During the last 20 years, R&D and innovation activities in the service sector have clearly increased. Especially business services are believed to be one of the main drivers of technical changes and economic progress. Looking at the labour indices calculated over the period from 1982 to 1996 one...

We investigate the effect of market structure on market performance in the market for consumer electronics. This research is novel, because we exploit product life cycle information to build an instrumental variable for the number of firms in a market, a variable which hitherto had to be treated...

We investigate the effect of market structure on market performance in the market for consumer electronics. This research is novel, because we exploit product life cycle information to build an instrumental variable for the number of firms in a market, a variable which hitherto had to be treated...

This paper analyses market efficiency and the role of the virtual location in digital markets using a data set containing more than 23,000 price observations from the online market for contact lenses as well as detailed information about online retailer and product characteristics. The data...

We analyze a drastic price increase in the German auction market for reserve power, which did not appear to be driven by increased costs. Studying the market structure and individual bidding strategies, we find evidence for collusive behavior in an environment with repeated auctions, pivotal...

As shown by R. Hahn [6], free allocation equal to the amount of permits a firm with market power uses in equilibrium, can prevent welfare losses. If the necessary amount of free allocation is not provided to the firm with market power, a second best solution is obtained where marginal abatement...

Innovators seek to protect their intellectual assets by patenting them, at the same time trying to avoid any disclosure of critical knowledge. Given that a patent specification has to include a clear description of the patented matter so that anybody skilled in the art is enabled to reproduce...

This paper examines the role of intermediaries in quantity regulation theoretically and presents a data application to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The choice of regulated firms to trade permits through intermediaries or directly at the exchange is discussed. Permit pricing...

The sensitivity of innovation activities with respect to the business cycle is often assumed to be small. In this paper the hypothesis on cyclical dependence of innovation activities is tested for firms in the German manufacturing, and additionally for SMEs. To this end firms? innovation...

This paper analyses the relationship between firm productivity and export behavior in German manufacturing firms. We examine whether productivity increases the probability of exporting, and assert that there is a causal relationship from high productivity to entering foreign markets, as...