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,...

When contributing content on large online platforms, producers of user-generated content have to decide where to contribute. On a complex and dynamic platform like Wikipedia, this decision is expected to depend on the way the content is organized. We analyse whether the hyperlinks on Wikipedia...

We investigate the incentives of manufacturers to use resale price maintenance (RPM) when selling products through common retailers. In our model retailers provide product specific pre-sales services. If the competitive retail margins are low, each manufacturer fixes a minimum price to induce...

When contributing content on large online platforms, producers of user-generated content have to decide where to contribute. On a complex and dynamic platform like Wikipedia, this decision is expected to depend on the way the content is organized. We analyse whether the hyperlinks on Wikipedia...

Does the information provided by mass media have the power to persistently affect individual beliefs about the drivers of success in life? To answer this question empirically, this contribution exploits a natural experiment on the reception of West German television in the former German...

In two empirical surveys in Germany the link between the information respondents have about climate change and their risk perception of the phenomenon was analysed. We found that a better understanding of the effects of climate change might lead to a decrease of the perceived hazard. In...

Given that many of the predicted effects of climate change are considered imminent and unavoidable, the need to mainstream adaptation as a viable coping measure among private households is becoming a topic of increasing importance. However, little research to date has assessed the factors...

Aufbauend auf der Hypothese, dass Arbeitsmärkte durch unvollständige Information charakterisiert sind, werden in diesem Arbeitspapier neuere Entwicklungen innerhalb eines Zweiges informationsökonomischer Ansätze vorgestellt: der Suchtheorie. Dabei werden ausführlich insbesondere jene...

This paper studies implications of uncertainty about the arrival date of a competitive CO2 backstop technology for the design of cost-effective CO2 emission trading schemes. For this purpose, we develop a dynamic general equilibrium model that captures empirical links between CO2 emissions...

The communication policy of the European Central Bank attracts a lot of attention from financial markets. This paper analyses the informational content of the monthly introductory statements of the ECB president explaining interest rate decisions with regard to inflation expectations of...