Nanny State Index 2023

Germany has taken the top spot as the freest country in Europe once again, with the least amount of nannying regulations like banning, taxing, …

Telecoms and innovation

Until recently, the telecommunications market was held up as an EU success story, with Europeans emerging as the big winners. European consumers were indeed …

Emission Possible

This paper urges EU decision makers to include transportation and buildings into the already existing Emissions Trading System (ETS). The study found that consolidating …

Green Alert

This paper urges EU decision makers to avoid entering a tit-for-tat subsidy battle with the Unites States in response to the US Inflation Reduction …

An evidence-based tobacco products directive

Work is underway at the European Union to develop a third Tobacco Products Directive. This briefing outlines a number of simple measures that could …

Tackling Europe’s Cost of Living Crisis

This paper analyses how excessive taxation and regulations are worsening inflationary pressures in eight European countries. As a result of heavy state intervention, European …

EU Minimum Wage Will Harm Subsidiarity and Low-Income Earners

The briefing reviews the newly passed directive on adequate minimum wages in the EU and investigates its potential negative impacts on traditional collective bargaining …

The case against energy price caps

As energy prices soar this year, policymakers in the European Union and the United Kingdom have proposed various measures aimed at limiting energy inflation. …

Fast tracking Ukraine

Granting candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova in June 2022 was an important and worthwhile step taken by the EU. Yet, as currently devised, …

Out of Pocket

This paper examines the tax and regulatory policies fuelling inflation across five European countries. The detailed analysis of high price levels in Germany, Italy, …

Time to question the entrepreneurial state and the mission economy

The EU and its member states are increasingly adopting a mission-oriented approach to tackling today’s pressing challenges. This line of thinking has been inspired …

Only a Sith deals in absolutes: how to nudge the Taxonomy towards Light Side

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced the European Union and its member states to substantially revise their energy policy in order to meet short-term …

Setting the parameters for a new Tobacco Products Directive

The European Commission is asking for feedback on its Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). The call for evidence closes on 17 June 2022 and is …

The realities of France’s fragile economy

It is well known that high production taxes and social contributions in France have been stifling the economy for some time. Prior to the …

Minimum Corporate Income Tax: When Fallacies Lead to Failures

The European Union is debating a directive that would place a minimum effective corporate income tax (CIT) of 15 percent on large-scale company groups. …

The Minimum Corporate Tax Directive and EU Challenges Today

At the end of 2021, the European Commission released a “Proposal for a council directive on ensuring a global minimum level of taxation for …

Where did the Digital Market Act lose competition, property, innovation and user interests?

The European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council continue negotiations on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a proposed regulation aimed at curtailing …

How the status quo serves platform workers and consumers

The European Commission has proposed a Directive of the European Parliament and Council on improving working conditions on platform work. The proposal lays down …

Changing the rules: A unilateral approach to non-tariff barriers

From 2023, all EU goods destined for the UK market will need to be certified with a new regulatory customs mark, recognising the regulatory independence of the …

How to identify and avoid gold-plating EU regulations

Preventing gold-plating is once again reinstated by the EU as an important measure to reduce barriers to the single market. Gold-plating is not in …

The economic damage inflicted by production taxes

Production taxes in France have long been a contentious issue closely linked to employment and wage growth. France currently sets one of the highest …

Changing competences

The European Union often concludes international trade agreements, which contain shared competences with the Member States (the so-called mixed competences agreements), thus they require …

Why tax competition benefits Europe

The latest International Tax Competitiveness Index, published by the Tax Foundation, illustrates the wide variation in the quality of tax systems across Europe. Many …

Raising barriers

The voting patterns of political parties in the national parliaments of Greece, Italy and Spain, and of their members of the European Parliament, show …

The DSA and Small and Medium Enterprises as users of online services

The proposed EU Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to protect users of digital services, but unfortunately it also creates serious new risks for both …

Mind the Gap: Pay Transparency Provisions in the EU

The European Commission seeks to strengthen the principle of equal pay for work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and …

Taxation Matters

As the International Tax Competitiveness Index states, the structure of a country’s tax code is an important determinant of its economic performance. A well-structured …

The EU’s digital package and the role of national competition authorities

The European Union has targeted large online platforms as potential threats to competition in the digital world. According to the Commission’s Vice President and …

The New European Digital Services Act: Risky for Consumers and Innovation

The EU Commission proposed the new Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) in December 2020. Collectively, these proposals are an important …

The Digital Markets Act: Precaution over Innovation

On 15 December 2020, the EU Commission released a proposal for a Regulation on Contestable and Fair Markets in the Digital Sector – referred …

