Competition authorities and regulatory bodies have increasingly made use of econometric and statistical methods in their analysis. Due to limitations of time and data, so-called screening methods have become more and more important in order to decide whether an in-depth inquiry is warranted....

We investigate the effect of an EU-wide consumer protection regulation on consumer trust as well as consumer behavior. The Unfair Commercial Practice Directive (UCPD) was implemented by EU member states between 2007 and 2010. We utilize data from the Special and Flash Eurobarometer for the years...

This paper studies the impact of national banking market concentration on European banks' financial soundness while controlling for macroeconomic, bank-specific, supervisory and institutional factors.Using bank balance sheet data from banks across the EU-25 for the period of 1997-2005 we find...

In order to avoid over-regulation, some countries have experimented with what might be called threat-based regulation. The idea is - similarly to the contestable market model - that actual regulation may not be necessary as long as the threat of regulation is credible. In that case, so the idea,...

We examine how different pass-through rates, from input- to final consumer prices, and different vertical contracts affect upstream market definition. Our theory model predicts that, under reasonable conditions, higher pass-through rates lead to definitions of larger upstream markets. Data from...

This paper provides empirical evidence that Accelerated Vehicle Programs exhibit a positive influence on car registrations using unique aggregate monthly data for 23 OECD countries from 2000 to 2010. The effect is still traceable if dynamic panel data fixed effects methods are used to address...

There is a wide range of magazines, newspapers, TV shows, and websites providing information on products based on product reviews or expert opinions. A natural question is, whether these reviews and expert opinions have effects on product sales. There is a small but growing literature in...

This paper investigates the existence of a possible media bias by analyzing the impact of auto- mobile manufacturer’s advertisements on automobile reviews in a leading German car maga- zine. By accounting for both endogeneity and sample selection using a two-step procedure, we find a positive...