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Competition and Mergers with Strategic Data Intermediaries

We analyze mergers between strategic data intermediaries collecting consumer information that they sell to firms competing in a product market. We show that a merger: (a) reduces the intensity of competition in the product market through a change in the selling strategies of merging intermediaries; (b) increases data collection, reducing consumer surplus through a better rent extraction. We argue...

Global Gas Market Implications of Methane Emission Reduction Policies

Methane is the second-largest contributor to global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing anthropogenic methane emissions quickly can significantly reduce global warming within just a few decades. The oil and gas sector is responsible for almost 20% of anthropogenic methane emissions. Yet, there are hardly any policies in place that address oil and gas sector methane emissions. ...

The Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age on Health Care Costs: Evidence from Administrative Data

In this paper, we use unique health record data that cover outpatient care and the associated costs to quantify the health care costs of a sizable increase in the retirement age in Germany. For the identification, we exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform which abolished an early retirement program for all women born after 1951. Our results show that health care costs significantly increase ...

Energy Transformation, Social Inclusion, and Economic Prosperity in Latin America: An Introduction

Mexico's Energy Prospects: Gains from Renewable Sources Over A Fossil Fuel-Dominated Environment

Changing political conditions in Mexico threatens the future of clean energy inthe country. A competitive electricity market and ambitious environmental goalswere among the priorities of the previous administration, but the current administrationaims to increase revenues from the national power company and acquirecontrol of the electricity market at the expense of consumer welfare and the environment.In ...

Income and Wealth Inequality in Hong Kong, 1981–2020: The Rise of Pluto-Communism?

The objective of this paper is to better understand the evolution and institutional roots of Hong Kong's growing economic inequality and political cleavages. By combining multiple sources of data (household surveys, fiscal data, wealth rankings, national accounts) and methodological innovations, two main findings are obtained. First, he evidence suggests a very large rise in income and wealth inequality ...

Generational Wealth Inequality Across the Distribution: Trends in the U.S. since 1949

Using recently published U.S. long-run microdata (SCF+), we document that — for people born in the first half of the 20th century — median wealth used to increase from one ten-year birth cohort to another. For people born in the second half, median wealth successively declined from cohort to cohort and wealth inequality within birth cohorts has markedly increased. Shifts in...

Wage Dispersion and Life-Cycle Unemployment

Higher wage dispersion may induce unemployed workers to search longer for a job by increasing their reservation wages. This paper investigates the implications of this mechanism in a job search model featuring a finite work life, showing that a mean-preserving spread of the wage offer distribution could lead to a larger increase in reservation wages of younger than older workers because the...

Chronic disease onset and wellbeing. Analyzing level, trend effects, and exploring the role of healthcare access

Objectives: Experiencing the onset of a chronic disease is a major life event impacting living conditions and wellbeing. Using longitudinal data, this study investigates immediate and trend impacts of chronic disease onset on life satisfaction and health satisfaction. It further examines, whether healthcare access buffers the immediate wellbeing reduction after disease onset.Methods: Data were...

Learn to use the SOEP over Lunch

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 wellbeing, 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...