Changes in European Industrial Organisation in Response to the Single European Market Programme {emuISNIE99 changes in EU IO.doc}

The Single European Market Programme was formally instigated with the Single European Act in 1987. It included around 300 measures designed to eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade (e.g. border controls, national standards, public procurement biases and national restrictions on entry). The essence of our approach is that barriers to trade/competition influence the organisation of the market (industrial concentration, multinationality of the operations of firms, and vertical integration). As those barriers are removed, we should observe the emergence of new organisational structures that are more appropriate to an integrated EU market. We identify the theoretical mechanisms through which these changes can be expected to take place, and argue that these differ according to the endogeneity of specific assets. The empirical part of the paper first reviews some of our earlier work on early changes in concentration and multinationality; then a more detailed case study of railway rolling stock brings out some of the inter-relationships between horizontal and vertical integration. This work is currently being extended to include eight further case studies. Contact: [email protected] School of Economic and Social Studies University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ England Tel: +44-1603-592084 Fax: +44-1603-250434