Productivity Growth and Infrastructure-Related Sectors: The Case of Mexico

This technical note examines the interactions between infrastructure and productivity growth in Mexico. To address this relation, we follow an approach that seek to tie down infrastructure productivity improvements in terms of the impact of particular types of infrastructure on particular sectors, thus providing the basis for informed decisions on investment priorities for economic growth. We have been able to identify significant relations between labor and capital productivity improvements, or capital deepening (i.e., investment) in infrastructure-related sectors and labor productivity improvements in other sectors. Sectoral infrastructure priorities can be found in the transport and energy sectors, broadly defined, with effects that have regional differences. The nature of our results points to complementary policies and the need to improve the regulatory compact for infrastructure in Mexico. Our results recommend special attention to the regulatory/competition policy approach in transport, and the electricity wholesale market.

Sowing and Cultivating the Seed of Diversity in Agri-Food: Intellectual Property Protection in Transnational and Comparative Perspective

This article combines intellectual property and comparative law insights to propose an evolutionary analysis of protection for seeds in the contemporary legal order. From a regime of commons for seeds, to plant variety protection, to patents for genetically engineered plants, exclusive rights have been progressively introduced for innovators in the field of agriculture to provide incentives in a world of growing need for food and raw materials. Such evolution has caused reduced common practices in agriculture that implied the freedom to save and exchange seeds. Among other values, a potential loss of biodiversity is the consequence. Likewise, legal systems tend to converge towards certain models of protection for innovators, although regulatory competition can exert significant pressure on states to preserve alternative models and offer solutions that balance all the values at stake.**

FROM THE SYNTHESIS OF ECONOMIC THEORIES TO POLITICAL CONSENSUS: MONETARY AND FISCAL DILEMMAS OF MACROECONOMIC STABILIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

An analysis of government programs for macroeconomic stabilization of selected countries is made to establish their compliance with scientific approaches that determine the political choice in favor of the use of monetary and/or fiscal instruments for stimulation of economic activity based on the revision of the substantive provisions of neoclassical synthesis and the new macroeconomic consensus to highlight the peculiarities of interpretation of macroeconomic processes, the nature of cyclical fluctuations and ways to level and adjust them. It is established that the most popular in the political sphere are the conclusions of the new neoclassical synthesis (New Consensus in Macroeconomics), which combines the new Keynesian approach and the real business cycle approach, however, they are also adjusted in any form, depending on the priority of the government. (the desire to achieve full employment; price stabilization; economic growth and balance of payments; efficient use of limited resources), provide mostly short-term planning horizon, which complicates the exit from the “vicious circle” of economic policy, when its dynamic development becomes hostage to the need for constant adaptation in accordance with the changing conditions, which it itself by its own adjustment causes. It was found that in the situation of the Coronavirus crisis the issues of combating the simultaneous shocks of supply and demand, and unemployment in particular, are recognized as a priority and sought to be addressed through a combination of monetary and fiscal policy tools, including regulatory competition by neoprotectionism. defined by us as a set of principles, tools and methods of regulatory policy in international trade, international capital movements and foreign investment, as well as international monetary, financial and credit relations, the imperative of which is to stimulate socio-economic development and economic growth by creating conditions for increasing the economic activity of all economic entities.

The new directive on an EU-wide representative action and third-party litigation funding: An opportunity for European consumers?

After years of compensatory collective redress being left to a sort of regulatory competition among Member States, Directive 1828/2020 finally introduced an EU wide representative action scheme, aimed at strengthening the position of European consumers vis-à-vis new market dynamics such as globalisation and digitalisation. The new system, which shall run in parallel with national tools, introduces some innovations such as a cross-border action mechanism, the possibility of adopting an opt-out model and a specific regulation of third-party litigation funding in the context of collective redress. This aspect, addressed already in the 2013 Recommendation, is of particular interest, because third party funding represents a particularly powerful complement to collective redress in easing citizens' access to justice. However, the provisions introduced with Directive 1828/2020 leave some issues open. In particular, the Court's role in managing the funding agreement, with special reference to the funder's fee, and the effect of the funding agreement in case an opt-out adhesion mechanism is adopted are of paramount importance and still need to be addressed interpretatively. In this task, the comparative method will be particularly helpful in analysing the solution which Countries more familiar with third party funding, like Australia, Canada or the United States have introduced or discussed.

Decrypting the Signs of Regulatory Competition in Regulating Cryptoassets

The icos market has challenged financial regulators in terms of determining fit with existing regimes and consideration for regulatory reform. Regulatory divergences have emerged in a number of jurisdictions and we discuss three dominant approaches in relation to hegemonic, self-regulatory and enabling regimes. These reflect different assumptions and regulators’ understandings of the cryptoasset industry, and we argue that the ‘terms for competition’ in relation to supply and demand side needs are still being discovered and are incomplete. This provides a unique opportunity for regulators to jettison familiar assumptions in relation to corporatized securities issuers or institutional investors in order to discover what governance needs are truly at stake. This may pose challenges for coherence with existing regulation but coherence should not itself be an obstacle for learning and potentially, reform. We also argue that signs of international regulatory coordination in relation to the Libra project are not necessarily reflective of a wider trend for the cryptoasset industry. This is because regulators can apply existing and familiar financial regulation paradigms more easily to the Libra Association, in particular its leading founding member Facebook. The cryptoasset market is still likely to give rise to diversity and should facilitate the discovery of new bases for regulatory thinking and policy, uncoordinated or otherwise.