What Does the European Union Do? / Alberto Alesina, Ignazio Angeloni, Ludger Schuknecht.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Alesina, Alberto.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Angeloni, Ignazio.

Schuknecht, Ludger.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8647.

NBER working paper series no. w8647

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2001.

Summary:

We construct a set of indicators to measure the policy-making role of the European Union (European Council, Parliament, Commission, Court of Justice, etc.), in a selected number of policy domains. Our goal is to examine the division of prerogatives between European institutions and national ones, in light of the implications of normative models and in relation to the preferences of European citizens. Our data confirm that the extent and the intensity of policy-making by the ED have increased sharply over the last 30 years. Such increase has taken place, at different speeds, and to different degrees, across policy domains. In recent times the areas that have expanded most are the most remote from the EEC's original mission of establishing a free market zone with common external trade policy. We conjecture that the resulting allocation may be partly inconsistent with normative criteria concerning the assignment of policies at different government levels, as laid out in the theoretical literature.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2001.