This paper evaluates four publicly discussed policy options to mitigate market power in the German wholesale electricity market. These four options are: a regulatory solution favoured by the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, the implementation of a day-ahead flow-based market...

Economic theory provides ambiguous and conflicting predictions about the association between algorithmic pricing and competition. In this paper we provide the first empirical analysis of this relationship. We study Germany's retail gasoline market where algorithmic-pricing software became widely...

Coordination Failure Diagnostics (CFD) is a model that analyses real market processes with the help of time pattern analysis and investigates whether they operate efficiently. The CFD cartel-audit should enable the detection of cartels via characteristic market process patterns. This is based on...

Boone (2008a) proposes a new competition measure based on Relative Profit Differences (RPD) with superior theoretical properties. However, the empirical applicability and robust-ness of the Boone-Indicator is still unknown. This paper aims to address that question. Using a rich, newly built,...

Economic theory provides ambiguous and conflicting predictions about the association between algorithmic pricing and competition. In this paper we provide the first empirical analysis of this relationship. We study Germany's retail gasoline market where algorithmic-pricing software became widely...

Economic theory provides ambiguous and conflicting predictions about the association between algorithmic pricing and competition. In this paper we provide the first empirical analysis of this relationship. We study Germany’s retail gasoline market where algorithmic-pricing software became...

This paper deals with the application of the SIEC test in German merger control using the decision by the Bundeskartellamt (German Federal Cartel Office) in the Edeka/ Kaiser’s Tengelmann case (file no. B2-96/14) as an example. The focus is on two aspects which are of particular interest from...

Mainstream competition law has failed to protect competition in core digital platform markets. This is partially due to enforcement agency’s current commitment to proving the investigated conduct’s actual effects on competition and consumer welfare on the basis of in-depth assessments of...

Cooperation among savings and cooperative banks was criticized by the European Commission because of potentially anti-competitive effects. In an industrial economics model of banks taking deposits and giving loans we look at regional demarcation as one of such cooperative practices. There are...

In this paper we analyze the incentive of the German postal service (Deutsche Post AG, DPAG) to increase quality in the light of the upcoming liberalization of the postal services market. Currently, there would be no incentive for DPAG to increase its quality if the market were not to be...