This paper analyses the effects of minimum wages on competition in the German roofing sector. The case is particularly interesting since this sector is faced with a uniform minimum wage despite significant regional disparities in productivity and wages. As a control industry we take the plumbing...

Damage compensation claims in case of cartels are supposed to increase deterrence, compensate losses and increase efficiency. I show that such claims can instead have adverse effects: If suppliers or buyers of cartelists are compensated in proportion to the profits lost due to the cartel,...

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...