Traditional economic theory of collusion assumed that cartels are inherently unstable, and yet some manage to operate for years or even decades. While the literature has presented several determinants of cartel stability, the vast majority focuses on firms as entities, even though cartels are...

In this paper, we examine students' attitudes towards various allocation mechanisms for a scarce resource. For this purpose, we have run a survey among officers of the German military who are enrolled in different courses of study (such as economics) at the University of the German Federal Armed...

This paper analyzes the incentive effects of pollution taxes versus pollution permits for a budget oriented Government. Pollution permits are analyzed as durable goods, and a pollution tax is seen as an equivalent to leasing pollution permits. First, a general model is developed and then four...

This paper analyzes the coordination, competition and resource allocation problems associated with telephone numbers, and it analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of various allocation mechanisms from a property rights perspective. The paper proposes to move away from current administrative...

German Abstract: Der vorliegende Beitrag diskutiert die Schnittstelle zwischen Recht und Ökonomik in der Wettbewerbspolitik. Aus einer ökonomischen Perspektive werden Ansätze zu einer institutionenökonomischen Analyse der Kartellrechtsdurchsetzung betrachtet. Im Rahmen einer positiven...

This paper examines the consequences of introducing mobile number portability (MNP). We show that if the sole effect of introducing MNP is the abolishment of switching costs, MNP unambiguously benefits mobile customers. However, if MNP also causes consumer ignorance, as telephone numbers no...

This paper provides a hedonic price analysis of mobile telephones for the German market. We have assembled data on 302 different handsets from 25 manufacturers over the period from May 1998 to November 2003. While volume has a negative effect on the price of a mobile handset, the number of...

Many cartels are formed by individual managers of different firms, but not by firms as collectives. However, most of the literature in industrial economics neglects individuals’ incentives to form cartels. Although oligopoly experiments reveal important insights on individuals acting as firms,...

This paper is about the price effects caused by a VAT (value-added tax) reduction for menstrual hygiene products in Germany. Several aspects make this VAT reduction particularly interesting: The exogeneity of the reduction under otherwise constant economic conditions, the reduction was...

Fan support has often been considered to be a main driver of the home advantage in sports. Using the natural experiment of ghost games during the COVID-19 pandemic in German professional soccer and a dataset of 6,120 matches ranging over the seasons 2011/2012 to 2020/2021, we test this claim....