Building on Oliver Williamson's original analysis, the contributors introduce new ideas, different perspectives and provide tools for better understanding changes in the approach to regulation, the reform of public utilities, and the complex problems of governance. They draw largely upon a...

This insightful collection of classic papers explores the effects of various legal institutions and policies on economic development. The editors include analysis of the historical, current, and future conditions of numerous legal traditions and strategies, both nationally and globally. The...

Does free trade contribute to the deterioration of the environment? This important book offers a fresh look at the trade-environment debate from a political-economic perspective. It provides an extensive analysis of the environmental consequences of free trade, and examines how trade affects...

After decades of successful growth, economic unions have recently become the focus of heightened political controversy. We argue that this is partly due to the growth of trade between countries that are increasingly dissimilar. We develop a theoretical framework to study the effects on trade,...

This paper explores price differences in the European Union (EU) pharmaceutical market, the EU's fifth largest industry. With the aim of enhancing quality of life along with industry competitiveness and R&D capability, many EU directives have been adopted to achieve a single EU-wide...

We investigate the relationship between financial integration and output volatility at micro and macro levels. Using a very large firm-level dataset from EU countries over time, we construct a measure of "deep" financial integration at the regional level based on foreign ownership at the firm...

We investigate the degree of financial integration within and between European countries. We construct two measures of de-facto integration across European regions to capture "diversification" and "development" finance in the language of Obstfeld and Taylor (2004). We find evidence that capital...

This book deals with the economic consequences of monetary integration, which has long been dominated by the Optimal Currency Area (OCA) paradigm. In this model, money is perceived as having developed from a private sector cost minimization process to facilitate transactions. Not surprisingly,...

Potential new entrants to the European Union from Central and Eastern European countries face many challenges to achieve financial convergence with the existing EU nations. Using detailed case studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and analysis of cross country...