Hostile takeover and costly merger control

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Merger Guidelines, mergers determined to be anticompetitive are more likely than not to be challenged. Within an adversarial system, the corresponding process of merger control exhibits two kinds of inefficiencies: First, both the antitrust authority and the buyer spend considerable amounts of resources during litigation. Second, the anticompetitive merger is only prevented with a probability less than one. We can show that these inefficiencies may be smaller under a hostile than under a friendly takeover although the top management of the target firm is introduced as third player, spending additional resources during litigation.     

Das Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates und der Mythos einer 80-Prozent-Europäisierung in Deutschland

Governance beyond the nation state is intensively discussed with regard to the degree of Europeanization of the member states. For some scholars, the Europeanization degree of German legislation has already reached a share of 80 percent. This article applies a quantitative perspective and investigates, whether and to what extent German legislation has been stimulated by European impulses over the past 30 years. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis distinguishes between regular and important legislation and examines whether and to what extent European impulses are induced by EU legislation. The results reveal that previous estimates have dramatically overstated the influence of Europeanization on German legislation. According to our findings, a share of 80 percent has only once occurred in a single policy domain. Usually, this share is significantly lower, in particular for important legislation. Moreover, it is only possible to identify the reasons for half of the Europeanization impulses in the respective EU legislative database.     

Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective

This article is, on one hand, a survey of the core theoretical literature on the economics of public regulation; and, on the other hand, a cohesive discussion about how the literature has matured and how recent contributions on political and regulatory institutions—US and European—are related to, and affect the results of, former lines of research. We conclude that the traditional distinction between public interest theories and special interest theories has lost validity due to the entry of game theory and institutional research. The evolving institutional analysis provides a sophisticated interpretation of possible corrective rationales inherent in regulatory restrictions, and is as such an important complement to the still vigorous special interest literature focusing on the redistributive rationales and their effects.     

Deregulation and decentralization: Ten years’ experience with home rule in sweden

In the article the major deregulation and decentralization reforms in Sweden during the last ten years are described. There are clear connections between the different reforms. The free commune experiment in the beginning of the 1980s proved to be a battering ram for more thorough reforms, especially the new Local Government Act and the far-reaching organizational liberty which it confers on the municipalities. To a certain extent, the new Local Government Act paved the way for the radical recasting of the State funding system.     

Reconstructing social spaces: The rhetoric of the public/ private split

The article deals with the public/private distinction as a hidden spatialization that regulates the social. It looks at restructurations of the distinction; at changes and their political consequences in terms of ongoing rhetorical boundary work. The naming or coding of something as public or private is in itself a cultured process. The distinction is used in various meanings and within multiple discursive repertoires. What is named as public or private also varies in time and in space. Although variable and contextual, the coding always carries social value; it structures the societal positions of people. Furthermore, the coding also carries meanings that are not translatable. “Things” do not mean the same in different places. Comparing cultures becomes problematic.