How European Markets Became Free: A Study of Institutional Drift
研究了欧洲过去20年放松管制、保护消费者福利并建立独立监管机构的转变，通过政治经济学模型解释国家为何自愿将竞争政策委托给超国家机构，并验证了欧盟机构比任何单个国家更独立、更强有力地执行竞争政策。
Abstract Over the past 20 years, Europe has deregulated many industries, protected consumer welfare, and created strongly independent regulators. These policies represent a stark departure from historical traditions in continental Europe. How and why did this turnaround happen? We build a political economy model of market regulation and we compare the design of national and supra-national regulators. We show that countries in a single market willingly promote a supranational regulator that enforces free markets beyond the preferences of any individual country. We test and confirm the predictions of the model. European institutions are indeed more independent and enforce competition more strongly than any individual country ever did. Countries with ex-ante weaker institutions benefit more from the delegation of competition policy to the EU level.