In this paper we provide a cross-country comparison of occupational regulation in the European legal market. Although EU growth and assimilation has resulted in some degree of unity in regulation, significant differences remain in licensing restrictions and in the characteristics of the labor...

Entry into licensed professions requires meeting competency requirements, typically assessed through licensing examinations. This paper explores whether the number of individuals attempting to enter a profession (potential supply) affects the difficulty of the entry examination. The empirical...

A recent phenomenon in competition policy is the acquisition of a private firm by an enterprise that is either wholly owned by government or in the midst of privatization. Such an acquisition poses the question of how public ownership may alter the incentives of a firm to engage in...

Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers often imply dramatic changes for employees, competitors, customers and suppliers. Not surprisingly, the market for corporate control has generated controversy and is frequently regulated by law or business custom. Though transfers of control take place in many...

Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers often imply dramatic changes for employees, competitors, customers and suppliers. Not surprisingly, the market for corporate control has generated controversy and is frequently regulated by law or business custom. Though transfers of control take place in many...

Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

We present a new welfare-based framework for optimally choosing legal standards in a variety of regulatory contexts. We formalise the decision-theoretic considerations widely discussed in the existing literature by capturing the quality of the underlying analysis and information available to a...

Since the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act (1897) and the Sherman Act (1890), regulation and antitrust have operated as competing mechanisms to control competition. Regulation produced cross-subsidies and favors to special interests, but specified prices and rules of mandatory dealing....

The paper addresses the issue of who pays for the cost of creating artistic works and other forrns of intellectual property. It examines the effect of current legal structure on regulatory performance in markets for intellectual property; specifically the effects of sequential and partial...

After nearly six years of telecommunications "deregulation" in the United States, centering on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there is little to which regulatory officials in charge of such deregulation can point in terms of benefits in the form of lower prices or innovative services. It is...