The statement institutions matter has become commonplace. A precondition for it to be supported by empirical evidence, is, however, that institutions are measurable. Glaeser et al. (2004) attacks many studies claiming to prove the relevance of institutions for economic development as being based...

I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general...

Competition law compliance has become increasingly important in the banking industry as the number of infringements and the associated fines imposed by the European Commission are rising. This article shows that not only governments and regulators, but also shareholders and managers, should be...

This paper provides a theoretic model for the analysis of cartel formation in an industry that is subject to profit shocks. The competitive or collusive conduct of a firm is determined by a decision maker who maximizes the present value of utility that accrues to him by earning a share of the...

The firms that compete with one another in terms of innovation do not necessarily coincide with the relevant competitors on pre-innovation product markets. As a consequence, the findings about the ambiguous interrelation between (product) market concentration and innovation cannot be transferred...

A merger between two innovation competitors is often suspected to reduce the variety of heterogeneous entities which are currently undertaking R&D or which are well situated to undertake R&D in a certain field. The consequential reduction of diversity can be detrimental to innovation because it...

The relevant competitors in regard to innovation might, but not necessarily do, correspond to the identified competitors on actual product markets. Hence, the conventional analysis of product markets, in order to assess the potential anticompetitive effects of mergers, is insufficient to capture...

Non-controlling minority shareholdings in rivals (NCMS) lower the sus- tainability of collusion under a wide variety of circumstances. Nevertheless, NCMS are sometimes deemed to facilitate collusion, in particular if the level of NCMS is exogenous. The present paper endogenizes firms' choice of...

Most of the literature on retail fuel markets find high-frequency and asymmetric price cycles. This is typically explained by the model of Edgeworth price cycles. A key element of this model is that prices fall to marginal costs during a cycle. It seems challenging to address this assumption...

Advanced economic instruments like simulation models are enjoying an increased popularity in practical antitrust. There is hope that they being quantitative predictive economic evidence can substitute for qualitative structural analysis and lead to unambiguous results. This paper demonstrates...