Seit der deutschen Wiedervereinigung vor 30 Jahren sind für den sogenannten Aufbau Ost nach Schätzungen mehr als zwei Billionen Euro aufgewendet worden. Dennoch unterscheidet sich der Osten Deutschlands in vielen Merkmalen noch immer vom Westen. Regionale ökonomische Unterschiede als Beleg...

This paper analyses the extent of inter-format retail competition between supermarkets, discounters and drugstores in Germany, using data from the German market for diapers. We estimate a random coefficient logit model at the individual household level. Based on consumer substitution patterns,...

Research on bargaining power in vertical relationships is scarce. It remains particularly unclear which factors drive bargaining power between negotiating parties in a vertical structure. We use a demand model where consumer demand determines the total pie of industry profits. Moreover, we apply...

Katz (1987), DeGraba (1990), and Yoshida (2000) have formulated theories that price discrimination bans in intermediary goods markets tend to have positive effects on allocative, dynamic and productive efficiency, respectively. We show that none of these results is robust vis-à-vis endogenous...

Relocation of production to countries with low labour cost have induced increased labour market flexibility, which has been praised as a silver bullet for economic growth and low unemployment. Within a unionised oligopoly framework, in which a multi-national firm has the option to relocate its...

Seit der deutschen Wiedervereinigung vor 30 Jahren sind für den sogenannten Aufbau Ost nach Schätzungen mehr als zwei Billionen Euro aufgewendet worden. Dennoch unterscheidet sich der Osten Deutschlands in vielen Merkmalen noch immer vom Westen. Regionale ökonomische Unterschiede als Beleg...

Many cartels are formed by individual managers of different firms, but not by firms as collectives. However, most of the literature in industrial economics neglects individuals' incentives to form cartels. Although oligopoly experiments reveal important insights on individuals acting as firms,...

Traditional economic theory of collusion assumed that cartels are inherently unstable, and yet some manage to operate for years or even decades. While the literature has presented several determinants of cartel stability, the vast majority focuses on firms as entities, even though cartels are...

We re-examine the view that a ban on price discrimination in input markets is particularly desirable in the presence of buyer power. This argument crucially depends on an inverse relationship between downstream firms' profits and the uniform input price. Assuming different input efficiencies...