It is increasingly observable that in different industries competitors jointly acquire and share customer data. We propose a modified Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such agreements and their welfare implications. In our model the incentives of firms for data acquisition and sharing depend on the willingness of consumers to switch brands. Firms ...
In this study, we suggest an explanation for the low growth rates of real housing prices in Canada and Germany in comparison to other OECD countries over the period 1975-2005. We show that the long-run development of housing markets is determined by real disposable percapita income, the real long-term interest rate, population growth, and urbanization. The differential development of real housing prices ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
In this paper, we discuss potential developments of the world natural gas industry at the horizon of 2030. We use the World Gas Model (WGM), a dynamic, strategic representation of world natural gas production, trade, and consumption between 2005 and 2030. We specify a "base case" which defines the business-as-usual assumptions based on forecasts of the world energy markets. We then analyze the sensitivity ...
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 ...
Homeownership rates are very different across European countries. They range from below 50% in Germany to over 80% in Greece, Spain or Ireland. However the differences lie not only in the overall homeownership rates but also in its structure, and this is the focus of this paper. Its aim is to study the impact of microeconomic factors on household's tenure choice, using a cross-country comparative approach. ...