Der angekündigte mehrheitliche Verkauf des Discounters "Plus" würde der Konzentration im deutschen Einzelhandel einen neuen Schub verleihen. Die oft vorgebrachte These, dass ein Ausscheiden kleinerer Wettbewerber langfristig auch den Konsumenten schadet, ist allerdings rein spekulativ. Dieser...

We introduce professional financial advice in households’ choice to hold risky financial assets. Consistent with the predictions from a formal model, we present evidence that households’ trust in financial advice only matters when their perceived own financial capability is low. Instead, for...

Savings accounts are owned by most households, but little is known about the performance of households’ investments. We create a unique dataset by matching information on individual savings accounts from the DNB Household Survey with market data on account-specific interest rates and...

Our paper evaluates recent regulatory proposals mandating the deferral of bonus payments and claw-back clauses in the financial sector. We study a broadly applicable principal agent setting, in which the agent exerts effort for an immediately observable task (acquisition) and a task for which...

We present a model of takeover where the target optimally sets its reserve price. Under relatively standard symmetry restrictions, we obtain a unique equilibrium. The probability of takeover is only a function of the number of firms and of the insiders' share of total industry gains due to the...

This paper argues that - in contrast to an often expressed view - the formation of larger and more powerful buyers need not reduce welfare by stifling suppliers´ incentives. If contracts are determined in bilateral negotiations, the presence of larger buyers may both increase...

We challenge the view that the presence of powerful buyers stifles suppliers´ incentives to innovate. Following Katz (1987), we model buyer power as buyers´ ability to substitute away from a given supplier and isolate several effects that support the opposite view, namely that the presence of...

We analyze a model of monopolistic price discrimination where only some consumers are originally sufficiently informed about their preferences, e.g., about their future demand for a utility such as electricity or telecommunication. When more consumers become informed, we show that this benefits...

We characterize a monopolist's optimal offer of service plans when only informed customers know already at the contracting stage whether their demand is high or low, while uninformed customers may learn their demand only after incurring some costs, if at all. While informed customers purchase...

This paper studies the impact of buyer power on dynamic efficiency. We consider a bargaining model in which buyer power arises endogenously from size and may impact on a supplier's incentives to invest in lower marginal cost. We challenge the view frequently expressed in policy circles that the...