Produktivität wird allgemein als treibende Kraft für das Wirtschaftswachstum und als Indikator für den materiellen Wohlstand einer Gesellschaft angesehen. Jedoch haben viele Industrieländer in den letzten Jahrzehnten ein rückläufiges Produktivitätswachstum und eine Ausweitung der...

A central motivating factor for studying price markups is their effect on consumer welfare. Reported estimates of (firm-level) price markups in the literature, however, are often focused on industry or cross-country comparisons. These treat different industries equally rather than based on how...

I develop a general framework for markup and markdown estimation that allows for profit sharing along value chains without making assumptions on conduct between vertically related firms. I derive the conditions under which the markup and markdown estimates relate to the firms' equilibrium...

Production functions provide a mapping from the firms' input quantity and productivity to output quantity. This mapping only generates unbiased estimates if input and output quality variation within and between observation units is accounted for. I review and classify state-of-the-art methods to...

Italien und Deutschland sind sich sehr ähnlich hinsichtlich des hohen Anteils von Familienunternehmen und ihrer großen Bedeutung für die Wirtschaft. Das ZEW Mannheim legt in dieser Studie interessante Zahlen dazu vor.

I study the impact of subsidies for Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) on carbon emissions. I show that subsidizing innovations without considering consumer behavior can harm the environment. I provide descriptive evidence on charging instances of PHEV and combine it with a structural model of...

Understanding how consumers respond to price increases is key when designing price-related policies. Using microdata on vehicle usage and paid fuel prices, I analyze consumers' response, focusing on three channels of mitigation: distance driven, fuel efficiency, and search. On average, consumers...

The introduction of the European Union (EU) Settlement Procedure in 2008 aimed at promoting the procedural efficiency of cartel investigations by the European Commission (EC). We use a data set consisting of 579 firms groups convicted by the EC for cartelization from 2000 to 2015 to investigate...

We propose a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach to estimate the impact of incentives on cost reduction. We show theoretically, and estimate empirically, that German electricity distribution system operators (DSOs) pile up more costs in the year used to determine future prices when subject...

We investigate the trade-off between financial stability and competition policy by focusing on the merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis Bank NL in the Dutch retail banking market. The financial crisis delayed the completion of the merger giving rise to anti-competitive behavior in the transitory...