We’ve got a serious pan-European constitutional problem

Debt mutualisation across EU Member States has recently been brought to the forefront of discussion. Firstly, because of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) balance-sheet operations, …

Nanny State Index 2021

The 2021 edition of the Nanny State Index, which has been expanded to 30 countries in Europe, shows that Germany has taken the top spot …

Taxing Capital – An International Comparison

The taxation of capital—at both the individual and the corporate level – is much debated and affects economic growth by lowering the incentives to …

Vaping’s image problem

Surveys suggest that public understanding of the risks and benefits of e-cigarettes has become divorced from the scientific evidence. A Eurobarometer survey conducted in …

Prices in a time of corona: the law and economics of price-gouging

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted widespread calls for stricter regulation of price gouging across the European Union. Whilst the calls come from a good …

Index of Liberalisation 2020

The Index of Liberalisation unveils which countries rank best in economic liberalisation and provides insight on countries with the infrastructure to rebound quicker following …

Over-reach: the EU’s lifestyle regulation plans

A report published by the European Commission on 3 February 2021 proposes a range of nanny state interventions intended to reduce the consumption of …

The EU National Energy and Climate Plans

With the Clean Energy for All Europeans package, the European Union has committed to being carbon-neutral by 2050. In order to achieve this goal, …

The economic cost of Catalonia’s hypothetical independence

Since the 2017 constitutional crisis in Catalonia, the momentum to secede from Spain has grown, but the potential economic impact has not been thoroughly …

Obesity and Overweight in Italy and the OECD Area

The way obesity is measured throughout the EU and OECD countries is significantly flawed. This paper shows that existing international comparisons measuring obesity are …

The rule of law crisis in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to serious health and economic emergencies all over the world. Moreover, it has also affected democratic institutions and the …

The Unemployment Trap in Lithuania

Prior to the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Lithuanian economy had been enjoying a rapid growth. Yet, while the number of available …

Credit Day 2020

This year Credit Day for the European Union falls on the 17th of December. This is the day which, on average, EU member states …

EU Accession and Economic Freedom

The access to European Union and the status of EU membership require significant reforms in order for a country to align with the Union’s …

Rule of law in Poland 2020

As a member of various international and European organisations, Poland is bound by the requirement to respect the rule of law so as to …

The East German Healthcare Phenomenon

The reunification of West Germany and East Germany took place 30 years ago, ending a period of around 45 years during which Germany had …

Economically free countries have fewer and less severe economic crises

With most of the world in a deep economic crisis due to coronavirus and the government reactions to it, knowledge of effective crisis policy …

A response to the SCHEER preliminary opinion

In September 2020, the EU’s Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) published a preliminary opinion (SCHEER 2020) on electronic cigarettes which …

The future of European Tax Competition Essay Prize

As the International Tax Competitiveness Index states, the structure of a country’s tax code is an important determinant of its economic performance. A well-structured …

International Tax Competitiveness Index

The International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) seeks to measure the extent to which a country’s tax system adheres to two important aspects of tax …

CBAM: The Devil is in the Detail

The EU Commission launched a public consultation on the adoption of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), i.e. a fee to be levied on …

Working conditions of platform workers

The European Commission has published a study on working conditions of platform workers. The report identifies key challenges related to platform work, such as …

Rule of law in Poland

The presidential elections in Poland in 2020, which were won by the incumbent Andrzej Duda, the candidate of the ruling Law and Justice party, …

Economic Freedom of the World

The  Economic Freedom of the World Index measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The …

You Had One Job

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Public Health England (PHE) have been widely criticised for their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Serious questions have …

Challenges related to fair minimum wages

This position paper is a response to the European Commission’s second phase consultation with social partners. The EC’s initiative has a general objective of …

The response to the pandemic: A Hayekian view

Socio-economic systems should be understood as ‘complex’ phenomena that cannot effectively be controlled or managed through central planning. In general, markets and other decentralised …

Chinese Puzzle

Covid–19 is provoking a major reorientation of the foreign policy of the US and Europe. At the heart of this is their changing relationship …

Aiming at a common market, not redistribution

In 2018 the European Commission presented its proposed EU budget as “new,” “modern” and “focused.” However, in terms of its expenditure and revenue the …

Freight Expectations: Post-pandemic prospects for global trade

The World Trade Organization has predicted that global trade in goods will drop by between 13 and 32 per cent in 2020 as a …

Coronavirus and the economic value of human life

The Covid-19 crisis has provided many grim examples of some familiar problems in health economics and cost-benefit analysis, and of the ‘tragic choices’ that …

Inflation: The next threat?

