What Does the European Union Do?

Alberto Alesina (), Ignazio Angeloni () and Ludger Schuknecht ()

No 8647, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We construct a set of indicators to measure the policy-making role of the European Union (European Council, Parliament, Commission, Court of Justice, etc.), in a selected number of policy domains. Our goal is to examine the division of prerogatives between European institutions and national ones, in light of the implications of normative models and in relation to the preferences of European citizens. Our data confirm that the extent and the intensity of policy-making by the ED have increased sharply over the last 30 years. Such increase has taken place, at different speeds, and to different degrees, across policy domains. In recent times the areas that have expanded most are the most remote from the EEC's original mission of establishing a free market zone with common external trade policy. We conjecture that the resulting allocation may be partly inconsistent with normative criteria concerning the assignment of policies at different government levels, as laid out in the theoretical literature.

JEL-codes: H73 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Date: 2001-12
Note: EFG ME PE
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Related works:
Working Paper: What Does the European Union Do? (2002)
Working Paper: What Does the European Union Do? (2002)
Working Paper: What Does the European Union Do? (2001)
Journal Article: What does the European Union do? (2005)
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