One of the goals of the European Commission in the energy sector is creating a single competitive European market. The decision of the European Union to liberalise energy markets has far-reaching consequences not only for gas companies, but also for the rest of the real economy in view of the...

This paper undertakes a statistical analysis of the fines imposed on 168 firms in 22 cartels prosecuted by European Commission under the 2006 Penalty Guidelines, leniency notice, settlement process, and the courts on appeals over the period 2007 to 2010. It looks closely at how the Commission...

European equity trading mainly takes place in electronic order-driven systems. In those systems two groups of traders post their orders. One group makes liquidity by submitting limit orders while the other takes liquidity by submitting market orders. A high degree of liquidity is widely seen as...

Based on an analysis of cartel prosecutions since 2007, this article assesses the way the European Commission has built up its fines in practice. The fines are compared with those imposed by the European Commission over the period from 1999 to 2006. The main findings are that, while fines have...

The economic impact of the compulsory grading legislation imposed by the EC is analysed. It is shown that the system imposed certain and immediate costs on producers and consumers, while any possible benefits were uncertain and distant. The system imposed bore no relation to the realities of the...

We analyse patterns of convergence (divergence) across euro-area countries in manufacturing since monetary union and find that not only costs, but also profitability have followed divergent paths. We further find that profitability developments only partially overlap with those of unit labour...

This paper presents an analysis of the recent developments of average market power in Europe by using a broad firm-level database for EU member states. To indicate competitive pressure at the firm-level, markups are estimated following De Loecker (2011), and De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). The...

The market for project finance loans has a special feature: banks do not only compete individually but also through coalitions or “syndicates”. Traditional concentration indicators summarise industry structure based on individual market shares but they fail to capture the dynamics of...

Monetary policy aims at affecting corporate borrowing by influencing the marginal costs of firms, but its potency can be conditioned by the degree of market competition. We first identify conditions under which changes in marginal costs may have different effects on credit constraints and output...

This paper brings up to date an on-going statistical analysis of the fines imposed in cartel prosecutions commenced between 1998 and 2006 by the European Commission and courts on appeal under the 1998 Penalty Guidelines and completed to the end of October 2010. Based on an analysis of all 46...