If treated as a single economy, the European Union is the largest in the world, with an estimated GDP of over 14 trillion euros. Despite its size, European economic policy has often lagged behind the rest of the world in its ability to generate growth and innovation. Much of the European economic research itself often trails behind that of the USA, which sets much of the agenda in mainstream economics. This book, also available as open access, bridges the gap between economic research and policymaking by presenting overviews of twelve key areas for future economic policy and research. Written for the economists and policymakers working within European institutions, it uses comprehensive surveys by Europe's leading scholars in economics and European policy to demonstrate how economic research can contribute to good policy decisions, and vice versa, demonstrating how economics research can be motivated and made relevant by hot policy questions. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

If treated as a single economy, the European Union is the largest in the world, with an estimated GDP of over 14 trillion euros. Despite its size, European economic policy has often lagged behind the rest of the world in its ability to generate growth and innovation. Much of the European economic research itself often trails behind that of the USA, which sets much of the agenda in mainstream economics. This book, also available as open access, bridges the gap between economic research and policymaking by presenting overviews of twelve key areas for future economic policy and research. Written for the economists and policymakers working within European institutions, it uses comprehensive surveys by Europe's leading scholars in economics and European policy to demonstrate how economic research can contribute to good policy decisions, and vice versa, demonstrating how economics research can be motivated and made relevant by hot policy questions. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Collusion and competition are well-known concepts in economic literature. The notion 'semicollusion' refers to situations where firms collude in one (or several) choice variable(s) and compete in others. Although the notion 'semicollusion' is not so often used explicitly, it turns out that the topic is covered extensively in the economic literature. Moreover, the phenomena 'semicollusion' seem to be present in numerous industries. The purpose of this monograph is to explain how semicollusion works in theory, describe empirical studies of semicollusion, and discuss the possible welfare effects of semicollusion. Semicollusion distinguishes between collusion and semicollusion with examples of semicollusive behavior in particular industries. This monograph provides a framework for understanding the mechanism at work with semicollusion and reviews the different approaches in the literature to this topic. Some of the literature assumes that firms collude on prices and compete on other variables such as advertising, capacities, or location. However, there is also another part of the literature where firms compete on prices and collude along other dimensions such as R&D. The authors discuss possible outcomes of semicollusion in industries with free entry. Semicollusion also reviews the empirical literature on semicollusion and the effects of semicollusion. There are empirical studies that cover various types of collusion, for example collusion on prices or collusion on R&D, and the authors discuss empirical studies for those outcomes that were covered in earlier chapters. The monograph concludes with a summary of the authors' findings, offers general conclusions, and discusses issues for future research.