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The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the increasing need for digital solutions to maintain economic and social activities remotely. Times of physical distancing made it clear that besides keeping trade running, they are crucial for education, health, work, etc. During the pandemic, e-commerce has played a growing role in global economic activity as part of the wider digital economy. As social distancing and movement restrictions become normal, businesses and consumers have become increasingly digital and provide and buy more goods and services online.

The noteworthy development in this process is that much earlier than the pandemic, in 2015, the European Commission started developing a Digital Single Market strategy which is aiming at bringing distinctive digital markets together across the Union. The Digital Single Market is a modern version of the European Union (EU) Common Market established in 1957, which allowed the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people all around the region. The fact that such an application was started long before the pandemic provided some vital advantages to the countries involved in the strategy during the pandemic process.

This study is investigating how the EU Digital Market and the policy implementations connected to it helped digital transformation of the countries of the EU. Digital Economy and Society Index, and E-Commerce and internet access data of Single Market countries are investigated within the scope of the study. The data covering 2011–2021 period is collected from the Eurostat database. When we studied the data, although it is possible to talk about a benefit for the EU in general, less developed countries of the region benefited more from the process.

The economic and financial crisis, especially the sovereign debt crisis, discovered many deficiencies and weaknesses in the banking sector in the European Union (EU). The need for special surveillance and supervision of cross-border banking cooperation and termination of the toxic link between sovereign debt and banking sector have accelerated the process of forming and establishing a Banking Union (BU). An integrated financial framework has been established in which the European Central Bank (ECB) through the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) has a key role and the responsibility for the overall supervision of the banking sector of the euro zone. The Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) and schemes of the Single Deposit Guarantee Mechanism (SDGM) are under the national supervisory authorities while the European Banking Authority (EBA) is responsible for developing the Single Rules. From the new architecture is expected the preservation of the single market and a common currency, breaking “toxic connections” between sovereign debt and banks, mitigation and removal of financial instability and economic growth. The research shows that the BU together with the ECB in a certain sense, also contributes to the normalization of credit and financial conditions in the single mark. Estimates through SSM, conducted by the ECB and the EBA, during, 2014 and 2015 on 107 banks in 21 countries indicate progress toward solvency and resilience of the banking system of the euro area. Despite some initial success the entire project BU seems to have missed on opportunities, resulted in late reactions, and was too complex to be feasible. The political will of national governments to give up sovereignty over its banking sector and transfer competencies to the supranational institutions is a key factor in the success or failure of a BU. It seems so but past experience indicates that there is no political willingness to solve problems. Mainly most of the government avoids cleaning a hidden “skeleton in closets” due to lack of means for recapitalization while some are trying for loans from the ECB to help their banks. The ECB plays a key oversight role at the EU level and has too much power, which can cause risks caused by conflicting goals. The ECB is losing the role of the final refuge of liquidity, which is the main disadvantage of a BU. The SSM is susceptible to criticism due to difficulty in operation because of slow incorporation of European legislation into national law. Slow implementation carries risks of fragmentation of the market, regardless of the responsibility of the ECB. The financial capacity of the temporary agreement with the SRM is insufficient in solving the crisis of more banks while procedural application is complex and time-consuming. Planned backstop with a centralized resource is a resolution that is insufficient for solving the failure of big systemic banks, which are too big to bail. The heterogeneity of the existing Deposit Guarantee Schemes (DGS) and the banking systems of the member states of the euro zone caused controversy in terms of setting of common insurance schemes. The procedures for the recovery and resolution of critical banks are problematic.

This paper investigates the impact of peer-to-peer networks that promote the unauthorized downloading of MP3 files exert on the recording industry. Although Napster was the most famous of these systems, its progeny have continued to allow millions of music listeners to download music (and other) files without remuneration to the copyright owners. Economic theory does not allow us to determine what the impact of such downloading will be. Using data on the historical sales of prerecorded music I examine in detail the recent decline in record sales and attempt to gauge the importance of various factors that have been put forward to explain this decline. My conclusion is that the evidence is most consistent with a claim that MP3 downloads decrease sales. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether the damage to the industry will be fatal.

In this chapter, I analyze universities’ present context of commodification by suggesting a typology of market universities based on Levín’s three types of capital enterprises: the simple purpose, technological, and enhanced universities. The simple purpose university mainly commodifies teaching. On the contrary, the technological and enhanced universities, even if they may also commodify teaching, are focused on the commodification of research. The main difference between the technological and the enhanced universities is the capacity of the latter to enjoy the profits of its commodified research activity, while the former exchanges research results and sells its research capacity in a subordinated way, losing (at least part of) those benefits. These three proposed types also differ regarding financial autonomy and academic freedom.

How do you efficiently design a global yet local user experience for Web sites? Arguably, the user-centered design approach has been one of the best methods in designing a successful user experience for Web services in the initial market, but why isn’t this process applied to international markets? This chapter makes a case for applying a user-centered design process to the international expansion of Web sites and discusses issues impacting the creation of a successful user experience for local audiences. Although this chapter primarily focuses on designing large scale Web services, many of the principles can be applied to any sites that undergo internationalization.

F.A. Hayek’s famous critique of the socialist planned economy turned on the role of information in markets. In competitive markets, decision-making is decentralized and relies on locally available market signals. Decision-makers do not have to be omniscient or predict the future; they simply have to focus on market prices. By contrast, socialist planners face a much more demanding situation where they have to acquire and process vast amounts of information in a centralized fashion. The author revisits Hayek’s early work in light of the contemporary revolution in information technology, using recent research on organizational decision-making. The author argues that a great deal of market information is produced by public and private institutions, and includes much more than market prices. The boundary between tacit knowledge and formalized knowledge changes as IT enables the spread of the latter. Furthermore, the growing “knowledge economy” underscores the importance of intellectual property, and the legal institutions that support it. Overall, some of Hayek’s early insights hold up well while others need updating.

Recent literature on firm-level heterogeneity and trade has emphasized a self-selection mechanism: only the most productive firms can recover the transaction (sunk) costs for serving foreign markets and become exporters. The role of trade integration is that a productivity gap between exporters and nonexporters becomes lower when the market becomes more integrated due to a fall in trade costs. The focus of this chapter is the role of EU harmonization of food regulations in explaining the intra-EU export-productivity premium. The food industry is an interesting case to examine because many directives and regulations of the Single Market Program concern this important economic sector and have the potential to affect trade and productivity. We use data on Dutch food processing firms for the 1979–2005 period, which we link with a dataset that codes food products subject to EU harmonization. The chapter confirms that more productive firms are more likely to enter the EU export market. The result of EU harmonization is that this probability increases. Second, we find a positive and significant export-productivity premium: that is, firms that export to other EU markets are more productive than nonexporting firms. This finding is robust to the estimation technique and the way we measured TFP growth. Third, when we test whether the export-productivity premium is affected by EU harmonization, we find weak evidence that is the case for Dutch food processing firms: much depends on the estimation method, the way we measure TFP growth, and the population of exporting firms.