Competition law post-Brexit

The end of the Transition Period following the UK's exit from the European Union and COVID-19 are major catalysts for the Competition and Markets Authority's future work, including in the fields of merger control and antitrust enforcement. This article considers how these, and other events, will influence the CMA's work, including the establishment of the Digital Markets Unit and the Office for the Internal Market, enforcement priorities and international cooperation.

Defeating ‘modern slavery’, reducing exploitation? The organisational and regulatory challenge

This chapter first charts the short history from the early anti-trafficking strategy put in place by the Labour government in 2007 through the changes and reorganisations of the subsequent 10 years, including the launch of the modern slavery strategy in 2015 under then Home Secretary May. While focusing on the impacts felt by workers in the UK, it also takes into account the position adopted by the UK in relation to international frameworks. The second section then focuses on the importance and potential impact of the creation of the most recent governance and enforcement structures — for example, the Director of Labour Market Enforcement and the evolution of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA). As of May 2017, the GLA was rebranded as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and has new powers to investigate serious exploitation across the whole UK labour market. The third section asks how we can best assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the modern slavery agenda.

Blacklists, Market Enforcement, and the Global Regime to Combat Terrorist Financing

This paper highlights how international organizations can use global performance indicators (GPIs) to drive policy change through transnational market pressure. When international organizations are credible assessors of state policy, and when monitored countries compete for market resources, GPIs transmit information about country risk and stabilize market expectations. Under these conditions banks and investors may restrict access to capital in noncompliant states and incentivize increased compliance. I demonstrate this market-enforcement mechanism by analyzing the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body that issues nonbinding recommendations to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The FATF's public listing of noncompliant jurisdictions has prompted international banks to move resources away from listed states and raised the costs of continued noncompliance, significantly increasing the number of states with laws criminalizing terrorist financing. This finding suggests a powerful pathway through which institutions influence domestic policy and highlights the power of GPIs in an age where information is a global currency.

Does corporate governance matter after all? governance scores and the value of Canadian companies

This study assesses the determinants of governance in the case of Canadian firms and examines the relationship between governance and firm value after the 2008 financial crisis. We estimate the effect of governance on stock return by using different econometric approaches. Our results show that large firms and firms with higher market-to-book value adopt better standards of governance. However, the results show a negative impact of governance on stock return. Therefore, providing important insights to policy makers that have recently proposed changes to the Canadian regulatory system. Our results show a lack of market enforcement, therefore, self-regulation is unlikely to be an effective mechanism for implementation of best practices of governance.

Agricultural credits and contracts

The paper considers contracting problems of the transitional period agriculture. The slow and inexperienced legal system makes third party contract enforcement non-viable. Market enforcement of contract is imperfect due to incompleteness of contracts and underdevelopment of informal features (institutions) of the society, such as codes of behaviour, low importance of goodwill, low adherence to ethical norms, inexperience with conflicts solving in market economy. The survey data related to contracting in transitional agriculture are presented.