Das ifo Institut hat bereits zu Beginn des europäischen Liberalisierungsprozesses die Organisation von Regulierungsbehörden untersucht. Der vorliegende Report knüpft mit einem internationalen Vergleich der Regulierungsinstitutionen an diese Arbeiten an. Am Beispiel der...

The enlargement of the European Union towards the East from May 2004 has generated an increase of about 100 million inhabitants in the EU-15, and has especially brought along big challenges and important opportunities both for the new countries and for the ""Old Europe"". This is the main idea...

Trade economists traditionally study the effect of lower variable trade costs. While increasingly important politically, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) have received less attention. Viewing TBTs as fixed regulatory costs related to the entry into export markets, we use a model with...