This paper shows that the provision of consumer rights can decrease welfare when some consumers remain ignorant of these rights. We find that consumers uninformed about a mandated warranty demand excessively safe products in some circumstances. In other circumstances, uninformed consumers buy...

We examine the relation between consumer search and equilibrium prices when collusion is endogenously determined. We develop a theoretical model and show that average price is a U-shaped function of the measure of searchers: prices are highest when there are no searchers (local monopoly power)...

We find an asymmetric pass-through of European Emission Allowance (EUA) prices to wholesale electricity prices in Germany and show that this asymmetry has disappeared in response to a report on investigations by the competition authority. The asymmetric pricing pattern, however, was not detected...

This paper investigates the upcoming business model of online streaming services allowing music consumers either to subscribe to a service which provides free-of-charge access to streaming music and which is funded by advertising, or to pay a monthly flat fee in order to get ad-free access to...

Since January 1st the European Union has launched an EU-internal emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) for emission-intensive installations as the central pillar to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. The EU ETS may be linked at some time to a Kyoto emissions market where greenhouse gas emission...

European mobile communication markets are two-stage markets which are composed of the infrastructure (the network and its components) and the service markets (telephony, mobile internet, SMS). In contrast to most other network-based markets there are multiple fully integrated providers which...

Recent Internet technologies and web-based applications, such as social software, are being increasingly applied in firms. Social software can be employed for knowledge management and for external communication enabling access to internal and external knowledge. Knowledge in turn constitutes one...

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth in these firms. A simple model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales separately due to innovative and unchanged products is developed and estimated...

The recent shift towards working from home (WFH) has far-reaching implications for social and economic outcomes. While firms are gatekeepers for the ongoing diffusion of flexible work arrangements, there is little evidence on how firms decide to offer WFH. We leverage two survey experiments...

This article examines the impact of innovation on employment growth in innovating small and medium enterprises using a quantile regression approach. The key findings are that innovation has a positive effect on employment in both growing and shrinking firms. The impact of innovation on employee...