Unternehmen investieren heute nicht mehr nur in Maschinen und Bauten, sondern zunehmend in Forschung und Entwicklung, Software und in ihre digitalen Kompetenzen. Doch bei den Investitionen in ihr sogenanntes Wissenskapital liegen die deutschen Unternehmen im internationalen Vergleich deutlich zurück. Das gefährdet die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der deutschen Volkswirtschaft insgesamt.
Since 1998, public firms have had to adapt to a market environment that is verydifferent from the post-war era in Europe. The liberalisation of services of generaleconomic interest across Europe led to competition between public and privateproviders, while new technologies require infrastructure investment and innovativesolutions. In addition, urbanisation and population ageing pose new challenges ...
In the first essay, titled “Retail Mergers and Assortment Repositioning”, I study how supermarkets compete in product variety and what this means for merger control. Authorities previously focused their attention on price effects of mergers. However, the recent years saw a shift in attention: For example, the new U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines (2010), issued by the Department of Justice and the ...
