In recent years, the Credit Rating Agencies (“CRAs”) have been in the eye of the storm. Some argue that CRA rating errors — symptomatized by rating inflation or deflation — originate in excessive competition. This paper argues that the low level of competition in credit rating is a...

We analyze the political impact of a generous solar panel subsidization program. Subsidies far exceeded their social benefit and were partly financed by new taxes to adopters and by electricity surcharges to all consumers. We use local panel data from Belgium and find a decrease in votes for...

This short paper argues that the COVID-19 crisis provides an opportunity for improvements in long term growth in the EU by allowing the exit of zombie firms that trap industries into low productivity cycles, limited technology diffusion, and weak economic dynamism. To seize this opportunity,...

The main objective of this paper is thus to examine the state of adoption and implementation of competition rules in the 12 Mediterranean countries (the "Euromed countries") engaged in association agreements with the EC in the framework of the Barcelona Declaration of November 1995. Indeed,...