Johannes Stephan

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the relationship between foreign ownership, managers' independence in decision-making and exporting of foreign-invested firms in five European Union accession countries, and showed that foreign investors' ownership and control over strategic decisions are positively associated with export intensity, measured as the proportion of exports to total sales.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the match between strategic motives of foreign investors in Central-Eastern Europe and locational advantages offered by these countries using the IWH-FDI-Micro database, a unique dataset that contains information from 2009 about the determinants of locational factors, technological activity of subsidiaries and potential for knowledge spillovers in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

Abstract: This study reviews the progress made in EU accession candidates on competition policy. The analysis shows that institution-building and legislation are well under way and that anti-trust practice is not too lax. Due to the diversity among the accession countries under review, the study finds that the strictly rule-based frame work of the EU might not be the most favourable solution for some candidates: firstly, the small and open economies of most candidates make it particularly difficult to define the 'relevant market' in competition cases. Secondly, the traditionally intense vertical integration of production in accession states calls for a reassessment of 'vertical restraints'. The policy implications of this study suggest that the EU competition task force should take a proactive, case-by-case approach vis-a-vis its new members.

TL;DR: In this paper, the central and eastern European countries (CEECs) increasingly included into the international division of labour in the European economic space, are asked whether this integration operates on a level playing field with respect to competition policy.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focused on the factors accounting for decisions to enact a national competition law and identified and discussed the factors that may influence the decision to enact the competition law.