Merger and divestiture policies influence bargaining power in vertical relationships, a commonly underestimated factor. I develop a Nash-bargaining model with endogenous bargaining weights. Next, I present a novel empirical framework to identify bounds on the upstream bargaining weights between manufacturers and retailers at the brand level, solving bias due to endogenous selection of divestiture packages. With this approach, I examine the impact of changes in bargaining weights under varying scenarios. Specifically, I analyze a landmark U.S. merger, approved conditional on divestiture, and its effect on bargaining power, final prices, and consumer surplus. Compared to a no-merger scenario, I estimate an increase in bargaining weights associated with divested brands and a decrease related to the brands of the merged entity. This shift contributes to an overall rise in consumer surplus. Furthermore, I simulate consumer surplus outcomes under alternative divestiture packages, revealing an alternative package with fewer divested brands that could have improved consumer welfare. These findings add a novel angle to the recent discussions about the fact that antitrust authorities may have been too lax in the past decades.

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long running panel structure, the breadth of topics and the representative nature of the data, the SOEP has become a central resources for quantitative research in the social sciences in Germany.

The final workshop of the Einstein research project “Open-Source Modeling of the Role of Renewable Hydrogen in Germany and Europe” will take place as part of this year's InfraDay, a free conference organized annually by TU Berlin.

The research project (project website) has been running since November 2021 and will be completed at the end of October. The aim of the project, which was carried out by TU Berlin and DIW Berlin, was the model development and coupling of various open-source models to answer key questions on the topic of renewable hydrogen in the energy system of the future. For this purpose, the models HydroGenMOD (DIW Berlin), a market model for hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives, DIETER (DIW Berlin), an electricity sector model, and GENeSYS-MOD (TU Berlin), a cross-sectoral energy system, were coupled with each other. 

The workshop will provide an overview of the central project results, which will be contrasted and supplemented by two external input presentations. The workshop will conclude with a panel discussion and a general discussion round.

Participation

The workshop is free of charge and can be accessed by writing an E-mail to Dr. Konstantin Löffler (k.loeffler@tu-berlin.de).

Concerns about inequality and questions of social justice and cohesion have re-entered the public arena and animate debate. In his Nobel prize lecture in 2015, Angus Deaton has outlined three imperatives that are key to understanding inequalities and formulating welfare-enhancing policies: (I) Differences in resources across individuals should be measured not only at specific points in time but also across the life course. (II) Direct economic measures of well-being should be developed to assess better socio-economic outcomes. (III) Data should be reconciled with lifecycle models to explain the causal mechanisms behind outcomes. Our open workshop is an initiative to build on these imperatives and seeks to bring together scholars whose research focuses, from a lifecycle perspective, on inequalities in and fluctuations of economic resources and their drivers.

This open workshop is part of the project Life-course Inequality Dynamics, funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR, French National Research Agency).

A face to face interview is something every student will go through at some point in their career. In the academic job market, it is the central process to convince potential employers of your future research prospects. Outside academia the focus is less on research, but performing well in the interview is nonetheless essential to get the job you want. Handling a job interview successfully is not an easy challenge, but the skills needed to present yourself in the best light can be practiced. For this reason, this year the Graduate Center will again offer job marketinterview training in the form of a ‘mock interview’.We will simulate the interview based on a fictive job vacancy in your field of interest. The“selection committee” will consist of at least two senior researchers in your field, e.g. your supervisor and post docs. Moreover, we have invited Sigrid Pearson, an English job interviewcoach. She will assist in preparing your talk during the days before the interview; she will also attend the talks and give detailed feedback on your performance after the simulation. As part of your preparation, we will also ask you to compose a short fictive job ad for the type of job youare planning to apply for (post‐doc position, position in an international organization etc.).

Rough schedule of each session:

1. Presentation of your job market paper (5-10 min)
2. Question and answers session (20 min)
3. Feed-back of all participants
4. Working session with the coach: Analysis and exercises

Please register with Laura (lstarck@diw.de) to allow for individual preparation time and early booking of the senior researchers who should attend your session.Please send Laura your suggestions for the “selection committee” and bring it up to the people in question as soon as possible.

About the coach:

Sigrid Pearson, MA (Dubl.), MA (Lond.), BSc (Hons), CTEFLA Sigrid Pearson coaches students and professionals in job applications and interviews, business English and academic skills at the Leuphana University Lüneburg and previously at the University of Hamburg and in international businesses. She also worked in a business psychologyresearch institute for several years translating and editing academic texts. Earlier in her career,she was a manager at Times Mirror International Publishers in London. She now applies her management training and experience in interviewing and direct sales to help students ‘market’ themselves to employers.

The DIW Graduate Center is pleased to offer a workshop on writing good texts for academic journals. It is designed for all doctoral students and researchers at DIW who would like to improve their English writing skills. Please register with Laura Starck (lstarck@diw.de) by November 1st, 2024 for the workshop. Please note: Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

The DIW Graduate Center is pleased to offer a workshop on giving scientific presentations. It is designed for all doctoral students and researchers at the DIW who would like to improve their skills in talking in front of an audience. Please register with Laura Starck (lstarck@diw.de) by Novemver 1st, 2024 for the workshop. Please note: Registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.