Regime Market Performance Analysis: Informing European Consumer Policy

Abstract

The Single Market of the European Union has progressed during recent decades to encompass more than 500 million consumers in 28 EU Member States and adjoining countries. During the same period, consumer issues have received growing policy interest and policy measures have been put in place to harmonize the Single Market, that is, to make national markets more alike. Yet, in order to provide policy measures that promote desirable market outcomes, the considerable challenge of understanding differences in the market performances of participating countries and the relationships between national markets and the Single Market need to be addressed. Consequently, this article proposes the consideration of differences in terms of regimes, that is, between groups of similar countries, when assessing the performances of markets. Differences in market performances are analysed with the Kruskal-Wallis test using survey data from the European Commission, and results were reviewed against market studies carried out by the Commission. Findings show that regime differences in market performance can indeed be observed and that the regime approach can draw policy attention to commonalities in market arrangements in addition to the consumer issues conventionally examined, such as price differences and consumer awareness.Keywords Consumer markets scoreboard . Consumer policy . Market performance . Policy regimes . Single market During recent decades, consumption has increasingly become a political project, and the European Union has worked to promote a vision of European consumer society based on access, individual choice, and trust in the market. The Single Market of Europe has evolved to cover 28 Member States and adjoining countries and consists of numerous markets of which

Consumer Policy in 28 EU Member States: An Empirical Assessment in Four Dimensions

“…Although these directives have narrowed the Member States' available options for setting their own consumer policy, they still leave some possibilities for the Member States to go further in their national level of consumer protection. Consequently and notwithstanding the efforts of the European Commission to align consumer protection in the Member States, current research has shown that national consumer policy approaches still differ (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Repo and Timonen 2017;Wind 2016).…”

“…Comparative studies of consumer policy in Europe have used a regime approach in seeking to identify similarities and differences of consumer policy models between groups of countries (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Cseres 2005;Micklitz 2003;Repo and Timonen 2017;Trumbull 2006a, b). Despite different research interests and scientific perspectives, all of these studies found consumer policy regimes, such as a Scandinavian regime consisting of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden or an East European regime consisting of all East European Member States.…”

“…Instead, what is surprising is that to distinguish and explain consumer policy models, previous studies selected only a few dimensions and factors, such as enforcement regimes (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009), legal traditions (Micklitz 2003), or consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a, b). They mainly used literature reviews (Repo and Timonen 2017) or case studies of selected countries (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Cseres 2005;Trumbull 2006a, b) for their analyses and conclusions. Finally, the effect of European Consumer Policy Directives and their specific application by Member States has not yet been considered to account for the different levels of consumer protection in European Member States.…”

“…Most existing studies of consumer policy in Europe either use a legal or a political science account to argue for consumer policy regimes. An exception is the study by Repo and Timonen (2017) that combines both perspectives. This study is furthermore innovative because it tries to statistically test the outcomes of consumer policy regimes.…”

Governance experiments in climate action: empirical findings from the 28 European Union countries

“…Indeed, also Geels et al (2016) suggest scholars should address multiple niche and regime innovations jointly. The concept of regime used in the MLP resembles those used in other contexts such as in international politics and economy to describe arrangements and commonalities (Krasner 1982, Hall and Soskice 2001, Holtz et al 2008, Repo and Timonen 2017, but it is applied in a sociotechnical setting.…”