The tremendous growth of digital transactions – mainly through online platforms - is profoundly affecting the way we interact and opening vast opportunities to improve our lives. Consumers are benefiting from an unprecedented proliferation of new services and products that previously were too costly to be developed and marketed to customers. At the same time, the characteristics of platform...
We investigate patterns in common ownership networks between firms that are active in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry for the period 2004–2014. Our main findings are that “brand firms”—that is, firms that have research and development capabilities and launch new drugs—exhibit relatively dense common ownership networks with each other that further increase significantly in density over time, whereas ...
The European Commission is facing the challenge and opportunity of implementing the Green Deal while simultaneously initiating the recovery of the economy following the coronavirus crisis. Investments in the basic materials industry’s transition to climate neutrality play a central role in this, as the sector is responsible for 16 percent of the EU’s CO2 emissions and is key to downstream value chains. ...
Employment agencies aim to match individuals to appropriate jobs. There are public and private employment agencies, which co-exist in many countries. Selection effects may be relevant in the sense that private agencies potentially engage in ‘cream-skimming’ by prioritizing highly qualified workers. The resulting job match quality is also important from an individual, a firm, and a society perspective. ...
The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important role for the formation and stability of cartels. We extend these studies through a design that distinguishes between innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant in the role of the competition authority, ...
We provide an evaluation of the impact of public subsidy schemes that aimed to support the development of basic broadband infrastructure in rural areas of Germany. Such subsidies are subject to state aid control by the European Commission (EC). While the EC increasingly recognises the role of economic analysis in controlling public aid to companies, there are to date no full retrospective studies performed ...
An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level while firm level revenues are a poor indicator of product sales. We use a novel database that identifies over ...