Leeds Law School

To examine the suitability of Law 963 in attracting FDI to Colombia and in increasing its positive impact, I studied the " state of art " of FDI and legal stabilization, the historical causes of incentives in Colombia, and all the Legal Stability Contracts signed in the light of said Law. The results of my study reveal that the law successfully met the expectations of increasing investments. However, there is also evidence that early reforms and a deficient application of the law prevented it from increasing the positive social impact of investments.

Current global economic order is openly dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI). At least since the 1990’s, developing countries have competed to attract FDI because it is considered the best source of technology, employment, and financial resources. Colombian Law 963 of 2005, which is a response to said competition, allows the signature of Legal Stability Contracts (LSCs) between the State and investors for the purpose of stabilizing the rules guiding investment decisions, for up to 20 years. Legal stabilization has successfully proven to increase FDI inflows. Nevertheless, incentives for FDI have been subject to several critiques that stress the excess of benefits for foreign investors in exchange for weak commitments.Wanting to examine the suitability of Law 963 in attracting FDI to Colombia and in increasing its positive impact, I studied the “state of art” of FDI and legal stabilization, the historical causes of incentives in Colombia, and the LSCs signed in the light of s...

The World Bank's Doing Business project encourages the reduction of business registration requirements to stimulate entrepreneurship and economic development. Over the last two decades, it has contributed to the harmonization of these requirements worldwide, but the rates of newly registered firms have not always followed through. Its unparalleled influence and emphasis on procedural reforms shadowed the development and comparative evaluation of alternative incentives to entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to filling this gap, by empirically examining the impact of simplified corporations, legal forms designed to stimulate entrepreneurial activity in Chile and Colombia. These new corporate forms provide not only abbreviated registration and operation rules, but also single ownership and the ability to issue classes of shares, two features that remain unavailable in many jurisdictions. The results confirm that company law reforms-both procedural and substantive-are insufficient to significantly increase the annual number of newly registered firms. Still, simplified corporations have quickly become entrepreneurs' preferred legal form in those countries, contributing to expanding new businesses' access to external finance.

... Morten Hviid is Professor of Law, The Norwich Law School, University of East Anglia and ESRC Centre for Competition Policy. ... to provide various financial and non-financial benefits to the travel agent in return for certain obligations on its part during key booking periods; in ...

This is the twelfth in a series on EU Competition Law and Policy produced by the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence. The volume reproduces the written contributions and transcripts in connection with a roundtable debate which examined the EU's ...

The objective(s) of Article 102 TFEU, what exactly makes a practice abusive and the standard of harm under Article 102 TFEU have not yet been settled. This lack of clarity creates uncertainty for businesses and, coupled with the current state of economics in this area, raises an important question of legitimacy. Using law and economic approaches, this book inquires into the possible objectives of Article 102 TFEU and proposes a modern approach to interpreting 'abuse'. In doing so, this book establishes an overarching concept of 'abuse' that conforms to the historical roots of the provision, to the text of the provision itself, and to modern economic thinking on unilateral conduct. This book therefore inquires into what Article 102 TFEU is about, what it can be about and what it should be about regarding both objectives and scope.

The book demonstrates that the separation of exploitative abuse from exclusionary abuse is artificial and unsound. It examines the roots of Article 102 TFEU and the historical context of the adoption of the Treaty, the case law, policy and literature on exploitative abuses and, where relevant, on exclusionary abuses. The book investigates potential objectives, such as fairness and welfare, as well as the potential conflict between such objectives. Finally, it critically assesses the European Commission's modernisation of Article 102 TFEU, before proposing a reformed approach to 'abuse' which is centred on three necessary and sufficient conditions: exploitation, exclusion and a lack of an increase in efficiency.

An initial reading of EU competition law jurisprudence and literature may suggest that there might be a competition-related freedom in the EU, expressed along the lines of ‘freedom of competition’ or ‘freedom to compete’. If competition is to be protected as a ‘freedom’ rather than merely as a ‘policy’, what this freedom involves should be established. It is important to establish the role of ‘freedom’ since it has been argued that EU competition law is a product of or has been significantly influenced by ‘ordoliberalism’. Under ordoliberalism protecting the ‘economic freedom’ of market actors is the aim of competition policy. This article examines the entire jurisprudence of the EU Courts to establish the role of ‘freedom’ in EU competition law as perceived by the EU Courts. This inquiry establishes whether ordoliberalism has so fundamentally influenced the jurisprudence that welfare-based objectives cannot be adopted as an/the objective of EU competition law. This is the first such comprehensive study regarding ‘freedom’ in EU competition law. The article demonstrates that there is little quantitative or qualitative support for the ordoliberal argument when one considers the relevant jurisprudence. A quantitative analysis of the case-law and in particular the historical trend raises serious doubts concerning the validity of the conventional ordoliberal-influence thesis.