Latest blog articles
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Digitalization has gradually changed business models and reshaped human lifestyles. The rise of business models based on the collection and processing of consumer data allows undertakings to charge business customers and final consumers different prices for the same goods or services, offered at...
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Recently I was interviewed by Dutch news radio station BNR on the question whether there are legal or economic arguments to split up Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. Because the interview was short, I could not give a truly balanced answer. Rather, from my Law &...
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What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except...
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Recently there has been a strong wave of anti-China sentiments expressed in the media and within certain political circles, both in the United States and within the European Union. The Netherlands has been no exception to this.
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Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...
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Today in times of pandemic hospitals face a crisis of scarce resources. In many places this has already led to measures of triage where critical medical care is rationed to those who are most likely to benefit from it. In other places, it is clear that such measures will soon need to be taken.
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Recently, Chanel Co., Ltd. lost a trade mark infringement case regarding its ‘Double C’ logo in China. The full text of the decision can be visited via here (Google translatable). The case has drawn wide attention and, mostly, negative comments. Does this seemingly-counterintuitive loss indeed, well...
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I wrote my PhD towards the last days of the debate over “social rights”. This debate harkens back to the fifties, when the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights was being negotiated. Some claimed that social rights could never be true rights. Others claimed that without social rights...
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With Brexit, Yellow Jackets and EU-scepticism dominating the news and everyday discussions, I would like to direct our blog readers’ attention to some of the lessons that law and economics can offer to the (polarizing) debate on the future of the EU.
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In this entry I want to mention four considerations that suggest that human rights lawyers should be cautious in embracing basic income as a replacement for human rights. These reflections should be seen as merely exploratory. The basic income in full has never been put in practice, and consequently...