Suchergebnisse

This forum contribution critically rethinks the macro-financial approach to
liquidity by focusing more explicitly on its public-private hybrid dimension. To
do so, it introduces the notion of a 'liquidity regime': a heuristic device
aimed at tracking the ensemble of social relations and institutions that govern
the coherence of the payments system at any given time. A key insight that
emerges from this approach is that the ability to make markets and access
liquidity is never neutral or apolitical. What requires closer attention,
therefore, is precisely how the interaction between public authorities and
private market participants affords some actors greater leverage in shaping the
financial system.

This unit was published in "International Cooperation of Competition Authorities in Europe: from Bilateral Agreements to Transgovernmental Networks" Błachucki, M., ed., (2020). The acquistion of WhatsApp by Facebook in 2014 revealed that the internationally prevalent system of turnover-based merger control thresholds was struggling to cope with cases in the digital world in which merging parties, typically acquisition targets, do not generate sufficient turnover to fall under turnover thresholds of international merger control regimes. The German and Austrian legislators reacted by introducing new size of transaction tests in their merger control thresholds, with the German and Austrian competition authorities issuing respective guidelines in 2017/2018. In various jurisdictions and at the EU level, the question arose whether such thresholds should also be introduced, or whether it will suffice if Germany and Austria could control high value low turnover transactions and could refer them to the EU level under the existing EU Merger Regulation's referral mechanism. This article sheds light on this debate. It explains the details of the German and Austrian size of transaction tests and the joint German-Austrian guidelines, and analyses how they, and the typical transaction value merger cases, fit into the referral mechanism of the EU Merger Regulation.

This unit was published in "International Cooperation of Competition Authorities in Europe: from Bilateral Agreements to Transgovernmental Networks" Błachucki, M., ed., (2020). The acquistion of WhatsApp by Facebook in 2014 revealed that the internationally prevalent system of turnover-based merger control thresholds was struggling to cope with cases in the digital world in which merging parties, typically acquisition targets, do not generate sufficient turnover to fall under turnover thresholds of international merger control regimes. The German and Austrian legislators reacted by introducing new size of transaction tests in their merger control thresholds, with the German and Austrian competition authorities issuing respective guidelines in 2017/2018. In various jurisdictions and at the EU level, the question arose whether such thresholds should also be introduced, or whether it will suffice if Germany and Austria could control high value low turnover transactions and could refer them to the EU level under the existing EU Merger Regulation's referral mechanism. This article sheds light on this debate. It explains the details of the German and Austrian size of transaction tests and the joint German-Austrian guidelines, and analyses how they, and the typical transaction value merger cases, fit into the referral mechanism of the EU Merger Regulation.

Critical macro-finance (CMF) has become an influential avenue of research aimed
at shedding light on how the global payments system is governed. In the
introduction to this special forum on CMF, we explore three main themes: (1) the
intellectual lineage of CMF and its relation to financialisation studies; (2)
the policy relevance of CMF; and (3) its 'critical' position.