Political Economy & Trade

The rise in digitalization has sparked the Fourth Industrial Revolution, raising new concerns and deep divisions throughout the European Union (EU). While the adoption of the Digital Single Market Strategy on May 6, 2015 attempted to adapt to the increasingly digital world, it further highlighted differences among Member States. This paper argues that cross-national variations in digital trade restrictiveness can be explained by the number of cyber-attacks a Member state experiences. This study differs from existing explanations in that it takes a technological perspective and attempts to explain a digital question with a digital phenomenon. The paper tests this hypothesis through a combination of anecdotal and quantitative evidence. Anecdotal evidence regarding the evolution of cyber-attacks in France in Germany suggests that both countries responded to cyber-attacks with strict national legislation towards digital issues. A simple linear regression of the number of cyber-attacks on a country’s Digital Trade Restrictiveness assesses the magnitude of the relationship between these variables for a sample of 28 EU Member States. While the data suggests a causal relationship between the two variables, further research is required to provide a more complete explanation for the variation in question.

Many European states have introduced carbon tax regimes into their national policies, as a way to combat the growing concerns of global warming and climate change. This paper explores the impact of national carbon tax regime in European states on the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced. It does this by comparing carbon tax regimes in Norway, Sweden, and France, in order to understand how each of these regimes works within their respective state and establishes national limitations on the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced. This paper then goes into an analysis of the amount of carbon dioxide produced per capita by all 27 EU member states and Norway, and then compares this average to the carbon dioxide per capita rates of the three case studies, in order to see if the establishment of a carbon tax regime has a direct impact on decreasing the pollution of carbon dioxide. This paper finds that although there are some indications that the establishment of a carbon tax may decrease national carbon dioxide per capita, due to the multisource nature of carbon dioxide emissions, carbon taxes cannot be found to have a direct link to the amount of carbon dioxide per capita that is emitted by a state.

The airline industry generates billions of euros and dollars of revenue each year for the European and American economies. Despite similar levels of economic development, modernization, and number of passengers taking to the skies each year, airline competition in the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) varies significantly. This paper aims to further explain why airline competition varies so greatly in the U.S. compared to the EU despite their similarities in other aspects. While acknowledging that a multitude of factors have contributed to the variation, the present paper focuses on governmental structural differences between the EU and the U.S. Specifically, it highlights the causal role of historical developments in regulatory measures and lobbying. The research examines a wide variety of policy documents, court cases, and lobbying statistics to support this claim. It specifically explores DOJ antitrust investigations, the post-9/11 airline market, and lobbying procedures in the U.S. When assessing the EU market, various EEC regulations, the Single European Act, Commission initiatives, and the lobbying work of A4E are specific cases of analysis. The result shows that the different nature of European and American economic philosophy, combined with the different historical developments and influence of lobbying over policymaking, supports the claim put forth.