In his book on 'Market Microstructure' Spulber presented some strange results with respect to the impact of the substitutability parameter in an intermediation model with differentiated products and inputs. Intuitively, effects in the product and the input market should be similar: if firms...

The "Elimination by aspects" (EBA) duopoly of product differentiation (Laurent, 2006a) was constructed from the discrete model of probabilistic choice worked out by Tversky (1972a,b). In this framework, an unique price equilibrium exists with a "differentiation by attributes", which embodies...

This volume was prepared by Luise Röpke while she was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes three self-contained chapters about aspects of the integration of new...

The Caribbean share of the global tourism market has been declining. This study examines what is driving tourism flows. It estimates the determinants of tourism and explores variations based on sample differences, and also constructs a static nominal price comparison index. The paper finds that:...

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Zusammenhänge zwischen Erdölpreisen, Kraftstoffpreisen, verbrauchten Mengen und dem Energiesteueraufkommen. Wesentliche Ergebnisse sind, dass die verbrauchten Kraftstoffmengen mit der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Produktion und den Erdölpreisen schwanken. Vor...

This paper investigates whether patent fee policies are a potential factor underlying the boom in patent applications observed in major patent offices. We provide the first panel-based evidence suggesting that fees affect the demand for patents in three major patent offices (EPO, USPTO and JPO),...

This paper analyzes the role of patent filing fees requested by the member states of the European Patent Convention (EPC). We provide a first empirical evidence showing that the fee elasticity of the demand for priority applications is negative and significant. Given the strong variation in...

It has been suggested that, during the 1970s and 1980s, excess capacity played an important role in the performance of Latin American exports of manufactures. This paper shows that countercyclical factors should be expected for most exports, and submits the hypothesis that these effects are more...

The study seeks to re-investigate the price elasticity of South African cigarette demand over the period 1996 to 2006. At first glance, rising cigarette prices seem to have played an important role in reducing cigarette consumption over the sample period, especially during the late nineties. But...