EU Law and Economics

by Steinbach, Armin

• ISBN13: 9780198920885
• ISBN10: 0198920881
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780198920892
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-04-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The intersection between law and economics is a dynamic field of research. Yet, European law has so far not been the subject of comprehensive, systematic economic analysis. Instead issues such as the European debt crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, and the climate emergency have largely escaped scholarly analysis through the nexus of EU law and economics.

EU Law and Economics closes this gap, providing an overview of the application of economics to the institutional, procedural, and substantive aspects of European law. Drawing on various branches of the economic sciences - including rational choice and game theory, and institutional and behavioural economics - this book goes beyond conventional methods of EU legal scholarship to expand our understanding of EU law and its effects. This book devotes attention to EU Treaties and secondary law, as well as their adjudicative interpretation, while using economic theory to explain their core legal principles such as conferral, subsidiarity, and mutual recognition.

Systematic and original, this book offers additional descriptive and normative metrics that expand our understanding of the decision-making behaviour of EU institutions and member states, while opening a new dialogue between two distinct disciplines.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Author Biography

Armin Steinbach, Professor of Law and Economics, Law Department, Ãcole des Hautes Ãtudes Commerciales (HEC) Paris

Armin Steinbach holds the Jean Monnet Chair and the HEC Foundation Chair of Law and Economics, European Law and International Law. He is also Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn and non-resident Fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. He previously served as a government official for more than ten years, heading the financial policy division in the German Ministry of Finance, the economic policy division in the Ministry of Economic and Energy Affairs, and served as ministerial secondment in the German parliament. Armin sits on the WTO list of panellists serving the WTO Dispute Settlement Body.

Table of Contents

Part I. Basics1. Meandering between rational choice, realism, constructivism, and institutionalism2. A cursory review of economic methods"Part II.3. What states and EU institutions care about4. The logic of barter trade: Rational choice and constitutional economics5. Reducing transaction costs6. Supplying public goods and addressing external effects7. Leveraging economies of scale8. Why cooperation fails"Part III.9. Membership of EU Treaties10. Centralization11. Flexibility12. Non-consensual EU law13. Legislative choices14. EnforcementPart IV. Who Cooperates under EU Law15. The European Council and Council of Ministers16. The European Parliament17. The European Court of Justice18. The European Central Bank19. The European Commission20. AdjudicationPart V. What to Cooperate on in the EU21. European Public Goods22. Internal market: economic integration23. Economic and Monetary Union