The literature identifies a significant drop in merger control enforcement activity on both sides of the Atlantic during the last decade. Furthermore, this drop in enforcement activity is convincingly connected to enforcement problems on the sides of the competition agencies. This paper goes...

The nature of learning processes as well as evolutionary considerations suggest that aesthetic judgement is of central importance in the formation of custom. Learning and extrapolation rely on evaluations of non-instrumental features like simplicity, analogy, straightforwardness, and clarity....

The new institutional economics has one of its roots in evolutionary thinking. The idea is that there is competition among organizational forms. Some forms spread faster than others and thereby displace and eventually destroy the less well adapted forms. In the end, the most 'efficient'...

Social institutions are persistent regularities in contracting and other relations amongst men and in the unintended consequences of such rule-like behavior. They include morality and law as well as institutions of governance such as branding and advertising. Institutions are studied in all...

Kürzlich hat Chr. Mantzavinos ein neues Wettbewerbsleitbild vorgeschlagen, das auf Ergebnissen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik und der Evolutorischen Ökonomik aufbaut. Er kritisiert die gängigen normativen Konzeptionen in der Wettbewerbspolitik, insbesondere die Idee des Wettbewerbs als...

Kürzlich hat Chr. Mantzavinos ein neues Wettbewerbsleitbild vorgeschlagen, das auf Ergebnissen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik und der Evolutorischen Ökonomik aufbaut. Er kritisiert die gängigen normativen Konzeptionen in der Wettbewerbspolitik, insbesondere die Idee des Wettbewerbs als...

The ubiquitous process of digitization changes economic competition on markets in several ways and leads to the emergence of new business models. The increasing roles of digital platforms as well as data-driven markets represent two relevant examples. These developments challenge competition...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem under an inquisitorial and an adversarial competition policy system. Agents' incentives to produce evidence depend critically on the action set of the decision maker. In an inquisitorial system, allowing ex ante for a...

The overall objective of this paper is to contribute conceptually to the questions why and how regions transform and it joins the debate on economic evolution and institutional change. The paper addresses the challenge of how to conceptualise the interdependencies of institutions of different...

We propose a theory of free movement of goods and labor between two economies in the presence of moral hazard. Each country produces two final goods where the productive efforts of workers cannot be perfectly observed, or verified only in the complex industry. We show that national institutional...