Since 1932, when Justice Louis Brandeis remarked that in a federal system states can serve as "laboratories" of democracy, political decentralization has been thought to stimulate policy experimentation. We reexamine the political economy behind this belief, using a simple model of voting in...

The purpose of the European internal market is to allow all firms in the Union to compete freely, without artificial barriers built up to protect them. The Treaty provisions and the subsequent case law are quite comprehensive and they are meant to eliminate restrictive regulatory barriers,...

In this paper, we argue that lower prices for pharmaceuticals can be achieved by fostering a new type of competition in the pharmaceutical industry. Lower drug development costs, and hence prices, can be brought about by abolishing national drug administrations and replacing them with private...

This paper argues that drugs are expensive not because of a lack of competition among research-based pharmaceutical companies, but because of a lack of competition in the drug approval process. Lack of competition in the drug approval process has led to exceedingly high drug development costs....

Settlements of patent litigation between branded and generic drug makers that include a promise by the generic maker to stay out of the market, sometimes in exchange for a ‘reverse' payment, increase the profits of drug makers at the expense of consumers. Some commentators argue that drug...

Technological innovation is transforming the structure of the retail banking sector. Traditional business models are facing a rapid disruption process led by the emergence of FinTech companies which provide innovative digitally-enabled banking and financial services. In order to offer payment...

Disruptive technologies and business models profoundly affect existing markets. The most visible recent examples are Internet-based "sharing services" that are disrupting conventional taxi and hotel markets, but there are many others in diverse areas such as finance, retail electricity and...

The advent of distributed energy technologies, most notably, distributed solar energy, poses a competitive threat to the electric utility industry. Here I provide a comprehensive assessment of the U.S. electric utility industry's regulatory response to this threat over the past three years....

This article examines the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property law, critiquing the government's approach and proposing amendments to current standards. In particular, this article focuses on the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission's treatment of innovation...

Portuguese Abstract: A estrutura da internet é composta por códigos, os quais regem as relações dentro da rede. Apesar de desenvolvida para não ser regulada, a internet não está vinculada ao parâmetro pelo qual se deixava reger quando da sua criação. A neutralidade de rede não é um...