ABSTRACT

In this paper, we analyze how public regulators and regulated businesses interpreted and influenced legal change implying technological shift. Based on the economics literature on technical change and legal history literature, we provide a constructivist and systematic framework to analyze law as mediation between regulators and firms’ respective behaviors. The analyzed historical case deals with the attempt of automobile multinationals to shape the European Economic Community vehicle emissions regulations. It focuses on the German fiscal policy to promote the sale of the so-called Clean Cars during the mid-1980s. We concluded that the regulation proposed by European Commission in the field of competition and environmental protection law successfully solved the clash between legitimate goals around emissions regulations. It covers implication in terms of normative order; political objectives coherency; firms’ profit strategies and relationships between firms and regulators through European trade associations. We find that the key factor of the firms’ positions to the law lies in information exchanged with political institutions, whose legal regulation acts as a signal integrated into the long-term firms’ strategies.

摘要

在本文中，我们分析了公共监管者和受监管企业如何解释和影响暗示技术变革的法律变化。基于有关技术变革的经济学文献和法律历史文献，我们提供了一个建构主义和系统的框架来分析法律，作为监管者和企业各自行为之间的中介。经过分析的历史案例涉及汽车跨国公司制定欧洲经济共同体汽车排放法规的尝试。它侧重于德国的财政政策，以在1980年代中期促进所谓清洁汽车的销售。我们得出的结论是，欧盟委员会在竞争法和环境保护法领域提出的法规成功解决了围绕排放法规的合法目标之间的冲突。它涵盖了规范顺序方面的含义；政治目标的一致性；公司的利润策略以及通过欧洲贸易协会的公司与监管机构之间的关系。我们发现，公司在法律上的地位的关键因素在于与政治机构交换的信息，而政治机构的法律法规是整合到长期公司战略中的信号。