Who does, and who should initiate costly certification by a third party under asymmetric quality information, the buyer or the seller? Our answer - the seller - follows from a nontrivial analysis revealing a clear intuition. Buyer-induced certification acts as an inspection device,...

In making key decisions for the future phases of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), policy makers need to fully understand the competitiveness implications of these decisions on industrial sectors. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis of cost pass-through ability of...

In dieser Studie werden ausgewählte makroökonomische Determinanten der Anzahl der Selbständigen in fünfzehn Ländern Europas untersucht. Datenbasis sind die Arbeitskräfteerhebungen der Europäischen Union für die Jahre 1991 ? 2003. Ausgangspunkt der Studie ist der Rückgang der Anzahl der...

In dem vorliegenden Artikel werden ausgewählte theoretische und empirische Aspekte des Zusammenhangs zwischen Existenzgründungen, staatlichem Handeln und Beschäftigung diskutiert. Dabei wird die Frage, ob Existenzgründungen zusätzliche Beschäftigung schaffen überwiegend aus einer...

Ownership unbundling and third party access are discussed as two options of unbundling in both the literature and political discussions. Focusing on the South American electricity sector, I contrast static and dynamic impacts of ownership unbundling and third party access regimes on customer...

The German response to the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was possibly the most significant change of policy towards nuclear power outside Japan, leading to a sudden and very significant shift in the underlying power generation structure in Germany. This provides a very useful natural...

Although the future socio-economic benefits of a new fibre-based ('next generation access', NGA) telecommunications infrastructure seem to be uncontroversial, a universal NGA coverage appears to be a rather unrealistic objective without government intervention. We contend, however, that the...

The impact of environmental innovations on firm performance is ambiguous. On the one hand, regulatory-driven environmental innovation may impose additional costs to firms and lower their profits. On the other hand, eco-innovators could profit from lower uncertainty in innovation due to...

Abstract In markets with competing interconnected networks like mobile telecommunication markets investments affect the investor’s and also any competitors’ profits. In a theoretical model it is shown that cost-reducing investments reduce the investor’s termination rates and increase...

In the advent of postal market liberalization in several European countries we expect that the incumbent operators anticipate entry by competitors who are not required to offer universal service, i.e. coverage of the entire country and uniform pricing. The market for postal service exhibits...