Topic Markets

Perspectives of the European Natural Gas Markets until 2025

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic several-layer model of European natural gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall ...

Mergers in Imperfectly Segmented Markets

We present a model with firms selling (homogeneous) products in two imperfectly segmented markets (a "high-demand" and a "low-demand" market). Buyers are mobile but restricted by transportation costs, so that imperfect arbitrage occurs when prices differ in both markets. We show that equilibria are distorted away from Cournot outcomes to prevent consumer arbitrage. Furthermore, a merger can lead to ...

Quality Standards for Fruits and Vegetables: Help or Hindrance for Rural Development?

Horticulture has developed into one of the most dynamic agricultural sectors in the world. The cultivation of fruits and vegetables has significant potential for increasing agricultural income and reducing rural poverty, particularly in developing and emerging countries. However, it appears that the growing consolidation in the retail sector has shifted power relations along the value-added chain away ...

Corporate Espionage

We consider a multimarket framework where a set of firms compete on two interrelated oligopolistic markets. Prior to competing in these markets, firms can spy on others in order to increase the quality of their product. We characterize the equilibrium espionage networks and networks that maximize social welfare under the most interesting scenario of diseconomies of scope. We find that in some situations ...

Liquidity and Asset Prices: How Strong Are the Linkages?

The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the rise in liquidity in recent years has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets. If strong linkages exist, the inclusion of asset prices in the monetary policy rule can eventually limit speculative runs and negative effects ...

Monetary Policy Transmission and House Prices: European Cross Country Evidence

This paper explores the importance of housing and mortgage market heterogeneity in 13 European countries for the transmission of monetary policy. We use a pooled VAR model which is estimated over the period 1995-2006 to generate impulse responses of key macroeconomic variables to a monetary policy shock. We split our sample of countries into two disjoint groups according to the impact of the monetary ...

Mortgage Market Maturity and Homeownership Inequality among Young Households: A Five-Country Perspective

This paper uses the newly constructed Luxembourg Wealth Study data to document cross-country variation in homeownership rates and the homeownership-income inequality among young households in Finland, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US, and relate it to cross-country differences in mortgage market maturity. We find that aside from Italy, homeownership rates and inequality in the four countries correspond ...

Green, Brown, and Now White Certificates: Are Three One Too Many? A Micromodel of Market Interaction

Our paper deals with modeling the effects of introducing a market-based tool for improving end-users' efficiency in an energy market which is already regulated through a cap-and-trade system for green house gas emissions and a quota system meant to improve competitiveness of energy produced using renewable resources. Our results show that the regulation of energy demand achieves its underlying objects ...

Perspectives of the European Natural Gas Markets until 2025

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic severallayer model of European gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European country (or region), and final demand. Our model results suggest rather modest changes in the overall supply situation ...

Market Integration and the Competitive Effects of Mergers