Publikationen der Abteilung Unternehmen und Märkte

Consolidating the Water Industry: An Analysis of the Potential Gains from Horizontal Integration in a Conditional Efficiency Framework

The German potable water supply industry is regarded highly fragmented, thus preventing efficiency improvements that could happen through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we use a cross-section sample of 364 German water utilities in 2006, applying Data Envelopment Analysis, to analyze the potential efficiency gains from hypothetical mergers between water utilities ...

R&D Efficiency and Heterogeneity: A Latent Class Application for the OECD

Expenditures devoted to research and development (R&D) are scarce and thus need to be used as efficiently as possible given the financial constraints countries are facing. This article assesses the relative efficiency of R&D expenditures for 26 OECD member countries and two nonmember countries. As countries differ in their national innovation systems and states of economic development and industrialization, ...

The Welfare Impact of Parallel Imports: A Structural Approach Applied to the German Market for Oral Anti-Diabetics

We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel dataset containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 649 anti-diabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of demand, and on the basis of an oligopolistic model of multi-product firms, we then recover the marginal costs ...

M&A and R&D: Asymmetric Effects on Acquirers and Targets?

What Drives Intermediate Local Governments' Spending Efficiency: The Case of French Départements

The restructuring of the allocation of governmental competencies in France has increased the importance of subnational governments by transferring additional tasks. We analyse the efficiency of public spending on the intermediate government level for the 96 départements in metropolitan France in 2008. Spending efficiency is measured using Data Envelopment Analysis. Results indicate significant room ...

Cross-Border Mergers and Domestic-Firm Wages: Integrating "Spillover Effects" and "Bargaining Effects"

Two literatures exist concerning cross-border merger activity's impact on domestic wages: one focusing on positive spillover effects; the other focusing on negative bargaining effects.Motivated by scarce theoretical scholarship spanning these literatures, we nest both mechanisms in a single conceptual framework. Considering the separate phenomena of inward and outward cross-border merger activity, ...

A Retrospective Merger Analysis in the U.K. Videogame Market

We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry—the videogame market—which is characterized by the frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the United Kingdom—Game Group PLC and Games Station Limited—we perform a difference-in-differences analysis comparing the price evolution of the merging parties with ...

Nonparametric Measures of Returns to Scale: An Application to German Water Supply

The evaluation of market structures and the quantification of returns to scale in network industries usually are of high interest for researchers and policy makers. Regarding the debate on optimal market structures in German potable water supply, we use a cross-sectional sample of 364 German water utilities observed in 2006 to derive a nonparametric measure of scale elasticity for the water industry. ...

Temporary Agency Work and Firm Competitiveness: Evidence from German Manufacturing Firms

This paper addresses the relationship between the utilization of temporary agency workers by firms and their competitiveness measured by unit labor costs, using a rich, newly built, dataset of German manufacturing enterprises. We conduct the analysis by applying different panel data models while taking the inherent selection problem into account. Making use of dynamic panel data models allows us to ...

Collusion through Joint R&D: An Empirical Assessment

This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We show that a sufficient condition for identifying collusive behavior is a decline in the market share of RJV-participating firms. Using information from the U.S. National Cooperation Research Act, we estimate a market share equation correcting for the endogeneity of RJV participation and R&D expenditures. We find robust ...