Der seit 1997 im Dachdeckerhandwerk eingeführte und seit 2003 bundeseinheitlich geregelte, allgemeinverbindliche Mindestlohn führt vor allem in Ostdeutschland auch im internationalen Vergleich zu einer starken Betroffenheit der Branche vom Mindestlohn. Die damit einhergehende effektive...

This paper compares electricity market reforms in the European Union with reforms in Chile and Brazil. The paradigm of competitive market structures for the electricity sector, as developed in the economics literature, is outlined: competitive markets in generation and retailing and an...

The fast growing EU market for investment funds is still characterised by a continuing relevance of national borders. This papers assesses this market?s degree of integration, the potential benefits from more integration and the obstacles to cross-border sales of funds. The analysis shows that...

Most observers have concluded that while money markets and government bond markets are rapidly integrating following the introduction of the common currency in the euro area, there is little evidence that a similar integration process is taking place for retail banking. Data on cross-border...

The interplay of infrastructure supply and demand is of central interest in line with Web 2.0. As the role of customers turns from a service users' role to an information providers' role, the traffic on existing lines increases and, simultaneously, customers' demand for high-quality...

This paper considers the impact of European telecom regulation on the value of affected companies. Employing a repeating ARGARCH model, I compare the effect of three types of regulation which are categorized based on the addressed subject, i.e. cross-market, country-specific and company-specific...

In this paper we explore the link between the intensity of product market competition and inflation rates across EU countries and sectors. We consider long-term averages of inflation rates in order to remove the cyclical behavior of inflation over time and as alternative proxies of competition...

This paper investigates the dynamics of the pass-through between market interest rates and bank interest rates in the euro area as a function of cyclical and structural differences in the financial system. We find that overall the speed of adjustment for loans is significantly faster than for...

This paper is the first that applies a new measure of competition, the Boone indicator, to the banking industry. This approach is able to measure competition of bank market segments, such as the loan market, whereas many well-known measures of competition can consider the entire banking market...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...