The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. What differs between the EU and the US is not the basic toolkit for achieving deterrence, but to whom it is targeted. In the EU, pecuniary sanctions against the firm are the only instruments...

Informationstechnologien erlauben Firmen immer mehr persönliche Daten über ihre Kunden zu sammeln. Mit diesen Daten werden Kundenprofile erstellt über Vorlieben für bestimmte Marken, Zahlungsbereitschaft oder Wechselbereitschaft bei Preiserhöhungen. Zudem kommt es immer häufiger vor, dass...

Only recently, competition authorities tend to see comparative advertising as helpful in promoting competition. They now encourage firms to use it. They reason that comparative advertising, if fair and not misleading, increases consumers' information about alternative brands. For this to work,...

We study the effects of competition and interoperabilty in platform markets. To do so, we adopt an approach of competition in net fees, which is well-suited to situations where users pay additional charges, after joining, for on-platform interactions. Compared to other approaches, net fees...

We use traffic data from around 5,000 web domains in Europe and United States to investigate the effect of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on website visits and user behaviour. We document an overall traffic reduction of approximately 15% in the long-run and find...

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted in the European Union in April 2016 and went into effect in May 2018. We study its impact on investment in new and emerging technology firms. Our findings indicate negative post-GDPR effects after its 2018 rollout on European ventures,...

The duration of appellate court proceedings is an important determinant of the efficiency of a court system. We use data of 234 firm groups that participated in 63 cartels convicted by the European Commission between 2000 and 2012 to investigate the determinants of the duration of the subsequent...