This paper applies parametric and non-parametric and parametric tests to assess the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in Germany. We address traditional issues in electricity sector benchmarking, such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size, as well as new evidence...

Maintaining sufficient levels of competition ranks among the core interests of any national – and increasingly international – antitrust policy; however, the formal proof that a cartel really functioned economically and did not only exist in a legal sense is hard to deliver: market power is...

We model the evolution of the number of individuals that are reported to be sick with COVID-19 in Germany. Our theoretical framework builds on a continuous time Markov chain with four states: healthy without infection, sick, healthy after recovery or after infection but without symptoms and...

We model the evolution of the number of individuals that are reported to be sick with COVID-19 in Germany. Our theoretical framework builds on a continuous time Markov chain with four states: healthy without infection, sick, healthy after recovery or after infection but without symptoms and...

Many countries consider the lifting of restrictions of social contacts (RSC). We quantify the effects of RSC for Germany. We initially employ a purely statistical approach to predicting prevalence of COVID19 if RSC were upheld after April 20. We employ these findings and feed them into our...

We use the synthetic control method to analyze the effect of face masks on the spread of Covid-19 in Germany. Our identification approach exploits regional variation in the point in time when face masks became compulsory. Depending on the region we analyse, we find that face masks reduced the...

One of the main results of the literature on the effects of uncertainty on trade states that uncertainty should not matter in the presence of well developed forward markets. Empirical studies, however, do not support this result. We derive the demand for forward cover in a small open economy...

The distribution of unemployment duration in our equilibrium matching model with spell-dependent unemployment benefits displays a time-varying exit rate. Building on Semi-Markov processes, we translate these exit rates into an expression for the aggregate unemployment rate. Structural estimation...