Publikationen der Abteilung Unternehmen und Märkte

Timing of Communication

Using an experiment, we demonstrate that a communication regime in which a worker communicates about his intended effort is less effective in: (i) soliciting truthful information; and (ii) motivating effort than one in which he communicates about his past effort. Our experiment uses a real-effort task, which additionally allows us to demonstrate the effects of communication on effort over time. We ...

Gross Employment Effects in the Renewable Energy Industry in Germany: An Input–Output Analysis from 2000 to 2018

The purpose of this paper is to provide detailed insights into an approach to measure gross employment of the renewable energy (RES) industry in Germany in order to improve transparency and comparability. The method applied for the assessment of gross employment figures follows the input–output (IO) modeling approach and covers direct as well as indirect employment effects.All-in-all, four different ...

Industry Conversion Tables for German Firm-Level Data

Microfirms and Innovation in the Service Sector

Transformational Strategies and Productivity Growth: A Transformational‐Activities Perspective on Stagnation in the New‐Normal Business Landscape

Declines in productivity growth substantially explain new‐normal business stagnation; yet in order to address situations of slack productivity growth, firms can choose from six generic transformational strategies: retirement, renewal, retrenchment, replication, redeployment, and recombination. While the extant literature focuses on specific transformational strategies that particular firms, or industries, ...

The Effect of a Ban on Gender‐Based Pricing on Risk Selection in the German Health Insurance Market

Starting from December 2012, insurers in the European Union were prohibited from charging gender‐discriminatory prices. We examine the effect of this unisex mandate on risk segmentation in the German health insurance market. Although gender used to be a pricing factor in Germany's private health insurance (PHI) sector, it was never used as a pricing factor in the social health insurance (SHI) sector. ...

Abuse of Dominance and Antitrust Enforcement in the German Electricity Market

Where Does the Fair Trade Money Go? How Much Consumers Pay Extra for Fair Trade Coffee and How This Value Is Split along the Value Chain

Fair Trade certification aims at transferring wealth from the consumer to the farmer; however, coffee passes through many hands before reaching final consumers. Bringing together retail, wholesale, and stock market data, this study estimates how much more consumers are paying for Fair Trade-certified coffee in US supermarkets and finds estimates around $1.50 per lb. The study then assesses how this ...

Do Laws Shape Attitudes? Evidence from Same-Sex Relationship Recognition Policies in Europe

Understanding whether laws shape or simply reflect citizens’ attitudes is important but empirically difficult. We provide new evidence on this question by studying the relation between legal same-sex relationship recognition policies (SSRRPs) and attitudes toward sexual minorities in Europe. Using data from the European Social Surveys covering 2002–2016 and exploiting variation in the timing of SSRRPs ...

The Entitlement Effect in the Ultimatum Game - Does it Even Exist?

Since the seminal paper of Hoffman et al. (1994), an entitlement effect is believed to exist in the Ultimatum Game, in the sense that proposers who have earned their role (as opposed to having it randomly allocated) offer a smaller share of the pie to their matched responder. The entitlement effect is at the core of experimental Public Choice – not just because it concerns the topics of bargaining ...