European competition policy in regard to vertical restraints is currently based on modern industrial economics. As far as vertical restraints are concerned, this influential economic approach has contributed to correcting the former much less positive competition assessment of these practices...

This contribution is a broad (textbook-like) survey on the economic foundations of competition policy. It encompasses a comprehensive overview on both industrial economics and law and economics arguments, as far as they are relevant for competition law. Contents: I. Competition and competition...

A theoretical framework for the analysis and design of a European System of Private Laws and Regulations is presented. Since private laws also encompass a considerable amount of mandatory legal rules (increasingly fuzzy distinction between public and private law), both traditional private law...

The purpose of this paper is to outline an evolutionary approach to the process of competition among institutions. We shall focus, in particular, on two issues: first, the role of the competitive process as a knowledge-creating process; and, second, the issue of what inferences, if any, can be...

In this empirical study all mergers that have been challenged by the U.S. antitrust agencies FTC and DOJ between 1995 and 2008 were analyzed in regard to the question to what extent and how the agencies assessed the innovation effects of mergers. Theoretical background is the still open question...

Decentralised experimentation and mutual learning of public policies is seen as one of the important advantages of federal systems (Oates: laboratory federalism). Based upon Hayekian ideas of the advantages of decentralised experimentation (as a discovery procedure), we analyse the long-term...

The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is a new governance method applied in the European Union to policy fields where the main competences still rest with the member states. The OMC should help to foster mutual learning about successful policies and promote policy transfer by identifying best...

How can European integration be made compatible with maintaining decentrality and variety within Europe? This paper argues that both aims can only be achieved simultaneously by applying the concept of competitive federalism to the EU. After showing that interjurisdictional competition is a...