Regulatory Competition and Economic Integration: Comparative Perspectives

Regulatory Competition and Economic Integration addresses one of the hottest policy questions on both sides of the Atlantic: at what level of government should regulation be undertaken? Whether called ‘federalism’ or ‘subsidiarity’, the struggle between those who wish to centralize governmental functions and those who seek to decentralize them looms large. Esty and Geradin bring together top-notch scholars from both Europe and the United States to examine the various aspects of the debate between ‘harmonization’ and ‘regulatory competition’ across three comparative dimensions: first, across regulatory areas (environment, banking, corporate law, labor, tax and antitrust); second, across models of economic integration (from highly integrated systems, such as the United States or the European Union, to loosely integrated regimes, such as the WTO); and third, across disciplinary perspectives (law, economics, business, political science). The book provides a sharp focus on the circumstances that would yield gains from regulatory competition and to contrast those cases where heightened co-operation in standard setting or broader regulatory harmonization might increase social welfare.