Building on the three-sector-hypothesis, the New Theory of Trade, and the New Economic Geography, we investigate the development of economic structures of European countries over the last three decades using employment data. We test for structural convergence which we analyze on the aggregate...

The paper adresses the need for more flexibility in the integration process of the European Union after its recent eastward enlargement. Due to the increasing number of decision-makers and the increasing heterogeneity of economic structures, financial constraints, societal preferences, and...

The ways of decision making within the EU have significantly changed in the last decades: the rule of unanimity has been more and more substituted by majority voting in order to speed up decision-making processes in a Union of 27 heterogeneous member states. A third possibility is now offered by...

An increasingly important part of contemporary merger control both in the US and the EU is unilateral effects analysis, particularly with regard to oligopolistic mergers. In practice, this requires econometric analyses of past market data and, above all, the construction of simulation models in...

The recent Impala Judgment by the CFI on the Sony/BMG Decision by the Commission represents the most important ruling on collective dominance since Airtours. We review both the Decision and the Judgment and derive implications for the institutional and substantive development of EU Merger...

This paper aims at localizing network-specific market power in new markets. Three kinds of transmission qualities on service markets can be differentiated according to the products provided: narrowband services like PSTN/ISDN or GSM, semi high-speed broadband services like broadband internet...

Die Universaldienstregulierung im Telekommunikationssektor ist ein Beispiel für die Sicherung einer Dienstleistung von allgemeinem Interesse im umfassend für Wettbewerb geöffneten Sektor. Seit der Marktöffnung hat sich der Regulie-rungsprozess grundsätzlich geändert. Mit Hilfe eines...

The increasing complexity of EU regulation is resulting in a tangle of contradictory decisions and statements, involving also new markets, such as interactive cable television, Internet etc. Whereas in the past sector-specific regulation has been applied in a discretionary manner in order to...