Thema Wettbewerb und Regulierung

Access Pricing and Network Expansion in Natural Gas Markets

Wir diskutieren alternative Ansätze zur Bekämpfung lokaler Marktmacht in Erdgasmärkten mit einem besonderen Fokus auf den Ausbau bestehender Pipelinekapazitäten. Cremer und Laffont (Eur. Econ. Rev. 46:928-935, 2002) haben gezeigt, dass Preisdiskriminierungbeim Netzzugang korrigierend bei Marktversagen wirken und auch zur Erhöhung der Produktionsmenge (also Transportvolumina) führen kann. Im Gegensatz ...

The Impact of Governance Structure on Firm Performance: An Application to the German Water Distribution Sector

This paper investigates the impact of governance structure on firm performance (i.e., retail prices) using a database of 765 German water suppliers. Controlling for scale economies as well as technical and structural characteristics, we find that private sector participation is accompanied with higher retail prices. Furthermore, Eastern states on average feature higher prices mirroring significant ...

Empiricism Meets Theory: Is the Boone-Indicator Applicable?

Boone (2008a) proposes a new competition measure based on Relative Profit Differences (RPD) with superior theoretical properties. However, the empirical applicability and robust-ness of the Boone-Indicator is still unknown. This paper aims to address that question. Using a rich, newly built, data set for German manufacturing enterprises, we test the empirical valid-ity of the Boone-Indicator using ...

Overcoming Data Limitations in Nonparametric Benchmarking: Applying PCA-DEA to Natural Gas Transmission

We empirically demonstrate a practical approach of efficiency evaluation with limited data availability in some regulated industries. We apply PCA-DEA for radial efficiency measurement to U.S. natural gas transmission companies in 2007. PCA-DEA reduces dimensions of the optimization problem while maintaining most of the variation in the original data. Our results suggest that the methodology reduces ...

Fallende Preise in der Wasserwirtschaft: Hessen auf dem Vormarsch

Zuerst erschienen in: Wochenbericht 79 (2009) 10, S. 150-155

Does the Tenure of Private Equity Investment Improve the Performance of European Firms?

The paper investigates whether the presence and tenure of Private Equity (PE) investment in European companies improves their performance. Previous studies documented the unambiguous merit of a buyout during the 1980s and 1990s for listed firms in the US and UK markets. This study analyzes such influences in both listed and unlisted European firms during 2002-2007. Our analysis suggests that shortterm ...

What's Banking Sector Concentration Got to Do with Private Equity Market?

The paper investigates the link between bank concentration and a country's buyout market. We perform a macro level analysis for 15 European countries during 1997-2007. We estimate the elasticity of the country i's buyout market to country i's concentration in the banking sector. Our major finding suggests that the more concentrated the banking sector is, the better it is for the size of the buyout ...

Agenda for Building a New Financial Market Architecture

Since the summer of 2007, participants in financial markets have been confronted by a crisis of their own making. In order to prevent the recurrence of a similar crisis in the future, the G-20 nations, at their finance summit in Washington on 15 November 2008, resolved to "ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate to their circumstances." ...

Anreizregulierung mittels stochastischer Frontier Analyse: Potenzial für Fehleinschätzungen in Millardenhöhe

Financial Constraints and Continental Business Groups: Evidence from German Konzerns

Using a unique large panel of German firms, we examine whether participation in business groups (Konzerns) reduces the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. The main finding is that the investment sensitivity is significantly reduced for small firms. On the other hand, we do not find clear evidence that medium-sized and large firms participating in Konzerns have different sensitivity compared to ...