Märkte für energieeffiziente Güter zeichnen sich typischerweise durch Informationsasymmetrien aus. Zertifizierte Öko-Labels einer unabhängigen Drittpartei stellen ein geeignetes Instrument dar, um solche Informationsasymmetrien am Markt zu überwinden und Vertrauen in die Gültigkeit von...

A number of jurisdictions are considering imposing price caps on the interchange fees that card issuers receive from merchant acquirers when cardholders pay with their cards. Several have already done so. This paper examines the net impact of these price caps on consumers. The economics of...

This paper establishes two simple and new specification tests based on the use of an orthogonal series. The paper then establishes an asymptotic theory for each of the proposed tests. The first test is initially proposed for the case where the regression function involved is integrable and the...

The central economic justification for competition law is that the protection of competition promotes welfare. In particular, perfect competition among firms catering to consumer demand for goods and services maximizes social welfare by generating both allocative and productive efficiencies....

This paper proposes an empirical model for analyzing the dynamics of Bitcoin prices. To do this, we consider a vector error correction model over two overlapping periods: 2010-2017 and 2010-2019. Price discovery is achieved through the Gonzalo-Granger permanent-transitory decomposition. The...

Recently, EU Consumer law has undergone a ‘Fitness Check' (or REFIT). We thought that checking the fitness for purpose of a body of law would involve revisiting its purpose. This is why we expected to find in the rich REFIT documentation (over 4000 pages of studies and Commission documents) an...

Dynamic asset pricing models typically do not generate trading volume whereas empirically trading volume is strongly related to asset prices; volume is usually high when returns are high and during periods of high return volatility. Stock prices on the other hand are known to be quite volatile...

We show that shocks to household consumption growth are negatively skewed, persistent, countercyclical, and drive asset prices. We construct a parsimonious model where heterogeneous households have recursive preferences. A single state variable drives the conditional cross-sectional moments of...

This paper proposes an estimable asset pricing model that builds upon micro consumption andreference-dependent preference. Central to the model is an S-shaped consumption utility function that is convex below the reference point. The model quantitatively accounts for both low risk-free rates and...