Our Emphasis in Research

The research profile and all research activities carried out at the Institute center around the law-based control of the economy. We analyze the multiple effects law-making has on market regulation under government supervision, market governance and governmental market activities from the viewpoint of legal doctrine (on the level of European, constitutional and administrative law) and from the viewpoint of legal policy, especially in the field of information law, the law of infrastructure markets, environmental law, land use law and public procurement law.
Questions concerning the organization, procedures and instruments of controlling the economy are at the heart of our research work, which also shows in the following research topics explored at the Institute:

- Fundamental rights and the influence they exert on the organization, procedures and instruments of controlling the economy

- Principles of and limits to state structure and organization, especially as regards outsourcing, privatization and the entrustment with public power (Beleihung)

- Distribution of powers between federations and their subdivisions

- Principles of and ways to (re)define the responsibility and accountability of top-level administrative entities/officials

- Participation in national interest aggregation and law-making by electronic means (E-democracy)

- Organization, procedures and instruments of regulating select infrastructure markets

- Models of socio-politically motivated regulation of services of general economic interest in different legal systems

- New procedures and instruments of governmental decision-making in the area of distribution

- The function of public procurement law within the complex structures that allow for the safeguarding of public services, particularly in PPPs (public-private partnerships).

- Public-law aspects of information orders

- Regulated self-regulation - new forms of law-creation in general

- Control instruments of the public administration between decision (Bescheid) and contract

- New legal instruments in the fields of spatial planning and land use

- New control instruments in environmental law, particularly concerning the authorization and monitoring of large-scale infrastructure projects