The policy reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in all the world’s leading countries. The deficits will to a significant …

The Road to Post-Pandemic Recovery

Thus far, three recovery programs have been proposed in response to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The first recovery program was …

Model Behaviour: How economists can shape the post-lockdown word

The seminal work on epidemiological models was carried out in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The models have developed substantially since then, but …

The problem is not testing capacity but testing participation

This paper argues that testing participation – and not testing capacity – is the biggest obstacle to a successful “test and isolate” strategy, as …

Going Viral: The History and Economics of Pandemics

Pandemics are a recurring feature of human history. In the modern world, since the 1770s, we have had a series of pandemics, with a …

Responses to COVID-19 of governments in selected countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious challenge for societies around the world. In response to it not only individuals are changing their behaviour, but …

How much will the shutdown of the Danish economy cost?

This analysis is based on five scenarios for the length of the shutdown and an attempt to rate the industry’s production losses. The scenarios …

To Ban or Not to Ban

A ban on opening a new supermarket is evidence that people want a new supermarket, for if they did not there would be no …

Rent controls: How they damage the housing market, the economy and society

Rent controls are now being discussed in cities like Berlin, London, and New York. Sweden has had rent controls since 1942. There are at …

Universal Basic Income: Is it a good idea?

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is currently the subject of much interest and discussion in the UK, with support and opposition …

Employment Flexibility Index 2020

For the third year in a row, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute and its partner organisations present the Employment Flexibility Index, that ranks a …

Achieving a carbon neutral economy by 2050

The new European Green Deal plans to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050 while opening up new possibilities for development and employment. The …

Credit Day: The return of fiscal prudence

16th December marks Credit Day across Europe. This is the day that, on average, EU Member State governments have exhausted their annual tax income …

Nanny State On Tour

This study calculates how much UK foreign aid was spent (in 2018 prices) on lifestyle interventions targeting smoking, drinking, eating and sedentary behaviour.UK taxpayers …

Taxing High Incomes

This report compares top effective marginal tax rates on labour income in 41 OECD and EU countries.
The top effective marginal tax rate is …

The Nanny State Index 2019

The Epicenter Nanny State Index is a league table of the best and worst places in the European Union to eat, drink, smoke and …

Reducing Shadow Economies

Across Europe, shadow markets constitute a significant portion of the economy. According to some estimates an average of 16 percent of GDP in EU …

School of Thought – 101 Great Liberal Thinkers

School of Thought – 101 Great Liberal Thinkers profiles the lives and ideas of some of the leading thinkers on individual liberty – from ancient …

Two cheers for the EU-Mercosur Agreement

The new EU-Mercosur Agreement only superficially rejects protectionism. As much as it liberalises trade, it also protects European defensive interests and extends the EU’s …

School Choice Around the World

Education reforms that allow new educational providers to supply schooling into a state system can improve parental satisfaction and raise learning outcomes through consumer …

Tailoring the work and leisure trade-off

Legal interventions in hiring and firing practices are often referred to as employment protection legislation that include working hours, health and safety requirements. The …

The Case Against Tech Taxes

This paper explains why additional taxes on the turnover of companies with a large digital presence would be disproportionate, discriminatory and damage the European …

The parliamentary voting behaviour of populist parties in Greece

Timbro’s methodological distinction in the Authoritarian Populism Index between extreme and authoritarian populist parties is highly relevant in the Greek political environment, as shown …

Not everyone’s cup of tea

MiFID II, together with MiFIR (Regulation (EU) No 600/2014), was intended to create a more transparent, competitive and integrated financial market in the EU …

Nanny State Index

Germany has overtaken the Czech Republic to become the EU’s most liberal country, according to the 2019 edition of the Nanny State Index. Finland …

Battle Resumes – the Copyright Directive is Back

The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (the “Directive”) is back. The issues with the Directive were described in our September 2018 briefing …

Still Hand in Glove?

Following on from research published by the IEA between 2012 and 2014, this discussion paper revisits the issue of state-funded activism in the UK …

Better Regulation: Risks, Markets, Responsibility

A popular explanation for economic scandals, crises and suboptimal market outcomes is the lack of government regulation. This interpretation is intensively promoted by the …

Corporate Tax Out of Control

Do European companies pay their fair share of tax? Many companies headquartered in France, Germany, Italy and Spain show very low effective corporate tax …

The Mass Demonstrations in France is a Reaction to the Effects of Interventionism, Not Liberalism

Mass protests of the “yellow vests” have been taking place in France since 17 November 2018. The catalyst of the demonstration was a fuel …

Free to work: Employment regulations in 2019

The Employment Flexibility Index of LFMI quantifies a great divergence in employment regulations between EU countries. Of the 41 countries included in the index …

Employment Flexibility Index 2019

The Employment Flexibility Index 2019 of the member states of the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides …

