The investigation of the sequencing of liberalization in the EU financial services industry is the primary object of this study. The relevance of the EU model for financial liberalization is threefold. First, the EU route towards liberalization in financial services could be regarded as a...

This paper investigates the existence and extent of economies of scale in the European payment processing industry. It is expected that the creation of a Single European Payments Area (SEPA) will spur consolidations and mergers among European payment processors to more fully realize payment...

I argue that the intra-European integration of services trade, even if it threatens to impose costs on third countries in the short run, on average makes the European Union (EU) more open to foreign service providers. The reasoning is that third countries are likely to respond to discrimination...