Summary The premium rates paid for statutory health insurance in Germany play a key role in the competition among health care funds. With the most recent health care reform (GKV-Wettbewerbsstärkungsgesetz GKV-WSG), a range of new products have been introduced that could erode the advantageous...

Summary This paper focuses on fraud detection in surveys using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data as an example for testing newly methods proposed here. A statistical theorem referred to as Benford’s Law states that in many sets of numerical data, the significant digits are not uniformly...

Summary Immigrant-native wage differentials are observed in many countries, so in Germany. However, the available empirical literature for Germany defined the groups in consideration, immigrants and natives, by citizenship. This limits the explanatory power of the estimates since citizenship...

Summary This note explores the relationship between the price elasticity of demand and the R&D intensity of the product. We introduce the concept of R&D intensity into a standard Dixit- Stiglitz/Krugman-type setting. R&D activity is treated as a fixed cost of production. Within this framework,...

Summary “Which index formula at the elementary level, where no expenditure share weights are available, corresponds to a desired aggregate index?” To answer this question, this paper develops a statistical approach. It proposes a theoretical framework which makes it possible to achieve...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use local-level time series data to examine the determinants of housing starts and the price elasticity of supply for the Aberdeen local housing market. Design/methodology/approach – Seven time series models are used in the analysis. The basic model...

Purpose Questionnaire measures of consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and price sensitivity are biased, yet these declarative methods can aid managerial decision-making. Additional choices involve which question formats to use (open-ended or discrete choice) and how many questions (unique...

Purpose Consumer price sensitivity has become a major issue over the past few decades. This paper aims to investigate the importance that insurance customers give to premiums, insurers, intermediary recommendations and bundling strategies. The relationship between attributes and consumer price...

For decades, agricultural price and trade policies in Sub-Saharan Africa hampered farmers' contributions to economic growth and poverty reduction. This paper draws on a modification of so-called trade restrictiveness indexes to provide theoretically precise partial-equilibrium indicators of the...

The main purpose of generic advertising is to enlarge the total market demand rather than capturing further slices from competitors. Several studies point out emergence of free-riding behavior under independent contribution and suggest use of coordination mechanism. However, existing literature...