Commission consulting on move to qualified majority voting (QMV) on taxation

On 20th December, the European Commission launched a (relatively brief) consultation on moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council on …

Note about the White House Report ‘Opportunity Costs of Socialism’

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) has published a report: “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism”. It is an interesting report with many …

Paranoid Android. Everything the Commission got wrong in its war on Google

The Commission’s decision to fine Google for unfair practice was based on a misunderstanding of the Android ecosystem and a mistaken definition of the …

Credit Day: improving appetite for fiscal responsibility

13 December marks Credit Day across the European Union. This is the day when, on average, European countries’ central governments exhaust their annual tax …

Shadow economy: Understanding drivers, reducing incentives

The aim of this publication is to present and analyse the results of representative population surveys into public perceptions of the shadow economy and …

The fight against poverty depends on economic freedom

The most obvious benefit of economic freedom is that, as a system, it is the most conducive to widespread prosperity, that is, to high …

Competition in the High Technology Sector

The European Union’s approach to competition law and enforcement demonstrates an attitude in the high-tech and media sector, that – due to its anti-competitive …

Regulating the New Media Economy

The new media economy operates differently from other industries when it comes to regulation. The marginal costs of technological giants mean that their interactions …

Free trade and how it enriches us

Free trade improves the well-being of all parties to it. The most significant way that trade achieves this outcome is by enabling and incentivising …

The Copyright Directive – The EU Battles the Internet

The Commission put forward a legislative proposal in September 2016 for a new directive on copyright in the digital single market.  The aim is …

Fixed-term Employment for Long-term Competitiveness

Labour market flexibility may be characterized by the market participants’ abilities to deviate from standard labour regulations and typical forms of employment. Such possibilities …

The Social and Fiscal Contribution of French Top 40 Companies

The social and fiscal contribution from large companies in France and worldwide remains largely unrecognised. Traditional accounting and financial presentations do not provide for …

Minimum Wage Regulation; It’s Complicated

Raising mandatory minimum wage might seem to be a simple policy that serves to increase wages for low-income earners. Politicians use this policy with …

Why the EU’s digital turnover tax is a bad idea

The European Commission has proposed a tax on revenues raised from certain digital activities. However, this is essentially a political gesture with only weak …

Of course sin taxes are regressive

There should be no debate about whether taxes on food, alcohol, tobacco and soft drinks (‘sin taxes’) are regressive. It can be easily demonstrated …

The Impact of the Energy Taxation Directive

Instead of comprehensive re-examination of the Energy Taxation Directive, the European Commission is examining whether ETD should continue the exemptions and lower tariffs for …

Labour Migration and Employment Flexibility

Economic migrants rarely displace local labour force. Immigrants are more likely to complement existing labour force creating opportunities for growth and bringing needed skills. …

Why the EU needs the City too

The UK might appear to have the most to lose from Brexit if City firms find it harder to sell financial services into the …

Offshore bet

The popular account of offshore financial centres as hotbeds of tax evasion is an outdated caricature that bears little resemblance to how OFCs operate. …

Non-tariff barriers to trade are damaging too

On average, the economic costs of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) now far exceed those of tariffs, which have generally been falling as new free trade …

Robocalypse Now?

It is claimed that robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence are going to destroy jobs on an unprecedented scale. These developments, unlike past bouts of technical …

Nanny State Index – Nicotine Supplement

Our new league table of nanny state regulation shows that punitive taxation and excessive regulation of safer nicotine alternatives has increased across the EU. …

Growing protectionism after the financial crisis

The weak global GDP growth since the financial crisis in 2007-2009 has coincided with unusually weak growth in global trade.
The average global tariff …

Fast Food Outlets and Obesity: What is the evidence?

Several local authorities in Britain have introduced ‘zoning laws’ to restrict fast food outlets within a certain distance of schools. Public Health England, the …

Socially Useless? The Crucial Contribution of Finance to Economic Life

Financial firms serve many useful functions which individuals and households could scarcely undertake on their own. These functions include maturity transformation, matching lenders and …

Financial Stability Without Central Banks

A ‘free’ banking system without a central bank provides incentives for banks to act with restraint. Their lending policies are, in effect, tied to …

London’s Global Reach and the Half a Trillion Dollars Equity Prize

As the world’s leading international financial centre, London faces fascinating opportunities as well as some significant challenges in coming years. This is as a …

Digital Resellers: The Case for Secondary Ticket Markets

The reselling of tickets for events has a long history, dating back at least to Roman times.
Such secondary markets in tickets are no different …

Supervising the Tech Giants

The rise of the ‘tech giants’ is, of course, a significant commercial threat to more traditional media, but it also raises some potentially important …

How to develop secondary markets for non-performing loans?

