Private enforcement through courts has been put forward as a possible substitute to public enforcement of federal and international trade regimes. In this article, we seek to advance the empirical literature on private enforcement in the EU context by overcoming the limitations of existing datasets. We present a new dataset measuring referral activity at subnational level and argue that EU trademark registrations represent a better proxy for cross-border economic activity than intra-EU trade in goods. EU trademark registrations capture trade in services as well as goods and are measured at the regional rather than at the national level. Consistent with theories emphasising the link between economic and legal integration, we find that regions with higher concentrations of EU trademark users generate significantly more referrals. Our analysis suggests that private enforcement is more effective in regions with large trade hubs and less so in more peripheral regions with less trade-oriented economies.

有人提出通过法院进行私人执法，可以代替联邦和国际贸易制度的公共执法。在本文中，我们试图克服现有数据集的局限性，从而推动有关欧盟范围内私人执法的实证研究。我们提出了一个新的数据集，用于衡量国家以下各级的推荐活动，并认为与欧盟内部的商品贸易相比，欧盟商标注册更能代表跨境经济活动。欧盟商标注册涵盖了服务和商品的贸易，并在地区而非国家层面进行衡量。与强调经济和法律一体化之间联系的理论相一致，我们发现欧盟商标用户集中度较高的地区产生了更多的推荐。