Suchergebnisse

This paper addresses the rather vexed question of intergenerational balance, a balance which has become increasingly more difficult to achieve as a result of the impact of the financial crisis and the demographic crisis in Europe. More particularly, the paper examines the approach of European Union law to the issue of mandatory retirement, an approach which has generally left national courts with the difficult task of balancing the rights of older workers against the claims of younger workers with limited guidance from the ECJ as to how this can be achieved. Through an analysis of the legislative and judicial approach of the European Union and through an examination of the empirical evidence relating to the impact of mandatory retirement policies on intergenerational balance, it is concluded that while the European Union's current approach is justifiable, more specific guidance should be given to national courts to assist them in determining this problematic question. Recommendations as to the scope and content of such guidance are made.

This article will analyse the provisions of, and the rationale for, the EU Sanctions Directive and the significant divergence in treatment of irregular immigrants in EU Member States, in particular, in relation to the provision of outstanding remuneration, which the EU Sanctions Directive has highlighted. Ireland, a state that has chosen to opt-out of the Directive, has been selected as a case study to analyse some of the issues that states encounter in bringing domestic labour policy in line with globalisation. In particular, this article will address the phenomenon of irregular immigration to Ireland, the current approach to the provision of outstanding remuneration and the rationale behind this current approach. Finally, the article will conclude that the reasoning behind the Irish opt-out was based upon misinformed assumptions about the purpose of the provision of outstanding remuneration arising out of a 'disconnect' between immigration and labour policy at a domestic level. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011.

In recent years it seems that both regions and cities appear to have become more eager to present themselves as regions or cities in which new or mobile firms in certain industrial sectors (especially perhaps biotechnology) should locate. At the same time, in the UK at least, there has been devolution of the administration of regional policy, albeit with specific targets being set by the national government. Thus cities and regions have become, at least in part, more able to combine their publicity with financial support for the particular industrial sector they wish to foster. In this paper a model is developed which has the following properties. Cities allocate monies between two types of expenditure, (i) support for a nascent industry and (ii) support for social policies, with payoffs that differ for different cities. It is shown that, if firms in the nascent industry are attracted by relatively high levels of support, cities will generally spend more on industrial support than the national government would. This simple model is similar to those developed in the literature on Tax Competition. This feature allows a commentary to be made on both the policy implications and possible extensions of the model.

A model is proposed in which there are two regions that differ in terms of size. There are two firms, one located in each region, producing a homogeneous product. The firms have identical cost functions and act as Cournot oligopolists. Transporting the product between the two regions is costly. A foreign firm is to establish a plant in one of the regions. The foreign firm experiences higher fixed costs, but has lower marginal costs, than the domestic firms. The optimal location of the foreign firm's plant is determined. It is then assumed that there exists a regional-development agency (in the region not chosen by the foreign firm) that can commit funds to defray the fixed costs of the foreign firm, if it were to choose to locate in its region. The amount of the subsidy necessary to induce the foreign firm to alter its choice is determined and the implications for the levels and regional distributions of price, output, employment and welfare are compared with the position that would have arisen without the development agency's intervention.