The ECB seeks to increase trading in non-performing loans by reducing the pricing gap between prospective investors and banks. For this to happen, there …

Is neoliberalism to blame for Orbàn and Le Pen?

Populism is on the rise, especially in Europe. Determining the causes is of crucial political importance. Some claim that “neoliberal” policies such as deregulation …

How the municipal VAT exemptions promote tax increases in the EU

As a general rule, local governments are exempt from VAT in the EU. Thus, VAT is not payable on the tax-financed consumption of municipalities …

Super Index 2017

According the latest IBL Super Index, Italy is the sick man of Europe. Despite relatively rosy macroeconomic projections for the whole EU, the gap …

Extreme disparity in European labour markets: an Employment Flexibility Index

The recent Employment Flexibility Index uses data provided by the World Bank’s Doing Business Labour Market Regulation Questionnaire to compare labour market regulations.
The …

Employment Flexibility Index 2018

Denmark, the UK, and Ireland are the leading countries in the 2018 edition of LFMI’s Employment Flexibility Index. Portugal, Luxembourg, and France are the …

2017 Index of Liberalisations: a summary

The 2017 IBL Index of Liberalisations aims to shed light on the degree of openness of the 28 Member States by examining ten different …

Credit day: debt and deficit in a bipolar EU

6 December marks Credit Day across the European Union. This is the day when, on average, European countries’ central administrations will exhaust their annual …

Fair and efficient? On the EC’s proposals for corporate tax reform in the digital single market

In the wake of the Ecofin meeting that took place in Tallinn on September 15-16, the European Commission published a communication on “A Fair …

Perspectives for Poland

In the last 25 years, the Polish economy has grown faster than the economies of Western Europe and the US, which enabled a significant …

No platform? On the economics of P2B exchange

The picture that emerges from the EC surveys of consumers and business regarding platforms is not of a market in which users are routinely …

Health by stealth: Mandatory food reformulation

Food and soft drinks manufacturers are continually reformulating their products and bringing new products to market in response to consumer demand. In recent years, …

Accepting the scientific consensus: GMOs in the EU

The ECJ ruled that Italy had been wrong to ban the cultivation of an EU-approved genetically modified maize. This was a big victory for …

Financial technology and regulation

Recent years have seen a reduced supply of capital to domestic businesses by banks due to increased capital requirements and compliance costs.
Market finance …

Artificial intelligence and the EU labour market

Widespread automation is often named as the greatest long-term threat to human employment. But Europe’s immediate job market problems are of a different sort: …

The day European Union governments spent the last of their annual revenues

EU central governments use up their resources December 6 on average, 25 days before the end of the year. This is almost seven days …

The Future of EU Finances

This Position Paper is a response to the Reflection Paper on the Future of EU Finances by the European Commission. The goal of this …

How the local government VAT exemption promotes tax increases in the EU

The author wishes to thank Oskar Henkow, Rebecca Millar, Anna Sandberg Nilsson and Anders Ydstedt for valuable comments.
Summary

As a general rule, …

The consequences of restricting the Posted Workers Directive

Posted workers are temporarily sent from one member state to another, usually for projects of short duration. There were 1.1. million posted workers in …

Basel regulations: a danger for European banks

The ongoing Basel IV discussions seek to impose additional capital requirement on banks, a move that would disproportionately affect those in Europe.
Whilst the …

Employment in privatised utilities

On 15 June 2017, the Directorate General for Internal Policies published a report which maps the recent history of privatisation and examines the risk …

Displacement Jobs – On the Swedish Employment Subsidies

The Swedish labor market makes use of twelve different forms of employment subsidies involving three percent of the entire active work force.
In this …

Excessive labour market regulation will not help to combat inequality

On 28 September 2017, the European Parliament Employment and Social Affairs Committee (EMPL) will vote on an initiative by Spanish MEP Javi Lopez (S&D) …

The CCCTB is not the corporate tax reform the EU needs

According to the Commission, the new CCCTB initiative is the most ambitious corporate tax reform ever proposed in the EU. However, despite the most …

The tax burden of workers in the EU: a summary

First published in 2010, the 2017 Tax Burden study by the Institut économique Molinari measures the tax and social security burdens on individual employees …

Tax Freedom Day 2017

The purpose of this study is to compare the tax and social security burdens of individual employees earning typical salaries in each of the …

Populism Index 2017 Summary

The 2017 TIMBRO Authoritarian Populism Index is the only Europe-wide comprehensive study that aims to shed light on whether populism poses a long-term threat …

Populism Index 2017

Auktoritär populism har övertagit liberalismens plats som den tredje ideologiska kraften i europeisk politik.
Väljarstödet för populistiska partier ligger kvar på rekordhöga nivåer men …

