Market power in economic theory is defined as deviations from marginal cost pricing, which results in unfair competition and welfare losses. In complex agri-food supply chains, the exercise of market power is a significant contributor to welfare losses, as multiple actors throughout the chain...

How do judgment devices influence price formation? We investigate this question through a study of the German wine market. The German wine market is characterized by the simultaneous existence of two classification systems: the official classification system referring to the “quality in the...

Kern dieses Working Papers ist die Prüfung eines staatlichen Kaufverbots von Agrarerzeugnissen und Lebensmitteln unterhalb der Herstellungskosten. In Deutschland gibt es seit ein paar Jahren eine erhebliche politische Diskussion hierzu, die sich schließlich im Koalitionsvertrag der...

In this paper the existence and magnitude of market power for German beer, cocoa powder, chocolate, and sugar confectionary exporters are tested. Two theoretical approaches are employed, the 'pricing of market' (PTM) and the 'residual demand elasticity' (RDE) approach. Even though all markets...

In this paper, we present a nonparametric comparative efficiency analysis of 179 communal public transport bus companies in Germany (1990-2004). We apply both deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping to test the robustness of our estimates and to test the hypothesis of...

Most bank efficiency studies that use stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) employ each bank's own implicit input price when estimating efficient frontiers. But the theoretical foundation of most studies is a cost minimisation and/ or profit maximisation problem assuming perfect input markets. At...