He turned down numerous honorable appointments during these years and only accepted an appointment at the Free University of Berlin. Just two years later, he became Director at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. He was a member of the German government's Deregulation Commission and co-editor of the European Economic Law series, the European Journal of Economic Law and the Journal of European Private Law.

During his time in Augsburg, Basedow researched private international law, European private and commercial law, in particular competition, transport and insurance law. He strongly promoted the Europeanization of private and commercial law as well as the internationalization of the Faculty of Law and was one of the pioneers in these areas of law in Germany. He also initiated institutions and programs at the Faculty of Law that still exist today: in 1990, he founded the Institute for European Legal Systems, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2020 as the Center of European Legal Studies (CELOS) (with the current directors: Christoph Becker, Martina Benecke, Michael Kort, Carmen Freyler and Thomas M.J. Möllers). Basedow founded the intradisciplinary series Augsburger Rechtsstudien, which now comprises 92 volumes. He started a trainee law school for European economics. This was further developed by his successor into an international, English-language Summer School of European Economic Law. Despite the physical distance, Basedow remained very close to the Faculty of Law throughout his life. The Faculty of Law mourns his untimely death.