Minimum income policies in the EU: a misguided proposal

The European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs are currently promoting a new legislative proposal …

Is the Spanish job creation model fragile? The case of tourism

The situation on the Spanish labour market is being debated by specialists and policy makers with respect to two central questions: on the one …

Platform for debate

Platform businesses bring together distinct but interdependent sets of users in such a way as to improve the welfare of each side of the …

Antitrust and the challenge of regulation for online platforms

Platform businesses bring together distinct but interdependent sets of users in such a way as to improve the welfare of each side of the …

Superindex

According to the latest IBL Super Index, the degree of internal divergence within Eurozone countries keeps increasing. This means that the gap between Eurozone …

Time to re-think the EU trade policy

As of 2017, the EU has 44 trade agreements in place with more than 60 countries across the globe. In addition, five accords have …

Nanny State Index Summary

The EPICENTER Nanny State Index is the only comprehensive league table of lifestyle regulations. The latest data suggest that the EU is becoming a …

Nanny State Index

The EPICENTER Nanny State Index is the only comprehensive league table of lifestyle regulations. The latest data suggest that the EU is becoming a …

Reforming the Common Agricultural Policy

The EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has undergone several waves of reforms over the last few decades. Yet, many market- and trade-distorting practices still …

The EU and Norway: a complex relationship

The EEA Agreement was signed in 1992, and entered into force in 1994. Until now, EEA EFTA countries have been able to enjoy the …

Education 4.0

Current schooling systems are badly equipped to deal with rapid technological innovation and changing work patterns such as the sharing economy and the rise …

Roaming without borders

Following the latest European Commission proposal on wholesale roaming surcharges across the EEA, on 5 and 6 April, MEPs will debate on and vote …

A freer energy market can power Europe’s security

Recent EC proposals fail to explain how alternative energy technologies such as fracking, a deeper energy trade relationship with Europe’s biggest trading partner – …

Solvency II and the CMU: unlocking contractual savings’ investment

Even though the free movement of capital has been a legislative reality in the European Union since the Treaty of Rome, the markets for …

The importance of an anti-lobbying clause

The composition of civil society at the EU level is largely dictated by which groups the European Commission chooses to fund. Furthermore, citizens have …

Regulations and complexity harm EU labour mobility

Labour market mobility in the European Union is increasing, but it remains too low to provide sufficient internal socio-economic adjustments. This situation reflects non-policy …

The Economics of Industry 4.0

Viewed over the sweep of history, concerns about technological unemployment have always proved overblown. Over the last two-hundred years, technology has created more jobs …

The taxation of high-income earners: An international comparison

The effective marginal tax rate is the total tax on the last euro earned, taking into account income tax as well as social contributions …

High-powered reforms to EU energy policy

The achievement of efficient and secure energy supply and a clean environment do not have to be conflicting objectives. However, meeting both goals will …

The past and future of European federalism: Spinelli vs. Hayek

The year 2017 will mark the sixty-year anniversary of the Treaties of Rome. On this occasion, the European project will receive a thorough check-up, …

The Solution to the Spanish Pension System

It is increasingly evident that public pensions are going to be hard to sustain in the future: the ratio of workers to pensioners is …

Free to Move

People greatly overestimate the immigrant share of the population and many wrongly believe that openness to migration harms Britons’ job prospects, burdens public finances …

Balancing the economy: The hand of government or the invisible hand?

The past record of industrial policy in the UK is a catalogue of waste and ineffectiveness. By the end of the 1970s it was …

Personal Pensions in the European Union

The development of personal pensions at the national and cross-border levels is hindered by high compulsory payments to public pension funds, restrictions on the …

Android and the challenge of platform management

Google Android is usually described as a mobile operating system – the software that links mobile hardware with applications and thus enables users to …

Hire Authority

In recent years, smartphone-enabled applications such as Uber have gone a long way to resolve the market imperfections which gave rise to taxi regulation …

Living on credit

November 30 marks Credit Day across the European Union. Credit Day is the day when member states’ central administrations exhaust their annual tax revenues …

Last call for TTIP

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is currently in a negotiatory limbo. Even though the European Commission has estimated such an agreement would …

The Effect of Corporate Tax Base Harmonization in the EU

The European Commission (EC) has renewed its proposals on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) initiative. The initiative refers to two proposals by …

Google Shopping: the arguments revisited

The arguments on which the various competition cases against Google are being fought involve core features of economic interaction in multi-sided digital markets. As …

Innovation in Agriculture

The Common Agricultural Policy
Population growth, natural resource scarcity and climate change will challenge agriculture to deliver food security in the coming decades. Innovative …

