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Price Guarantees, Consumer Search, and Hassle Costs

The paper deals with the competitive effects of price guarantees in a spatial duopoly where consumers can search for lower prices but have to incur hassle costs if they want to claim a price guarantee. It is shown that symmetric equilibria with and without price guarantees exist but price guarantees will have no effect on prices if search costs are low, hassle costs are high and the number of uninformed ...

From Boom to Bust? A Critical Look at US Shale Gas Projections

US shale gas production is generally expected to continue its fast rise. However, a cautious evaluation is needed. Shale gas resource estimates are potentially overoptimistic and it is uncertain to which extent they can be produced economically. Moreover, the adverse environmental effects of ever more wells to be drilled may lead to a fall in public acceptance and a strengthening of regulation. The ...

Why Do Emitters Trade Carbon Permits? Firm-Level Evidence from the European Emission Trading Scheme

The creation of the EU's Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has turned the right to emit CO2 into a positively priced intermediate good for the affected firms. Firms thus face the decision whether to source compliance with the EU ETS within their boundaries or to acquire it through the permit trade. However, a combination of internal abatement, free permit allocation and exibility to shift the use of ...

Targeted Pricing and Consumer Data Sharing among Rivals

The Welfare Impact of Parallel Imports: A Structural Approach Applied to the German Market for Oral Anti-Diabetics

We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel dataset containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 649 anti-diabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of demand, and on the basis of an oligopolistic model of multi-product firms, we then recover the marginal costs ...

Market Driven Power Plant Investment Perspectives in Europe: Climate Policy and Technology Scenarios until 2050 in the Model EMELIE-ESY

In the framework of the Energy Modeling Forum 28, we investigate how climate policy regimes affect market developments under different technology availabilities on the European power markets. We use the partial equilibrium model EMELIE-ESY with focus on electricity markets in order to determine how private investors optimize their generation capacity investment and operation over the horizon 2010 to ...

Supplier Fixed Costs and Retail Market Monopolization

Considering a vertical structure with perfectly competitive upstream firms that deliver a homogenous good to a differentiated retail duopoly, we show that upstream fixed costs may help to monopolize the downstream market. We find that downstream prices increase in upstream firms’ fixed costs when both intra- and interbrand competition exist. Our findings contradict the common wisdom that fixed costs ...

Municipal infrastructure companies against the background of energy policy and demographic change (KOMIED) – Empirical analyses using micro level data of the energy, water and waste sector

Municipal infrastructure firms are facing major challenges. On the one hand, they are operating under an increased pressure to reduce costs due to growing intensive competition and shifting regulatory processes. On the other hand, they have to fulfill new environmental requirements that result from new energy and climate policy objectives and demographic changes. Recent privatizations have not...

Why Do Emitters Trade Carbon Permits? Firm-Level Evidence from the European Emission Trading Scheme

The creation of the EU's Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has turned the right to emit CO2 into a positively priced intermediate good for the affected firms. Firms thus face the decision whether to source compliance with the EU ETS within their boundaries or to acquire it through the permit trade. However, a combination of internal abatement, free permit allocation and flexibility to shift the use ...

The EU ETS: Eight Years and Counting

This paper provides an introduction to the EU's Emissions Trading System. As such it provides a discussion of the historical and legal context in which the EU ETS developed and now operates, a presentation of the key performance indicators for the first eight years through the end of the second phase in 2012, and some concluding observations on the system's future. The paper is purposively descriptive ...