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DIW Discussion Papers 1330 / 2013
We study the effect of a merger in a dynamic high-technology industry-the videogame market- which is characterized by frequent introduction of new products. To assess the impact of the merger between two large specialist retailers in the UK, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis comparing the price evolution of the merging parties to that of their 7 major competitors on an original sample ...
2013| Luca Aguzzoni, Elena Argentesi, Paolo Buccirossi, Lorenzo Ciari, Tomaso Duso, Massimo Tognoni, Cristiana Vitale
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DIW Discussion Papers 1329 / 2013
In response to the growing burden of obesity, public primary prevention programs against obesity have been widely recommended. Several studies estimated the cost effects of diabetes prevention trials for different countries and found that diabetes prevention can be costeffective. Nevertheless, it is still controversial if prevention conducted in more real-world settings and among people with increased ...
2013| Jan Häußler, Friedrich Breyer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1328 / 2013
Recent developments in electricity markets such as the increased deployment of variable renewable generation have prompted renewed interest over the role of energy storage. While storage technologies can in principle provide various benefits for the functioning of an electrical grid, many energy storage technologies are in initial stages of development and demonstration. The role of public policy is ...
2013| Eric Borden, Wolf-Peter Schill
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DIW Discussion Papers 1327 / 2013
To date, the distributive implications of incentive regulation on electricity transmission networks have not been explicitly studied in the literature. More specifically, the parameters that a regulator might use to achieve distributive efficiency under price-cap regulation have not yet been identified. To discern these parameters is the motivation for the research presented in this paper. We study ...
2013| Luis Ángel Herrera, Juan Rosellón
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DIW Discussion Papers 1326 / 2013
Classic economic theory predicts that markets will clear, leaving little or no gains from trade left on the table. Laboratory experiments have largely confirmed this, though the results of recent field experiments have been mixed, with some artefactual markets in developing countries performing relatively inefficiently. I create a realistic multi-round trading market in Uganda with market-experienced ...
2013| Nathan Fiala
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DIW Discussion Papers 1325 / 2013
Research and development (R&D) is a common process in for-profit organizations. Despite the benefits, it is not routinely practiced in nonprofit organizations, in part because it is difficult to identify the effects of programs that are designed to involve individuals over long periods of time. This paper presents a process by which organizations looking to affect social outcomes can learn from their ...
2013| Nathan Fiala, Cormac Mangan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1324 / 2013
Returns merely based on one purchasing price of an asset are uninformative for people regularly contributing to their old-age provision. Here, each purchase has an influence on the outcome. Still, they are commonly used in finance literature, giving an overly optimistic view of expected long-term stock market returns and risks. Moreover, around business cycle turning points when volatility is high, ...
2013| Dirk Ulbricht
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DIW Discussion Papers 1323 / 2013
Previous work has shown that state-level antitrust enforcement activity may have impacts on entry and relocation behavior by U.S. firms. Significant state-level antitrust activity may be an indicator of a perceived adverse business environment and it is found to deter establishment entry, particularly for larger firms in the retail and wholesale sectors. An obvious question is whether establishment ...
2013| Robert M. Feinberg, Thomas A. Husted, Florian Szücs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1322 / 2013
We study the degree of agglomeration of acquisition activity within clusters of temporal, geographic and industrial proximity based on almost 600,000 individual transactions. The findings indicate that significant clustering occurs in time and across industries, while the results on geographic clustering are mixed. This supports the view that merger waves are mostly driven by neoclassical motives. ...
2013| Florian Szücs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1321 / 2013
We quantify externalities on profitability and market shares of competing firms in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n - 1 player oligopoly after a merger. Competitors are identified via the European Commission's market investigations and our methodology allows us to distinguish the externality due to the change in market structure from the merger effect. We obtain results ...
2013| Klaus Gugler, Florian Szücs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1320 / 2013
This paper proposes a dynamic life cycle model of health risks, employment, early retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to analyze the health-related risks of consumption and old age poverty. In particular, the model includes a health process, the interaction between health and employment risks, and an explicit modeling of the German public insurance schemes. I rely on a dynamic programming ...
2013| Daniel Kemptner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1319 / 2013
Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from twelve countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative incomes has no effect on changes in health. However, broader measures of poor material conditions such as subjective ...
2013| Maja Adena, Michal Myck
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DIW Discussion Papers 1318 / 2013
Technological changes in renewable energy technologies play an important role in the context of climate change as they contribute to a reduction of technology costs and lead to an increasing market penetration of emission reducing technologies. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review highlighting numerous motivations and necessities underlying the introduction of renewable energy policies. ...
2013| Felix Groba, Barbara Breitschopf
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DIW Discussion Papers 1317 / 2013
The interdependence of electricity and natural gas is becoming a major energy policy and regulatory issue in all jurisdictions around the world. The increased role of gas fired plants in renewable-based electricity markets and the dependence on gas imports make this issue particular striking for the European energy market. In this paper we provide a comprehensive combined analysis of electricity and ...
2013| Jan Abrell, Clemens Gerbaulet, Franziska Holz, Casimir Lorenz, Hannes Weigt
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DIW Discussion Papers 1316 / 2013
We examine the effects of future renewable expansion in Germany on residual load and renewable surplus generation for policy-relevant scenarios for 2022, 2032 and 2050. We also determine the storage capacities required for taking up renewable surpluses for varying levels of accepted curtailment. Making use of extensive sensitivity analyses, our simulations show that the expansion of variable renewables ...
2013| Wolf-Peter Schill
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DIW Discussion Papers 1314 / 2013
Since 2003 German hospitals are reimbursed according to diagnosis related groups (DRGs). Patient classification in neonatology is based inter alia on birth weight, with substantial discontinuities in reimbursement at eight different thresholds. These discontinuities create strong incentives to upcode preterm infants into classes of lower birth weight. Using data from the German birth statistics 1996 ...
2013| Hendrik Jürges, Juliane Köberlein
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DIW Discussion Papers 1313 / 2013
This article proposes a two-stage oligopoly model for the crude oil market. In a game of several Stackelberg leaders, market power increases endogenously as the spare capacity of the competitive fringe goes down. This effect is due to the specific cost function characteristics of extractive industries. The model captures the increase of OPEC market power before the financial crisis and its drastic ...
2013| Daniel Huppmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1312 / 2013
We analyze various regulatory regimes for electricity transmission investment in the context of a transformation of the power system towards renewable energy. We study distinctive developments of the generation mix with different implications on network congestion, assuming that a shift from conventional power plants towards renewables may go along with exogenous shocks on transmission requirements, ...
2013| Jonas Egerer, Juan Rosellón, Wolf-Peter Schill
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DIW Discussion Papers 1311 / 2013
Signature requirements are often used as hurdles to prevent overuse of public referenda. We evaluate the causal effect of lowering signature requirements on the number of observed citizen initiatives. Based on municipality-level data for Germany, we make use of legislative changes at specific population thresholds to build an identification strategy using a regression discontinuity design. We find ...
2013| Felix Arnold, Ronny Freier
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DIW Discussion Papers 1310 / 2013
This paper empirically evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major book retail chains in the UK: Waterstone's and Ottakar's. We employ differences-in-differences techniques and use a rich dataset containing monthly scanner data information on a sample of 200 books sold in 60 stores in 50 different local markets for a period of four years around the merger. Since retail mergers may have either ...
2013| Luca Aguzzoni, Elena Argentesi, Lorenzo Ciari, Tomaso Duso, Massimo Tognoni