Innovation in harm reduction

18 October, 2016
Permissionless Innovation
 
Scientific research has made important breakthroughs in harm reduction in recent years. In the field of alcohol consumption, …

Innovation in Food Labelling

18 October, 2016
 
Geographical Indications
 
According the European Commission, a Geographical Indication (GI) is “a distinctive sign used to identify a product …

Innovation in regulatory approaches

18 October, 2016
 
The sharing economy and digital platforms
 
An important part of the digital platform revolution is the sharing economy, which …

Ploughing the Wrong Furrow

The precautionary principle provides non-farming interest groups with a pseudo-official means of influencing policy. The result is a drift towards overregulation and regulatory failures …

Beware the Commission’s rotten Apple ruling

7 September 2016
The European Commission has ordered Ireland to recover €13bn worth of allegedly unpaid taxes from Apple. Reception of the decision has …

The EU and economic freedom: a complicated relationship

3 August 2016
The European Union is all things to all people. To proponents on the right, it is a force for international cooperation, …

Ever freer union? Economic freedom and the EU

3 August 2016
By performing an econometric analysis on the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World: Annual Report 2015,” it is found that …

Radical, but not equal: assessing corporate tax reforms

27 July 2016
A tax on turnover would tax profitable and loss-making firms equally, potentially posing an insurmountable hurdle to struggling firms, and eliminating …

The importance of being credible: Eurozone rules and Italian banks

13 July 2016
 
The conventional account of the Eurozone crisis is one of reckless bankers lending to households and governments far beyond their ability …

Corporation tax reform: theory, evidence and avoidance

06 July 2016
There are efforts at national, EU and international levels to put forward significant reforms to the corporate tax system. The 20th century …

Brexit: a natural experiment for the EU

29 June 2016
Can a country do better after leaving the EU? Indeed, we can perform an even more granular analysis and seek to …

The Authoritarian Populism Index: Main Findings

16.06.2016
The Authoritarian Populist Index (TAP) includes both right- and left-wing populist parties and covers all national elections in 33 European countries, from 1980 …

The policy implications of the sharing economy

15 June 2016
The emergence of the sharing economy is rapidly changing the way in which goods and services are provided across the EU. …

France: the hottest economy you’ve never heard of

08 June 2016
France badly needs economic reform. But we shouldn’t let negative news headlines blind us to the fact that the French economy …

The EU goes digital (sort of)

01 June 2016
While entrepreneurship and innovation are flourishing across much of the EU’s private sector, public policy has lagged behind most recent technological …

Tobacco harm reduction and the new TPD

25 May 2016
The new Tobacco Products Directive (TPD2) dramatically tightens regulation of cigarettes, rolling tobacco and e-cigarettes. Yet, it is unclear that it …

Pricking the balloon on Eurozone deflation

18 May 2016
As growth rates in the Eurozone gather steam, policymakers’ concerns are increasingly shifting to low inflation. According to Eurostat, consumer prices …

TTIP: a pre-mortem

11 May 2016
To say that negotiations for an EU-U.S. trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), have lost momentum since they …

Bans on homesharing won’t redress Berlin’s housing shortage

4 May 2016
A law banning short-term apartment rentals just came into force in Berlin. The measure, which was passed in 2014 but only …

Is Android harming competition in mobile software?

21 April 2016
In sum, the Commission’s Statement of Objections concerning Android is not justified in light of the existing arrangements between Google and …

Prospects for agricultural reform in the EU

6 April 2016
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is today the EU’s most expensive policy, taking up almost half of the annual budget. It …

Regulatory approaches to the sharing economy

18 February 2016
The sharing economy is based on reductions in transaction costs which enable exchanges that were previously not possible. Sharing economy firms …

EU Antitrust vs. Google

Istituto Bruno Leoni, 20 January 2016
The extent of market power enjoyed by Google is a debatable question. The antitrust literature emphasises the importance …

Understanding online platforms

21 December 2015
While platforms can operate online and offline, the internet has created new opportunities to lower transaction costs by linking users. Recently, …

Openness can pay off: the economic impact of migrants

1 December 2015
Existing evidence from large refugee migrations and the recent influx of Syrian migrants into Middle Eastern countries shows no adverse effects …

Index of Liberalizations 2015

Istituto Bruno Leoni, November 2015
The Istituto Bruno Leoni’s Index of Liberalizations aims at identifying both the barriers to competition and the best practices …

Shadow Economies in the Baltic Sea Region 2015

Lithuanian Free Market Institute, November 2015
A new report by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute looks at perceptions and prevalence of the shadow economy …

Taxation and its negative impact on business investment activities

Gabriel A. Giménez Roche, November 2015
In its latest study, the Institut économique Molinari shows that corporate taxation continues to slow down economic recovery …

The Effect of Harmonisation of the Corporate Tax Base in the EU

Lithuanian Free Market Institute, November 2015
The European Commission has re-launched the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) initiative. CCCTB refers to a proposal …

French government will end year by going deeper in debt

Cécile Philippe and Nicolas Marques, November 2015
According to Eurostat data, the French government will have used up all of its resources by November …

Federal Britain: The Case for Decentralization

Philip Booth, November 2015
The UK’s current devolution settlement leads to unrepresentative government and has an inbuilt bias towards “big government”. This situation is …

The right to housing: a threat to property rights?

