As a general principle, state aid to firms and sector-specific support schemes should be used only when there are market failures; that is, when there are good reasons to believe that the market would not deliver efficient and/or equitable outcomes.

This report provides an overview on the economics of attention intermediaries. It addresses the following questions: What are the economics of attention intermediaries? For competition policy, how should markets be defined and market power of attention intermediaries be assessed? What theories...

Vor dem Hintergrund der zunehmenden Bedeutung von digitalen Plattformen in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft entwickeln die Autoren einen integrierten Ansatz eines Ordnungsrahmens, wobei sie insbesondere Bausteine einer Informations- und Wettbewerbsordnung bewerten und daraus Handlungsempfehlungen...

Suchmaschinen ermöglichen Nutzern einen schnellen Zugang zu Informationen, die sie konkret suchen oder die sie durch die Suchmaschine entdecken. Sie haben sich zu wichtigen Informationsintermediären entwickelt. Aufgrund ihrer zentralen Rolle in der Informationsvermittlung und der...

This paper analyzes a mechanism through which a supplier of unknown quality can overcome its asymmetric information problem by selling via a reputable downstream …rm. The supplier’s adverse-selection problem can be solved if the downstream …rm has established a reputation for delivering...

In many markets, user benefits depend on participation and usage decisions of other users giving rise to network effects. Intermediaries manage these network effects and thus act as platforms that bring users together. This paper reviews key findings from the literature on network effects and...

The focus of cartel damages law is on the recovery of the cartel overcharge. Parties other than purchasers are often neglected, not only as a matter of judicial practice, but also due to legal restrictions. We argue that a narrow concept of standing - which excludes parties that supply either...

We provide a treatment of a number of questions pertaining to pending patents - a subject that has so-far mainly been discussed en-passant in the existing literature. We present the underlying institutional and legal framework that governs pending patents and some basic facts related to them....

Standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per-viewer ad prices. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and...