the stronger do policy directions rely on plausibility considerations. In the negotiation of concrete policy measures among the different policy actors in the EU, the still weak empirical foundations may hold up the realisation of the project’s ambition.