In electricity day-ahead markets organized as uniform price auction, a small reduction in supply in times of high demand can cause substantial increases in price. We use a unique data set of failures of generation capacity in the German-Austrian electricity market to investigate the relationship...

There is a growing concern that minority shareholding (MS) in rival firms may facilitate collusion. To examine this concern, we exploit the fact that leniency programs (LPs) are generally recognized as a shock that destabilizes collusive agreements and study the effect that the introduction of...

The duration of merger proceedings held by competition authorities is an important determinant of the efficiency of the entire merger control process. We use a dataset of 2953 Phase I and 92 Phase II investigations completed by the European Commission (EC) between 1999 and 2008 to examine the...

This paper studies the long-run fiscal consequences of balanced budget rules (BBR) that are enshrined in a country's constitution. Using historical data dating back to the 19th century and applying a difference-in-difference approach we find that the introduction of a constitutional-BBR reduces...

This paper studies the long-run fiscal consequences of balanced budget rules (BBR) that are enshrined in a country's constitution. Using historical data dating back to the 19th century and applying a difference-in-difference approach we find that the introduction of a constitutional-BBR reduces...