Topic Competition and Regulation

How Communication Makes the Difference between a Cartel and Tacit Collusion: A Machine Learning Approach

This paper sheds new light on the role of communication for cartel formation. Using machine learning to evaluate free-form chat communication among firms in a laboratory experiment, we identify typical communication patterns for both explicit cartel formation and indirect attempts to collude tacitly. We document that firms are less likely to communicate explicitly about price fixing and more likely ...

Government Ownership and Competition: Evidence from the European Airline Industry following the COVID-19-Pandemic

This paper empirically analyses the impact of government ownership on competition. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent governmental equity interventions in the European airline industry provides for a particularly ideal setting to investigate this topic, and this for several reasons. First, airline markets and competition therein are well-defined and well-understood. Second, European countries...

8th BCCP Forum

Leibniz ScienceCampusBerlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) Forum The Forum will bring together all BCCP fellows in law and economics who are engaged in the activities of the science campus. We will have the opportunity to learn about each other’s research during short presentations by the different partner institutions followed by open discussion. The objective of the meeting is to encourage...

The Emission Intensity Effect: Carbon Border Adjustments in the Presence of Heterogeneous Firms

In the absence of globally coordinated action to combat climate change, governments are concerned that ambitious carbon pricing could harm the competitiveness of emission-intensive industries. A prominent measure to prevent that manufacturing producers relocate to countries with laxer environmental regulation are carbon border adjustments often referred to as carbon tariffs. Several studies have...

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...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Role of Institutions for High Growth Firms in European Regions

High growth firms are high on the policy agenda as empirical evidence consistently shows that they disproportionately contribute to economic growth via net job creation. Several innovation scholars analyze how high growth entrepreneurship responds to the local enabling environment, such as institutional and framework conditions. However, the majority of these studies look at the role of formal...

The 13th Berlin IO Day

The Berlin IO Day is a one-day workshop sponsored by the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) and supported by the Berlin's leading academic institutions, including DIW Berlin, ESMT Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin. The aim is to create an international forum for high quality research in Industrial Organization in the heart...

Private Monopoly and Restricted Entry - Evidence from the Notary Profession

Sponsored Search: How Platforms Exacerbate Product Market Concentration

How does online advertising affect consumer behaviour, product pricing and competition? To analyse this, I develop a theory of digital markets where an intermediary provides a platform for firms to advertise their product and where consumers need to engage in costly search if they want to learn about the product characteristics. First, I show that when prices are observable...

GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps

Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app market. Comparing long-run equilibria with and without GDPR, we find that GDPR reduces consumer surplus and...