Lost in translation : euro-compatibility, legal security, and the autonomous implementation of EU law in Switzerland

This article presents the legislative and judicial practice relating to the "autonomous implementation" of EU law in Switzerland. Given that "euro-compatibility" is the central consideration behind this legislative policy, one would expect Swiss authorities to have devised legislative and hermeneutical techniques guaranteeing high fidelity to EU "mother law". That is not the case, however, and as this article shows much is lost in the translation from EU to Swiss Law

Market and institutional determinants in the regulation of conveyancers

Demand for law professionals in the conveyancing of property is decreasing because of market and institutional changes. On the market side, many transactions feature large, well-known parties and standardized transactions, which make professionals less effective or necessary for protecting the parties to private contracts. On the institutional side, public titling makes it possible to dispense with a broadening set of their former functions. Recording of deeds made professionals redundant as depositories of deeds and reduced demand for them to design title guarantees. Effective registration of rights increasingly substitutes professionals for detecting title conflicts with third parties and gathering their consent. Market changes undermine the information asymmetry rationale for regulating conveyancing, while institutional changes facilitate liberalizing not only conduct but also license regulations. These arguments are supported here by disentangling the logic of titling systems and presenting empirical evidence from the European and USA markets.

The economics of organized crime and optimal law enforcement

This paper extends the optimal law enforcement literature to organized crime.We model the criminal organization as a vertical structure where the principal extracts some rents from the agents through extortion. Depending on the principal's information set, threats may or may not be credible. As long as threats are credible, the principal is able to fully extract rents.In that case, the results obtained by applying standard theory of optimal law enforcement are robust: we argue for a tougher policy. However, when threats are not credible, the principal is not able to fully extract rents and there is violence. Moreover, we show that it is not necessarily true that a tougher law enforcement policy should be chosen when in presence of organized crime.

Report on a special investigation of the Webster County Metropolitan Law Enforcement Telecommunications Board for the period July 1, 2006 to January 28, 2011

Report on a special investigation of the Webster County Metropolitan Law Enforcement Telecommunications Board for the period July 1, 2006 to January 28, 2011

Who is afraid of the big bad ban? An evaluation of the effects of the Spanish clean air law on expenditure at hospitality venues

Background:In January 2011 Spain modified clean air legislation in force since 2006, removing all existing exceptions applicable to hospitality venues. Although this legal reform was backed by all political parties with parliamentary representation, the government's initiative was contested by the tobacco industry and its allies in the hospitality industry. One of the most voiced arguments against the reform was its potentially disruptive effect on the revenue of hospitality venues. This paper evaluates the impact of this reform on household expenditure at restaurants and bars and cafeterias. Methods and empirical strategy:We use micro-data from the Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares (EPF) for years 2006 to 2012 to estimate "two part" models where the probability of observing a positive expenditure and, for those who spend, the expected level of expenditure are functions of an array of explanatory variables. We apply a before-after analysis with a wide range of controls for confounding factors and a flexible modeling of time effects.Results:In line with the majority of studies that analyze the effects of smoking bans using objective data, our results suggest that the reform did not cause reductions in households' expenditures on restaurant services or on bars and cafeteria services.

Net Neutrality and other challenges for the future of the Internet. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, 11-12 July, 2011

Peer-reviewed

Transnational private authority and the participation of workers' organizations in the regulatory space surrounding the employment relationship

Most corporate codes of conduct and multi-stakeholder sustainability standards guarantee workers' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, but many authors are sceptical about the concrete impact of codes and standards of this kind. In this paper we use Hancher and Moran's (1998) concept of 'regulatory space' to assess the potential of private transnational regulation to support the growth of trade union membership and collective bargaining relationships, drawing on some preliminary case study results from a project on the impact of the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) social conditionality on worker organization and social dialogue. One of the major effects of neoliberal economic and industrial policy has been the routine exclusion of workers' organizations from regulatory processes on the grounds that they introduce inappropriate 'political' motives into what ought to be technical decision-making processes. This, rather than any direct attack on their capacity to take action, is what seems best to explain the global decline in union influence (Cradden 2004; Howell 2007; Howe 2012). The evidence we present in the paper suggests that private labour regulation may under certain conditions contribute to a reversal of this tendency, re-establishing the legitimacy of workers' organizations within regulatory processes and by extension the legitimacy of their use of economic and social power. We argue that guarantees of freedom of association and bargaining rights within private regulation schemes are effective to the extent that they can be used by workers' organizations in support of a claim for access to the regulatory space within which the terms and conditions of the employment relationship are determined. Our case study evidence shows that certain trade unions in East Africa have indeed been able to use IFC and other private regulation schemes as levers to win recognition from employers and to establish collective bargaining relationships. Although they did not attempt to use formal procedures to make a claim for the enforcement of freedom of association rights on behalf of their members, the unions did use enterprises' adherence to private regulation schemes as a normative point of reference in argument and political exchange about worker representation. For these unions, the regulation was a useful addition to the range of arguments that they could deploy as means to justify their demand for recognition by employers. By contrast, the private regulation that helps workers' organizations to win access to regulatory processes does little to ensure that they are able to participate meaningfully, whether in terms of technical capacity or of their ability to mobilize social power as a counterweight to the economic power of employers. To the extent that our East African unions were able to make an impact on terms and conditions of employment via their participation in regulatory space it was solely on the basis of their own capacities and resources and the application of national labour law.

Impact of the Spanish smoking control law on exposure to second-hand smoke and respiratory health in hospitality workers: a cohort study

A smoke-free law came into effect in Spain on 1st January 2006, affecting all enclosed workplaces except hospitality venues, whose proprietors can choose among totally a smoke-free policy, a partial restriction with designated smoking areas, or no restriction on smoking on the premises. We aimed to evaluate the impact of the law among hospitality workers by assessing second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure and the frequency of respiratory symptoms before and one year after the ban.