New and old products differ in two respects: quality and newness. Whereas a higher quality of a new product always benefits consumers, the newness itself benefits some consumers, but not others, and for some, it is even a disadvantage. We capture these features in a Hotelling model of...

Due to falling fertility and rising life expectancies, a serious financial crisis is looming over the pay-as-you-go pension systems established in many developed countries. The present study demonstrates that falling fertility can partly be explained by the fiscal externalities arising from the...

Welche Bedeutung sollte dem ökonomischen Theorieansatz und damit insbesondere dem ökonomischen Kostenindex der Lebenshaltung (im Folgenden als "nutzenbasierter Ausgabenindex", NBA, bezeichnet) in der amtlichen Inflationsmessung eingeräumt werden? In diesem Beitrag werden die Potenziale des...

This study investigates the consequences of revenue-neutral tax reforms on the members of two-person households. The model employed has individual utility functions for household members and allows for household production. General conditions are derived specifying when such tax reforms are...

The authors develop a dynamic approach to measuring the evolution of comparative brand premium, an important component of brand equity. A comparative brand premium is defined as the pairwise price difference between two products being identical in every respect but brand. The model is based on...

This paper attempts to establish a greater awareness among researchers for the noteworthy contributions to price index theorymade by Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802-1896), a German mathematician and philosopher at the Universitaet Leipzig. Few economists and statisticians are aware of the fact...

Numerous quality-adjusted hedonic price-trend studies based on computer prices have provided support to widely held suspicions that officially released price indices are not accurately measuring the price declines occurring in many information technology (IT) products. If provable, then general...

In Germany, donations to charitable institutions can be deducted from the taxable income. The government subsidizes each donated Euro by the household’s marginal tax rate. Unfortunately, this system has some serious shortcomings. Therefore, the existing tax deduction of donations should be...