ABSTRACT
The last two decades have not only been an era of increasing international mobility of goods, services and factors, but also one of decreasing regulatory burden in a number of markets. Given these parallel trends the question of the nature of this correlation arises: is it a mere coincidence or does it represent some kind of causal link between globalization and deregulation? Of course, for certain interdependencies the answer is trivial: deregulation of international transactions directly causes or at least amplifies globalization trends. However, the opposite causal link from globalization towards regulatory decisions is less straightforward. It is not clear a priori whether, how and to what extent increasing cross-border factor mobility will impact on regulatory equilibria – be it on the fields of labour, financial market, trade or product regulation.
