Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt die Konzeption und Erhebung der ZEW/Creditreform Umfrage bei Dienstleistern der Informationsgesellschaft. Diese im Jahr 2002 eingeführte Umfrage geht aus einer Umfrage bei unternehmensnahen Dienstleistern hervor, die ZEW/Creditreform zwischen 1994 und 2001...

The telecommunications sector is characterized by economies of scale and scope, high sunk costs, and strong network effects. This combination may facilitate monopolization and abuse of market power. The present study evaluates the need for sector-specific regulation in this sector. It is shown...

The majority of industrial organizations literature on network externalities looks at firm behavior under given market characteristics. The present paper instead asks the question whether the presence of network externalities can change market characteristics, specifically, whether an initially...

This paper gives a survey of the current state of competition in the German Broadband access market. Existing regulations and their impact on the deployment of high-speed Internet access are evaluated. It is argued that facilities-based competition is preferable to open-network regulations. The...

Increasing investment in innovation has been a major goal of research and innovation policy in Europe over the past decade. Yet to secure competitive advantage and achieve growth, R&D investment has to be translated into successful innovations, and this is first and foremost the task of firms....

Public intervention in the automotive industry has a long, global history. In Europe, both, individual member states and the European Union (EU), often allocate public resources to automobile manufacturers through a wide variety of instruments and institutions. This willingness to offer support...

The aim of this project is to investigate the competitive behaviour of e-commerce firms over the course of the product lifecycle for consumer electronics such as digital cameras, IT hardware, and smartphones. We combine data from Austria's largest online price comparison site with retail data...

The aggravating turbulences in the market for euro government bonds have so far precluded any recovery from the debt crisis. The key problem is that structural reforms and consolidation measures have long impact lags and are not able to stop an acute self-fulfilling crisis of confidence. In the...

The financial and economic crisis has drawn attention to the need for a better understanding of destabilising effects that arise in the financial sector and spill over to the real economy. In turn, weakening economic conditions are likely to feed back to the financial sector, thus giving rise to...

Die neue Bundesregierung steht in der kommenden Legislaturperiode vor großen wirtschaftspolitischen Herausforderungen. Zwar war die deutsche Wirtschaftsentwicklung in den letzten Jahren überraschend positiv. Hervorzuheben sind vor allem die starke Zunahme der Beschäftigung und die schnelle...