The diversity of the EU approach to law enforcement: Towards a coherent model inspired by a law and economics approach

Traditionally in the division of labor between the European level and the Member States it was, roughly, the European legislature that set the norms and the Member States that took care of enforcing these norms. In various policy areas, an implementation deficit has been observed, which is said to be partly due to the Member States facing difficulties with the choice of procedural options. For that reason, among others, the European legislature increasingly prescribes the enforcement approach to the Member States to back up national legislation that implements European law. This Article examines the incoherence of the EU’s approach to law enforcement in the areas of consumer, competition, environmental, and insider trading laws. After setting out the EU’s legal competences with a view to law enforcement, the rather diverse picture — mixes — of private, administrative, and criminal law enforcement in the four areas will be illustrated. The authors then ask the question of whether this divergence can be explained by an economic reasoning with respect to law enforcement. The analysis, however, identifies substantial differences between an ideal enforcement mix and the current e

The Role of Experts in Assessing Damages

In this contribution we focus on the role of experts in the assessment of tort damages from an economic point of view. We distinguish two different aspects. First, we examine the role which economists might play in assessing damages in tort cases. This approach focuses on the insights that Law and Economics provides regarding the correct assessment of damages. We pay specific attention to two problematic forms of losses where economic insights may play an important role: pure economic loss and personal injury damage (both loss of income and compensation for immaterial losses due to fatal and non-fatal accidents). Second, we investigate from a Law and Economics point of view the role of experts in g

The export of ecological civilization: Reflections from law and economics and law and development

This paper uses the concept of ecological civilization (EC) that has been developed within China and is now promoted within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The paper critically examines the suitability of China’s environmental law as an export product and uses the law and economics literature to formulate some critical observations with respect to the suitability of Chinese environmental law as an export product. Law and economics are also used to analyze the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature, arguing that the reduction of environmental pollution will only occur with an increase in regulatory and institutional structures. Then, the law and development literature is employed to critically analyze the so-called legal transplants phenomenon, whereby particular legal rules from a donor country are transplanted to a host country. That literature argues that transplants may lead to rejection if they are not demand-driven and do not take into account local needs. The paper therefore concludes with some implications for the idea of transplanting the concept of EC along the BRI

Gedragsveronderstellingen en verzekeringen

__Samenvatting__ Verzekeringseconomieen -recht hanteren alspresumptie dat verzekerden minder voorzichtig worden als zij verzekerd zijn en dat juist diegenen die het verhoogde risico op schade lopen, een verzekering nemen. Heteerste verschijnsel wordt geduid als ‘moreel risico’en het tweede verschijnsel roept het risico van ‘antiselectie’ in het leven. Daar kan aan worden toegevoegd de presumptie dat de vraag naar verzekeringen rationeel tot stand komt: men verzekert weloverwogen wat men van waarde acht en men laat onverzekerd waar men minder aan hecht. Het recht ontwikkelt instrumenten om moreel risico en antiselectie tegen te gaan en de verzekeringseconomie baseertcompletetheorieën op de genoemde uitgangspunten. Maar empirietoont aan dat rationele keuze minder dominant is dan de presumptie veronderstelt. Dat werpteen anderlichtop moreelrisicoen antiselectie. In dit hoofdstuk wordt ditempirisch materiaal ontsloten en wordt derelevantie van het materiaal voorbeleidsmakersbinnen het verzekeringsrecht beargumenteerd

The Role of the Expert Witness

In this chapter, we discuss general aspects of the role of the expert in court and issues faced by experts. The chapter is written largely from a Dutch perspective, so that references to the Court almost exclusively refer to a judge rather than a jury acting as a fact-finder. Notwithstanding this perspective of the authors, the concepts illustrated herein are widely applicable to issues relating to experts serving in courts outside of the Netherlands. Although the discussions in this chapter are intended to apply to experts in forensic epidemiology, we draw extensively from writings in Law and Economics, in part because so much has been published in this area on the topic of experts and expert testimony, and in part because these writings translate well to other disciplines