Access to Electronic Data for Criminal Investigations Purposes in the EU. CEPS Paper in liberty and security in Europe No. 2020-01, February 2020

Within the EU and across the Atlantic, investigation and prosecution of crime increasingly relies on the possibility to access, collect and transfer electronic information and personal data held by private companies across borders. Cross-border access to and collection of data for the purpose of fighting crime raise several legal and jurisdictional issues. This paper comparatively examines the constitutional, legal and administrative frameworks on access to and use of digital information in cross-border criminal justice cooperation in a selection of EU member states. It presents key challenges in the application of the EU mutual recognition and mutual legal assistance instruments, as well as the existence of 'promising practices' across the EU and in transatlantic relations. The paper also assesses a set of legal and practical questions raised by the ongoing policy and normative debate on the so-called “E-Evidence” Package. Finally, it sets out a number of policy options and practical ways forward for EU and national policy makers to promote judicial cooperation for cross-border access to and collection of electronic data in line with EU and international rule law and fundamental rights standards

D-Branes on C^3_6 part I: prepotential and GW-invariants

This is the first of a set of papers having the aim to provide a detailed description of brane configurations on a family of noncompact threedimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. The starting point is the singular manifold C^3/Z_6, which admits five distinct crepant resolutions. Here we apply local mirror symmetry to partially determine the prepotential encoding the GW-invariants of the resolved varieties. It results that such prepotential provides all numbers but the ones corresponding to curves having null intersection with the compact divisor. This is realized by means of a conjecture, due to S. Hosono, so that our results provide a check confirming at least in part the conjecture.Comment: 66 pages, 18 figures, 15 tables; added reference

The Core of Games with Stackelberg Leaders

This paper considers cooperative game theoretic settings in which forming coalitions can act as Stackelberg leaders. We de�fine a value function which modi�fies the gamma-value function (Hart & Kurz, 1983, Chander & Tulkens, 1997) by letting members of deviating coalitions move �first in choosing a coordinated strategy. We accordingly defi�ne what we call the phi-core, and characterize the phi-core allocations of a cartel formation game and of a public goods economy.Core, Cooperative Games, Oligopoly, Public Goods

Coalitional Approaches to Collusive Agreements in Oligopoly Games.

In this paper we review a number of coalitional solution concepts for the analysis of the stability of cartels and mergers under oligopoly. We show that, although so far the industrial organization and the cooperative game-theoretic literature have proceeded somehow independently on this topic, the two approaches are highly inter-connected. We first consider the basic problem of the stability of the whole industry association of firms under oligopoly and, for this purpose, we introduce the concept of core in games with externalities. We show that different assumptions on the behaviour as well as on the timing of the coalitions of firms yield very di¤erent results on the set of allocations which are core-stable. We then consider the stability of associations of firms organized in coalition structures different from the grand coalition. To this end, various coalition formation games recently introduced by the so called endogenous coalition formation literature are critically reviewed. Again, di¤erent assumptions concerning the timing and the behaviout of firms are shown to yield a wide range of different results.Cooperative Games, Coalitions, Mergers, Cartels, Core, Games with Externalities, Endogenous Coalition Formation.

A conjectural cooperative equilibrium for strategic form games

This paper presents a new cooperative equilibrium for strategic form games, denoted Conjectural Cooperative Equilibrium (CCE). This concept is based on the expectation that joint deviations from any strategy profile are followed by an optimal and noncooperative reaction of non deviators. We show that CCE exist for all symmetric supermodular games. Furthermore, we discuss the existence of a CCE in specific submodular games employed in the literature on environmental agreements.Strong Nash Equilibrium, Cooperative Games, Public Goods

Wage inequality and returns to schooling in Europe: a semi-parametric approach using EU-SILC data

In this paper we apply a semi-parametric approach (quantile regression - QR) to the last 2007 wave of the EU-SILC data set, in order to explore the connection between education and wage inequality in 8 European countries. We find that wages increase with education and this holds true across the whole distribution. Furthermore, this effect is generally more important at the highest quantiles of the distribution than at the lowest, implying that schooling increases wage dispersion. This evidence is found to be rather robust as showed through tests of linear hypothesis. We also corroborate the idea that, although OLS coefficients estimates are substantially in line with the QR’s, the former technique really misleads relevant information about cross-countries heterogeneity in the impact of education on within group inequality at different points of the wage distribution. Hence this paper confirms that a semi-parametric QR approach is more interesting, as well as more appropriate, because it measures the wage effect of education at different quantiles, thus describing relevant cross-countries changes or bounces not only in the location, but also in the shape of the distribution.Returns to education; Wage inequality; Quantile regression; Europe

Coalition Formation in Games without Synergies

This paper establishes sufficient conditions for the existence of a stable coalition structure in the ”coalition unanimity” game of coalition formation, first defined by Hart and Kurz (1983) and more recently studied by Yi (1997, 2000). Our conditions are defined on the strategic form game used to derive the payoffs the game of coalition formation. We show that if no synergies are generated by the formation of coalitions, a stable coalition structure always exists provided that players are symmetric and either the game exhibits strategic complementarity or, if strategies are substitutes, the best reply functions are contractions. We illustrate the role of synergies in a Cournot oligopoly example with cost reducing R&D.Coalition formation, Synergies, Strong Nash equilibrium

Exploring the inter-industry wage premia in Portugal along the wage distribution: evidence from EU-SILC data

In this article we investigate whether inequality in the inter-industry wage premia may be explained by unobserved differences in workers' educational skills. We use the last 2007 wave of EU-SILC data set for Portugal, a nation which can be considered a case-study, due to its traditional high inter-industry wage dispersion. Applying both OLS and Quantile Regression techniques, our results suggest that quality differences across workers still remain an irrelevant matter in the wage premia determination, even after many noteworthy educational reforms adopted in that country since the beginning of the 1990s.Returns to education, inter-industry wage inequality, quantile regression, Portugal

Inter-industry Wage Premia in Portugal: Evidence from EU-SILC data

In this paper we investigate whether inequality in the inter-industry wage premia may be explained by unobserved differences in workers’ educational skills. We use the 2007 EU-SILC data set for Portugal, a nation which can be considered a case-study, due to its high inter-industry wage dispersion. Applying both OLS and quantile regression techniques, our results suggest that this unobserved heterogeneity is not a relevant matter in the wage premia determination. We thus corroborate the previous empirical contribution to Economic Letters performed by Martins (2004).Returns to education; inter-industry wage inequality; Quantile regression; Portugal