European Antitrust Policy 1957–2004: An Analysis of Commission Decisions

This paper provides a survey of  European antitrust law enforcement since its foundation in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 up to and including 2004. We present a complete overview and statistical analysis of all 538 formal Commission decisions under Articles 81, 82, and 86 of the European Community Treaty. We report a range of summary statistics concerning report route, investigation duration, length of the decision, decision type, imposed fines, number of parties, sector classification, nationality, and Commissioner and Director General responsible. The statistics are linked to changes in legislation and administrative implementation, thereby providing an historical overview that summarizes the Commission’s work in the area of antitrust. One or more appeals were filed with respect to 161 of the 538 decisions. We estimate the determinants of the size of the imposed fine and probability of appeal when an infringement has been found.     

Regulating the Platform Economy: How to Protect Workers While Promoting Innovation

The rise of the platform economy has made it a topic of great interest among European policymakers, as evidenced by the European Commission’s 2016 Communication “A European agenda for the collaborative economy”. The regulatory challenges facing policymakers are manifold, ranging from taxation to competition policy to worker protection. Furthermore, many basic aspects of the platform economy are unclear, such as its size, the number of workers who take part in it and, indeed, its very definition. What types of regulation are necessary to ensure that the benefits of the platform economy are maximised for all Europeans? How can the productivity gains associated with the platform economy be distributed throughout society? Perhaps most importantly, how can policymakers support innovation while also protecting consumers, workers and communities?     

Profiling the non-user: Rethinking policy initiatives stimulating ICT acceptance

Business strategies and policies that were successful in increasing internet penetration in the early days may no longer be appropriate. This is most probably so in countries where a bigger proportion of the population is already connected to the internet. As more people are online, it becomes more likely that the remaining fraction of non-users is either hard to convince, under-skilled or simply lacking the financial resources to afford a connection. In view of this, a new policy approach is proposed to increase ICT acceptance. The approach is based on strategies of segmentation and differentiation. This entails that policy initiatives are specifically targeted towards different groups in the population. This article demonstrates that being a non-user can be explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ICT or by the outweighing effect of one of them. It also provides a framework for setting up new policy measures.     

Global purchasing strategy: Conceptualization and measurement

In this paper we introduce Global Purchasing Strategy (GPS) as an explanatory construct of global purchasing performance. GPS is embedded in a contingent resource-based view. The construct is conceived as the driving force behind the strategy-organization alignment. GPS is conceptualized along four dimensions: the configuration of the global purchasing process, the standardization of the global purchasing process, the standardization of product-related characteristics and the standardization of the purchasing staff organization. We develop the GPS scale and test it on a sample of 151 internationally purchasing firms. The analytic results show evidence of both reliability and validity. We propose a general model of global purchasing performance with GPS as a central mediating construct.     

Inflation,economic activity and the operation of fiscal,foreign and monetary impulses in the Netherlands — A preliminary analysis, 1953–1973

Summary This paper tests both the strong and weak versions of the fiscal, foreign and monetary impulse hypotheses holding that each of these impulses is either a sufficient or a necessary condition for fluctuations in price and output to occur.Four impulses are distinguished: a fiscal impulse being a linear combination of autonomous changes in government expenditures and taxes, two foreign impulses measured by the growth rates of world trade and import prices, and a monetary impulse measured by (changes in) the growth rate of the stock of domestic or world money.When tested against the Dutch post-war experience of inflation and output fluctuations, all strong impulse hypotheses have to be rejected, as do the weak fiscal and foreign world trade hypotheses with respect to inflation and the weak fiscal hypotheses with respect to output growth. The weak foreign and monetary impulse hypotheses of output fluctuations, however, and the weak foreign import price and monetarist hypotheses of inflation are not rejected.     

Rural development and agricultural policy in the EEC

Decision making on integrated rural development projects is a complex affair. Dr van den Noort isolates some important elements in the process, puts them into an economic policy framework and examines them in relation to some experiences in the Netherlands and the EEC. A wide gap emerges between the philosophy and practice of agricultural and rural policy which bodes ill for the future of the EEC. If agricultural policies and rural development are to lead to greater intergration in the EEC then they must be used to increase a still to be defined general welfare function for the EEC and not to further narrow-minded regional policies.     

Subjective evaluation of delayed risky outcomes for buying and selling positions: the behavioral approach

This paper analyzes time discounting as a function of risk, using reservation prices. Based on experimental data, we compare bidder reservation prices for riskless assets with those for risky assets. The experiments rely on a second price auction with real monetary incentives and real delay in payoffs. We estimate the pure time discount rate for different maturities, considering riskless assets (bonds) and risky assets (delayed lotteries). An innovation in the experimental design allows disentangling pure time from pure risk discounting effects. If subjects bid for assets, we find implied discount rates for risky assets to be uniformly lower than those for riskless assets, across all maturities (the risk moderation effect). However, there is no risk moderation effect if subjects quote ask prices. We argue that delaying a payoff has a stronger effect on the price of bonds than on the price of risky assets since, in the case of bonds, the investor moves from a position of certainty to a position of risk, or uncertainty. Our findings on the risk moderation effect may be used to explain the attractiveness of compensation contracts with options, as commonly used in the financial industry.     

Efficiency in wine grape production: comparing long‐established and newly developed regions of South Africa

Efficiency, partly based on technology, is central to international competitiveness. This article applies a stochastic frontier inefficiency model to a panel of 77 wine grape farms in South Africa between 2005 and 2015 and allows the comparison of efficiency levels for the old established wine regions with those of newer entrants. Thus, we investigate whether experience plus first choice of location matters more than the follower's advantage of newer technology. In all regions, a greater share of permanent labor and increased supervision raised efficiency, while more inorganic fertilizer and less irrigation has the opposite effect. Innovations in trellising had insignificant effects (except in the old regions) but not replacing old vines reduced efficiency. However, a higher proportion of red varietals also lowered efficiency in the old regions due to a fall in the price of red wine as these farmers continued to concentrate on quality reds. The new regions compensated for falling prices by increasing crop size with irrigation and fertilizer and extending the area planted, but with less concern for quality. This appears to be more successful in efficiency terms, but as international demand for quality wine increases it may be a poor long‐term strategy.     

Labour Demand in the Post‐apartheid South African Wine Industry

In 2013 the minimum agricultural wage in South Africa was increased by an unprecedented 51%. We use data on 77 Western Cape Province wine grape farms from 2005–2015 to estimate the impacts on employment. Previous post‐apartheid labour market reforms increased minimum wages substantially, but re‐entry to global markets after sanctions were lifted increased demand and this preserved jobs in the wine sector. However, by 2005 this demand growth had largely ceased. The long‐run wage elasticity for permanent employees was found to be ?0.4, but for casual workers the figure was ?4.7, so the 51% wage increase is likely to decimate casual employment in the future. Thus, the poorest and most vulnerable casual workers lose most in terms of jobs, incomes and secure livelihoods, whereas 80% of full‐time staff benefit from the higher minimum wages. Thus, the minimum wage change is likely to increase the gap between privileged permanent staff and casual workers. This result is not surprising in view of the long‐standing interdependence between farmers and their permanent workers in wine grape production.     

The Forex Regime and EMU Expansion

This paper provides evidence that the choice of the foreign exchange regime is not of first order importance for achieving high output growth. It is argued that due to the forward looking nature of the foreign exchange market, exchange rate stability hinges on the current and anticipated coherency of monetary and fiscal policies. We demonstrate this empirically on a panel including potential EMU accession countries. By means of rank regression analysis we uncover the partial links across the regime specifics of the representative country versus the German regime during the 1990s.