[Vorwort] Im Dezember 1984 erteilte der Bundesminister für Wirtschaft dem Institut für Weltwirtschaft den Auftrag, ein Gutachten über "Deregulierungspotentiale in der Bundesrepublik" zu erstellen. Der größte Teil dieses Gutachtens - die theoretischen Grundlagen, die Rechtfertigungsanalyse...

This paper studies competition in prices and opening hours in a model with free entry. It is shown that under free competition a market failure arises: Entry is excessive and opening hours are under-provided. Restrictions on opening hours aggravate this failure. I analyze the impact of a...

We construct a model of trade with heterogeneous retailers to examine the effects of trade liberalization on retail market structure, imports and social welfare. We are especially interested in investigating the transmission of lower import prices into consumer prices and the effects of retail...

This paper investigates whether a nation's contingent value of hosting a mega-event depends on past experience with implied public goods benefits for its residents. Applying data from an ex-ante and ex-post query based on contingent valuation methods, we use the FIFA World Cup 2006 as a natural...

Since Taylor's 1993 paper researchers have devoted a lot effort to estimation of monetary policy rules. Taylor showed that a simple central bank reaction function, with the interest rate as monetary policy instrument and inflation and output gap as explanatory variables, mimics the Fed funds...

We examine evidence for a systematic underperformance of Germany's state-owned banks in the current financial crisis and study if the bank losses can be traced to the quality of bank governance. For this purpose, we examine the biographical background of 593 supervisory board members in the 29...