How European Markets Became Free: A Study of Institutional Drift

German Gutierrez () and Thomas Philippon ()

No 24700, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Over the past twenty years, Europe has deregulated many industries, protected consumer welfare, and created strongly independent regulators. These policies represent a stark departure from historical traditions in continental Europe. How and why did this turnaround happen? We build a political economy model of market regulation and we compare the design of national and supra-national regulators. We show that countries in a single market willingly promote a supranational regulator that enforces free markets beyond the preferences of any individual country. We test and confirm the predictions of the model. European institutions are indeed more independent and enforce competition more strongly than any individual country ever did. Countries with ex-ante weaker institutions benefit more from the delegation of competition policy to the EU level.

JEL-codes: D02 D41 D42 D43 D72 E25 K21 L0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eur, nep-mac, nep-opm and nep-reg
Note: EFG IO LE POL
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Published as German Gutierrez & Thomas Philippon, 2023. "How European Markets Became Free: A Study of Institutional Drift," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol 21(1), pages 251-292.

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