It must not be easy being a rating agency. Where corporate debt is concerned, the major credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) are said to be too slow and lagging the market. When the topic is structured finance, the agencies are said to inflate ratings to attract business. And when the subject is...

Some of the roots underlying the recent crisis may be found in the global convergence towards a model characterized by strong property rights and an extremely limited role attributed to “open science.” The modern economy has increasingly moved from an open science – open markets model...

The purpose and methodology of this article is as follows: first, to understand the general nature of the current crisis (banking, financial, debt, currency, constitutional, political) from a socio-legal, economic, ideological and political perspective; then, to analyse the complexity of the...

In its Guidance Paper on Article 102 TFEU, the Commission established three conditions that in its view must normally be satisfied before a "refusal to deal" or "margin squeeze" may be considered contrary to Article 102 TFEU, mirroring those established by the European Court of Justice (the...

This paper explores the relationship between the position of individuals in the labour market (employment characteristics and wages) and their education level in order to determine the private returns to education in Greece. Specifically, the focus is on the impact of the crisis on the returns...

This introductory essay for a symposium on antitrust enforcement during economic crises provides a brief historical overview of the failures of antitrust enforcement during major economic crises and wars in the first half of the twentieth century. It then considers the reasons that historical...

With over a dozen bills pending in both the U.S. and E.U. to "solve" the privacy crisis, perhaps it's time to take a step back and ask some fundamental questions about information management in the age of big data. Why does "private" information evoke visceral policy responses? Is there a...

In times of crisis, there is reduced demand for consumer durables and the manufacturing industry tends to suffer from excess capacity. Due to liquidity problems, the banking sector too suffers critically. Generally, one observes an accelerated merger control activity across all the sectors, but...

Against the background of growing discontent over excessive leniency of US and EU competition policy, this article argues that the policy displays characteristics corresponding to those that brought about the social capture of financial policy co-responsible for the late 2000s global crisis. The...

Merger control during the financial crisis of 2007/2008 is one of the most challenging topics for EU Competition law. The global crisis tested the EU merger control framework in both procedural and substantial aspects. On the one hand, the national governments had an interest (responsibility) to...