This paper deals with a special type of voluntary approach to protect the environment, for example, that we would like to term voluntary commitment. Its major characteristic is that it represents a unilateral declaration without a decisively active role of regulators. In other words, voluntary...

This paper compares technologies across space and time on the basis of factual and counterfactual substitution elasticities and argues that differences in estimated substitution elasticities should be decomposed into two counterfactual components. While the first component is designed to...

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth in these firms. A simple model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales separately due to innovative and unchanged products is developed and estimated...

Nowadays, a process can be observed in Germany where electricity producing and trading firms react to the electricity market liberalisation by merging market shares, since the year 2000, which reduces the number of suppliers and influences production and consumer prices. This paper discusses...

Überlastete Universitätsverwaltungen und langwierige Nachrückverfahren sind die Folge der dezentralen Vergabe von Studienplätzen. Um die Studienplatzvergabe künftig schneller und einfacher abwickeln zu können, soll die Zentralstelle für die Vergabe von Studienplätzen (ZVS) die...

Within this paper an oligopolistic German electricity market is modelled by a game theoretic modelling tool representing a Nash equilibrium. Due to European electricity market liberalisation electricity producing and trading firms react strategically like global market players by joining and...

We present the first panel estimates of the productivity effects of the unique German institution of parity, board-level co-determination. Although our data span two severe recessions when labour hoarding costs of co-determination are probably highest, and the panel is too short to capture the...

Economic re-integration after a long period of separation among countries with different levels of development is expected to start in border regions. Enterprises along the borderline can gain a rent due to low transport and transaction costs. They benefit from the fortunate opportunity of...

Präferenzen für Gütervielfalt und hieraus resultierende heterogene Preisbildung auf unvollkommenen Gütermärkten werden in empirischen Produktivitätsuntersuchungen bislang nur unzureichend berücksichtigt. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke beitragen: Er...

We first analyze pre-unification similarities and differences between the two Germanys and the two Koreas in terms of demographic, social, political and economic status. An important issue is the degree of international openness. 'Stone-age' type communism of North Korea and the seclusion of the...