Explaining Regulatory Policy Divergence

Author(s):  
David Vogel

This chapter explores several alternative explanations for the divergence in transatlantic risk regulation, and discusses the policy shifts that have taken place on both sides of the Atlantic since around 1990. The United States and the fifteen member states of the EU are affluent democracies with sophisticated public bureaucracies, substantial scientific capacities, and strong civic cultures. Their regulatory officials have access to much of the same scientific expertise and there is extensive communication among policy makers, scientists, business managers, nongovernment organizations, and citizens. The chapter shows how divergent risk regulations between the United States and the EU add to the costs of transatlantic commerce and also raise the costs of international trade as some countries adopt European standards and others adopt American ones.

Author(s):  
David Vogel

This chapter explores changes in public opinion regarding the transatlantic politics of risk regulation, as well as the preferences of influential policy makers. Both separately and by their interaction with one another, they have had a critical impact on shaping the divergence in transatlantic regulatory stringency. The chapter presents a broad historical overview of changes in public demands for more stringent risk regulations and the willingness of policy makers to address them. During the second half of the 1980s, the extent and intensity of public concerns about a wide range of health, safety, and environmental risks increased substantially on both sides of the Atlantic. These concerns played a role in a major expansion of consumer and environmental regulation in both the EU and the United States.


1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross D. Petty

Nearly 40% of the more than $270 billion spent on advertising throughout the world occurs in the United States and more than 25% more is spent in Europe (Adler 1996). Both the United States and European Union (EU) have a central government that is the source of marketwide law, as well as numerous states, each with its own individual laws. Although the EU drew on U.S. law when drafting its 1984 Directive on Misleading Advertising, many of its member states have legal traditions predating those of the United States, and they are reluctant to change. The author examines advertising law in both the United States and EU, specifically exploring the law of misleading, comparison, and unfair advertising. Differences between states in each market, the states and central government, and the United States and EU are analyzed to develop implications for both marketers and policy makers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 84-111
Author(s):  
Alasdair R. Young

This chapter analyzes one of the two instances in which enforcement tariffs were imposed: the EU’s banana trade regime (BTR). The analysis charts the origins of the policy through the EU’s efforts to protect it under multilateral trade rules before focusing on how the EU responded once it lost the complaint brought by the United States and Latin American banana producers. The EU responded in three acts. Only the second act has attracted much scholarly attention, which has led to some questionable conclusions about the impact of tariffs. The chapter exploits variation in conditions and outcomes over the three acts. Although adversely affected exporters lobbied for policy change during the second act, they were absent in the other two when changes were also adopted. In addition, there is no indication that their efforts affected the preferences of policy makers during the second act. Policy makers struggled to balance advancing the EU’s ambitious agenda in the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks with its obligations to domestic and African and Caribbean banana producers. The chapter argues that the EU’s policy reforms became more radical as the preferences of EU policy makers regarding the treatment of African and Caribbean producers changed for reasons unrelated to the dispute.


Author(s):  
David Vogel

This book examines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990 global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal? This book takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. The book traces how concerns over such risks—and pressure on political leaders to do something about them—have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. The book explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.


Author(s):  
Peter Scott

From an international perspective, the inter-war car industry was a British success story. Britain ranked only second to the United States as the world’s leading producer of, and market for, automobiles, owing to a relatively strong domestic market by European standards. However, while consumers’ expenditure was high, it was not deep—car ownership per capita in 1938 being around a third of US levels. This chapter examines why the British automobile sector failed to take off into mass market diffusion. A number of important factors are highlighted, including lower British wages relative to the United States; punitive vehicle and petrol taxation; and the high unit production costs incurred in serving a market too small to justify Fordist mass production. However, a more fundamental reason was the low priority given to car ownership in a relatively small, densely populated, and highly urbanized island nation with well-developed public transport networks.


Author(s):  
Steven L Schwarcz

Securitisation represents a significant worldwide source of capital market financing. European investors commonly invest in asset-backed securities issued in U.S. securitisation transactions, and vice versa One of the key goals of the European Commission's proposed Capital Markets Union (CMU) is to further facilitate securitisation as a source of capital market financing as a viable alternative to bank-based finance for companies operating in the EU. To that end, this chapter explains securitisation and attempts to put its rise, its decline after the global financial crisis, and its recent CMU-inspired revival into a global perspective. It examines not only securitisation's relationship to the financial crisis but also post-crisis comparative regulatory approaches in the EU and the United States.


Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Mauro G. Carta ◽  
Matthias C. Angermeyer ◽  
Silvano Tagliagambe

The purpose is to verify trends of scientific production from 2010 to 2020, considering the best universities of the United States, China, the European Union (EU), and private companies. The top 30 universities in 2020 in China, the EU, and the US and private companies were selected from the SCImago institutions ranking (SIR). The positions in 2020, 2015, and 2010 in SIR and three sub-indicators were analyzed by means of non-parametric statistics, taking into consideration the effect of time and group on rankings. American and European Union universities have lost positions to Chinese universities and even more to private companies, which have improved. In 2020, private companies have surpassed all other groups considering Innovation as a sub-indicator. The loss of leadership of European and partly American universities mainly concerns research linked to the production of patents. This can lead to future risks of monopoly that may elude public control and cause a possible loss of importance of research not linked to innovation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Jenichen

AbstractIt is a common—often stereotypical—presumption that Europe is secular and America religious. Differences in international religious freedom and religious engagement policies on both sides of the Atlantic seem to confirm this “cliché.” This article argues that to understand why it has been easier for American supporters to institutionalize these policies than for advocates in the EU, it is important to consider the discursive structures of EU and US foreign policies, which enable and constrain political language and behavior. Based on the analysis of foreign policy documents, produced by the EU and the United States in their relationship with six religiously diverse African and Asian states, the article compares how both international actors represent religion in their foreign affairs. The analysis reveals similarities in the relatively low importance that they attribute to religion and major differences in how they represent the contribution of religion to creating and solving problems in other states. In sum, the foreign policies of both international actors are based on a secular discursive structure, but that of the United States is much more accommodative toward religion, including Islam, than that of the EU.


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