National science and technology (S&T) systems are often mentioned as a condition for competitiveness of high technology sectors. Therefore, public S&T policies should actively support the development of national S&T systems. In particular in Eastern Europe an active S&T policy is often demanded...

With its resource availability and the prospect of climate friendly technology, coal continues to play an important role in the global energy sector. We develop a complementarity model of the international market for steam coal. We want to analyze the level of competition in this market which is...

In this paper, we present a nonparametric comparative efficiency analysis of 179 communal public transport bus companies in Germany (1990-2004). We apply both deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping to test the robustness of our estimates and to test the hypothesis of...

National science and technology (S&T) systems are mentioned, in politics as well as in science, as a condition for the competitiveness of domestic high technology industries. An active S&T policy has, therefore, great importance for governments. Eastern European countries see, in an active S&T...

In this paper we present an international cross-country benchmarking analysis for utility regulation of France and Germany, the two largest electricity distribution countries in Europe. We examine the relative performance of 99 French and 77 German distribution companies operating within two...

We analyze potential gains from hypothetical mergers in local public transport using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis with bias corrections by means of bootstrapping. Our sample consists of 41 public transport companies from Germany's most densely populated region, North...

This paper analyzes a modified yardstick competition mechanism (MYC), where the yardstick employed consists of a tariff basket and total costs. This mechanism has a significant information advantage: the regulator "only" needs to observe total costs and output of all firms. The modified...