Suppliers to a sellers’ cartel and the boundaries of the right to damages in U.S. versus EU competition law

While customer damage claims against price-cartels receive much attention, it is unresolved to what extent other groups that are negatively affected may claim compensation. This paper focuses on probably the most important one, suppliers to a downstream sellers’ cartel. The paper first identifies three economic effects that determine whether suppliers suffer losses due to a cartel by their customers. We then examine whether suppliers are entitled to claim net losses as damages in the U.S. and the EU, with exemplary looks at England and Germany, delineating the boundaries of the right to damages in the two leading competition law jurisdictions. We find that, while the majority view in the U.S. denies standing, the emerging position in the EU approves of cartel supplier damage claims. We show that this is consistent with the ECJ case law and in line with the new EU Damages Directive. From a comparative law and economics perspective, we argue that more generous supplier standing in the EU compared to the U.S. is justified in view of the different institutional context and the goals assigned to the right to damages in the EU. We demonstrate that supplier damage claims are also practically viable by showing how supplier damages can be estimated econometrically.     

Climate change and the credibility of international commitments: What is necessary for the U.S. to deliver on such commitments?

The engagement of the United States is critical to the success of any international effort against global climate change. Although international climate efforts require long-lasting, credible commitments by participating countries, risk of failure to deliver on such commitments rises with the degree of gap that the domestic institutions permit between the executive and the legislature. The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol indicated that the Clinton administration’s effort to bring international solutions into the domestic arena before domestic consensus was obtained was counterproductive. The congressional politics over budgetary allocation regarding the Bush administration’s technology policies showed that general preference to a technology-oriented approach to climate change alone did not ensure the credibility of international commitments. These cases revealed that the U.S. climate diplomacy was lacking in domestic institutional mechanisms that bring the executive branch’s deal at international negotiations, and the legislators’ preferences at home, closer together. For the U.S. to take leadership in international climate cooperation, domestic institutional frameworks which reconcile the interests of the two branches are necessary. This paper suggests that such domestic institutional frameworks feature two components: regular channels of communication between the two political branches; and, incentive mechanisms for the two branches to swiftly come to terms with each other.

United Nations Mission to Kosovo: in Violation of the Right to Life?

International organisations are expected to abide to human rights standards in the course of their operations. However, to what standards are transitional regimes held accountable? Should the UN exercising executive powers be held accountable to the same or higher standard than a national government? In this article, the author discusses the legal basis relied upon by a UN internal human rights mechanism, the Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP), that declared the UNMIK in violation of its positive obligation to investigate enshrined in Article 2 of the EHRC. A closer look at the opinions issued by the HRAP reveals that it might have misapplied the standard set forth in the relevant jurisprudence of the European Court for Human Rights, and thereby held UNMIK accountable under stricter requirements.     

When Choice of Data Matters: Analyses of U.S. Crime Trends, 1973–2012

Objectives

This study uses UCR and NCVS crime data to assess which data source appears to be more valid for analyses of long-term trends in crime. The relationships between UCR and NCVS trends in violence and six factors from prior research are estimated to illustrate the impact of data choice on findings about potential sources of changes in crime over time.

Methods

Crime-specific data from the UCR and NCVS for the period 1973–2012 are compared to each other using a variety of correlational techniques to assess correspondence in the trends, and to UCR homicide data which have been shown to be externally valid in comparison with other mortality records. Log-level trend correlations are used to describe the associations between trends in violence, homicide and the potential explanatory factors.

Results

Although long-term trends in robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft in the UCR and NCVS are similar, this is not the case for rape, aggravated assault, or a summary measure of serious violence. NCVS trends in serious violence are more highly correlated with homicide data than are UCR trends suggesting that the NCVS is a more valid indicator of long-term trends in violence for crimes other than robbery. This is largely due to differences during the early part of the time series for aggravated assault and rape when the UCR data exhibited consistent increases in the rates in contrast to general declines in the NCVS. Choice of data does affect conclusions about the relationships between hypothesized explanatory factors and serious violence. Most notably, the reported association between trends in levels of gasoline lead exposure and serious violence is likely to be an artifact associated with the reliance on UCR data, as it is not found when NCVS or homicide trend data are used.

Conclusions

The weight of the evidence suggests that NCVS data represent more valid indicators of the trends in rape, aggravated assault and serious violence from 1973 to the mid-1980s. Studies of national trends in serious violence that include the 1973 to mid-1980s period should rely on NCVS and homicide data for analyses of the covariates of violent crime trends.

     

Idea generation: the performance of U.S. States 1997–2007

Regional prosperity increasingly depends on a region’s capacity to have command over the production of ideas. Measuring the production of ideas with patents, the objective of this paper is to analyze how the number of utility patents granted to inventors in U.S. States in different technologies changed between 1997 and 2007 and how States took advantage of the new opportunities and adapted to the changing technology landscape. The paper uses shift-share analysis, traditionally used in employment studies, for analyzing change in patents by technology categories developed by the NBER. The shift-share results show that only a few states were able to take advantage of the information technology driven increases in patents. California dominates in patent production and may be providing spillover benefits to neighboring states. The shift-share decompositions are used as variables in a fixed-effect panel-regression model of state economic growth. The regression results show that the shift-share decompositions provide statistically significant information in explaining growth after accounting for a State’s stock of patents, suggesting that States should concentrate on effective ways to boost their stock of knowledge in rapidly growing technologies to improve state economic growth.