Building on MEP Andrew Duff’s proposal to create a limited pan-European constituency for electing representatives to the European Parliament, this paper argues that there are good reasons for believing that such an institution would better be built around national parties rather than...

Should South-Mediterranean economies continue their financial integration in the world economy, considering their current stance and in view of the experiences of developed economies with the global financial crisis? The economies of the North-African rim, that is Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,...

Canada-Renewable Energy presented the WTO Panel and Appellate Body (AB) with a novel issue: at the heart of the dispute was a measure adopted by the province of Ontario whereby producers of renewable energy would be paid a premium relative to conventional power producers. Some WTO Members...

Interest groups have played an important if unappreciated role in shaping intellectual property rights. As economies are driven by ideas, rather than manufactured goods, there is likely to be a reconfiguration of the incentives granted and withheld from innovators. The paper argues that prizes...

This paper uses the Operational Code methodology in order to study Peter Mandelson's worldviews. Using speeches from the public record I constructed Mandelson's views of the international relations and of the EU's relationships with other countries as well as his role as a leading actor. The...

This paper aims at showing the role of agriculture in determining many of the controversies and problems of the current phase of globalisation. This first entails presenting key statistics indicating the main developments in world agricultural trade, illustrating how there has been a relative...

The traditional measure of market power is the HHI, which gives implausible results given the low elasticity of demand in electricity spot markets, unless it is adapted to take account of contracting. In its place the Residual Supply Index has been proposed as a more suitable index to measure...

Money has always been a difficult and complex concept and the views about what money actually is could hardly be more diverse. This is all the more true in the times of completely manipulated irredeemable paper currencies, the functioning of which is based almost completely on the extent to...

Is the politicisation of monetary policy in a currency union desirable? This paper shows that in a setting where political influence by national governments is modeled as a common agency game with rational expectations, the answer to this question crucially depends on whether the common central...

The paper compares the extent of intergenerational earnings and educational correlation in Japan and France. It uses very similar repeated surveys that provide information on educational attainment and family background, conducted in Japan and France. To insure comparability, similar sample...