In competition law, the problem of the optimal design of institutional and procedural rules concerns assessment processes of the pro- and anticompetitiveness of business behaviors. This is well recognized in the discussion about the relative merits of different assessment principles such as the...

Using a GARCH model, we analyze the influence of U.S. monetary policy action and communication on the price volatility of commodities for the period 1998–2009. We find, first, that U.S. monetary policy events have an economically significant impact on price volatility. Second, expected target...

Although both in US antitrust and European competition law there is a clear evolution to a much broader application of rule of reason (instead of per-se rules), there is also an increasing awareness of the problems of a case-by-case approach. The error costs approach (minimizing the sum of...

The digital revolution has reinvigorated the discussion about the problem how to consider innovation in the application of competition law. This raises difficult questions about the relationship between competition and innovation as well as what kind of assessment concepts competition...

Can competition law also take into account effects on privacy or should privacy concerns of data-collecting behaviour only be dealt with by data protection law? In this paper we are analysing the German Facebook case, in which certain terms of service (that force consumers to give consent for...

The digitalisation of the economy with data as the new critical resource is a technological revolution which requires an adaptation of the legal framework for markets and the economy. This paper analyzes the privacy concerns in the digital economy from an economics perspective. What can we learn...

Regression methods are commonly used in competition lawsuits for, e.g., determining overcharges in pricefixing cases. Technical evaluations of these methods' pros and cons are not necessarily intuitive. Appraisals that are based on case studies are descriptive but need not be universally valid....

This paper analyzes inter- and intraregional redistribution in a centralized state using the citizen-candidate model. It focuses on conflicting interests among regions and among citizens of varying mobility. If discrimination with respect to place of residence and degree of mobility is possible,...

In this paper, we explore the interest rate setting behavior of newly appointed central bank governors. We use the Kuttner and Posen (2010) sample, which covers 15 OECD countries, and estimate an augmented Taylor (1993) rule for the period 1974–2008. We find, first, that newly appointed...

In this paper we systematically evaluate how central banks respond to deviations from the inflation target. We present a stylized New Keynesian model in which agents' inflation expectations are sensitive to deviations from the inflation target. To (re-) establish credibility, monetary policy...