During the recent sales of UMTS licenses in Europe some countries used auctions while others resorted to so-called Beauty Contests. There seems to be a wide consensus among economists that in these and other contexts like privatisation an auction is the better selling mechanism. However, why...

We study the impact of insurance on the amount of fraud in a physician-patient relationship. In a market for credence goods, where prices are regulated by an authority, physicians act as experts. Due to their informational advantage, physicians have an incentive to cheat by inducing...

Using the concept of Inequity Aversion we derive in a Moral Hazard setting several results which differ from conventional contract theory. Our three key insights are: First, inequity aversion plays a crucial role in the design of optimal contracts. Second, there is a strong tendency towards...

Most insurance companies publish few data on the occurrence and detection of insurance fraud. This stands in contrast to the previous literature on costly state verification, which has shown that it is optimal to commit to an auditing strategy, as the credible announcement of thoroughly auditing...

Recently, the combinatorial clock auction has become more and more common in the auctioning of telecommunication licenses. Although the auction design is complex, the promise is that bidding becomes simple - truthtelling is close to optimal. We show that this claim is too strong. The auction...

We compare two commonly used mechanisms in procurement: auctions and negotiations. The execution of the procurement mechanism is delegated to an agent of the buyer. The agent has private information about the buyer's preferences and may collude with one of the sellers. We provide a precise...

Die Struktur der deutschen Wirtschaft hat sich in der Vergangenheit stark gewandelt. Als Indikator für diesen Strukturwandel wird oftmals der langjährige Rückgang des Wertschöpfungsanteils der Industrie zugunsten der Dienstleistungen angeführt, die einen immer größeren Teil der...

The structure of the German economy changed drastically over time. The decline of the proportion of gross value added of the manufacturing sector at the expense of the services sector is often cited as an indicator for this structural change. However, this shift is not necessarily an indication...

[Einleitung: Europa und die Wirtschaftskrise] Die Europäische Union, mit ihren Wurzeln im Schumann Plan von 1950 und gegründet 1992 durch den Vertrag von Maastricht, war bis 2008 hinsichtlich ihrer Ziele - Friedenssicherung und wirtschaftlicher Wohlstand - außerordentlich erfolgreich. Die...

[Introduction] Over the last few years there has been an increasing debate on supply security in the German healthcare system. In particular, concerns have been raised with respect to the shortage of pharmacies in rural regions. While the low level of demand for pharmaceutical services and...