Nicolò Zanon, November 2015
In this IBL Occasional Paper, the author – a Justice of Italy’s Constitutional Court – discusses the legal and economic …

Social mobility in the UK

 
Christopher Snowdon, October 2015
 
In October 2015, David Cameron said: “Britain has the lowest social mobility in the developed world.” No such …

Taxing e‐cigs would be a mistake in the fight against smoking

 
Frédéric Sautet, September 2015
 
Following a series of volume decreases in sales of traditional cigarettes in France, sales appear to be stabilizing …

E-cigarettes and Article 20 of the Tobacco Products Directive

15 September 2015
 
From 2016, e-cigarettes will face additional regulation under Article 20 of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). Given that non-smokers …

Position: Digital Single Market proposals

15 June 2015
 
The digital revolution is increasingly making barriers to access, trade and innovation obsolete. Remaining obstacles to more efficient exchange of …

Net freedom instead of net neutrality for a successful digital market

 
Cécile Philippe, June 2015
 
The Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy for Europe includes several initiatives to be delivered by the end of …

Tax rulings and state aid: a treacherous mix

 
30 April 2015
 
The benchmark for assessing the legitimacy of any tax measure is the overall tax regime of the country in …

Slicing up the public sector: A radical proposal for devolution

 
Tom Packer and Matthew Sinclair, March 2015
 
The UK is highly centralised and devolution combined with fiscal decentralisation could bring significant economic …

All the conspiracy theories around TTIP

Smoking or vaping: the revolution in tobacco and nicotine consumption

 
Frédéric Sautet, March 2015
 
Long denigrated and accused of every imaginable evil, the tobacco market is undergoing a renaissance with innovations that …

Brexit: Directions for Britain Outside the EU

Ralph Buckle, Tim Hewish, John C. Hulsman, Iain Mansfield, Robert Oulds, February 2015
It is quite possible that there will be a referendum on …

Failure to liberalise energy markets jeopardises Energy Union

Simona Benedettini and Carlo Stagnaro, 16 January 2015
 
The liberalisation and integration of European energy retail markets is still far from complete. Retail …

Taxing Problem: The UK’s incoherent tax system

Ryan Bourne, December 2014
The UK tax system is incoherent. Even ignoring benefits styled as tax credits and the withdrawal of child benefit, taxpayers …

Nutrition taxes: a broken tool in public health policy

 
Frédéric Sautet, Institut Economique Molinari, October 2014
 
It is vital to understand that the impact of nutrition taxes on the consumption of …

Nutrition taxes: a broken tool in public health policy

Frédéric Sautet, September 2014
Excess weight and obesity have been on the rise for more than 40 years in many countries around the world. …

Advertising in a Free Society

 
Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, September 2014
 
In practice it is impossible to distinguish between advertising that is intended to be persuasive …

Punishing the Majority: Problems with Alcohol Policy in UK

 
John C. Duffy and Christopher Snowdon, June 2014
 
Alcohol policy in Britain and many other countries aims to reduce per capita alcohol …

IBL Memo: Policy framework for climate and energy in the period from 2020 to 2030

 
Istituto Bruno Leoni, March 2014
 
Current obligations by the EU to decrease GHG emissions by 20% by 2020 are the most ambitious …

The Government Debt Iceberg

 
Jagadeesh Gokhale, March 2014
 
Western governments have developed unfunded social insurance programmes where retiree benefits are paid for from the taxes of …

Sin taxes: the examples of alcohol and tobacco  

 
Valentin Petkantchin, March 2014
 
So‐called “sin” taxes are very much in fashion in France and elsewhere. With the aim of reducing “sinful” …

Euro Puppets: The European Commission’s remaking of civil society

Christopher Snowdon, March 2013
With public confidence in the European project waning, the idea of initiating a ‘civil dialogue’ with the public emerged in …

Are Green Jobs Real Jobs? The Case of Italy.

 
Luciano Lavecchia and Carlo Stagnaro, May 2010
 
The European Union has committed itself to increase the share of renewable energy up to …