In this paper, we examine the inconclusive debate on regulatory competition in Europe. We demonstrate that the recent expansion in the EU company law has created archetypal underpinning for formation of regulatory competition: the ground-breaking "triptych" of the ECJ on Centros, Überseering,...

Since the Centros decision of the European Court of Justice in 1999, the regime of corporate laws in Europe has evolved in a fundamental way. Although it is rather incomplete and imperfect, a two-level system of corporate laws has emerged. It is characterized by a considerable degree of free...

Modern economic writing regards the influence of market forces on legislation to be a major improvement to the quality of rule-making. This holds specifically true in the area of company law and tax law, which shape the framework for business activities like few other fields of law and have lead...

The EC Treaty’s decision for protection of competition as such is based on a fundamental confidence in the benefits of a market economy. This contribution argues that this concept does not allow for a reduction to just one single aim such as consumer welfare. Competition advances a number of...

This paper takes a critical look at the explanatory value of "regulatory competition" as a term or idea in debate about law and legal systems. The paper's central contention is that it has only very limited usefulness, and is easily misused. It is an idea that has explanatory force in highly...

During the past years in Europe, the possibility of a market for corporate incorporations, namely the freedom of European companies to choose their country for incorporation, has been blocked, in part, by the difficult economic conditions and in part by the operation of national level rules on...