Economic foundations of regulation [DROIB322]

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course, the student will - will be able to perceive the strengths and weaknesses of the "normative" discourse in economics, centred on the notion of general interest or common good, itself declined in the concept of "social surplus"; - will thus understand economics as one of the human sciences, allowing legal provisions to be reread and motivated; - will have appropriated the economic concepts and reasoning which, starting from this central notion of the common good, reread themes sometimes seen as mainly legal; - will be able to make a judgment with rigour and a sense of abstraction; - will be able to link together, on the basis of a unifying principle, themes that are a priori scattered; - In this way, with an interdisciplinary perspective, it will be possible to judge the validity of legal provisions (such and such a Directive, such and such a law, such and such an article of the TFEU, etc.), with economics and law being seen as two complementary rather than antagonistic disciplines.

Objectives

As the learning outcomes indicate, the course therefore aims to enable the student to conduct interdisciplinary reasoning on concrete topics. More generally, the course should enable the student to see the humanities and social sciences as better able, together, to address an issue. In this sense, the course aims to make the student a 'generalist', alongside his or her technical skills in law or economics.

Content

A general introduction outlines the strengths and weaknesses of normative discourse in economics. If a nation pursues general interest objectives, an essential standard of judgement, it must have regulatory tools that prevent particular interests from clashing with these primary objectives. The value of an interdisciplinary approach is also presented. Then, various topics are addressed, such as privacy protection, Article 101 TFEU, the phenomenon of self- or coregulation, the CETA and the issue of free trade... The concepts are approached from an interdisciplinary perspective Market power, dominance, the different registers of regulation, information asymmetry.