Verbraucherpolitik kann durch die Bereitstellung glaubwürdiger Informationen den Schutz der Verbraucher vor eigennützigem Verhalten der Unternehmen verbessern, durch den Abbau von Markteintrittsbarrieren die Funktionsfähigkeit des Wettbewerbs sichern und die Etablierung von Innovationen am...

The continuous decline of commercial agricultural areas accompanied by a trend toward larger farms has increased competition for a scarce production factor in Germany: land. From 2000 to 2013, the purchase prices of agricultural land increased by 80 percent, according to the German Federal...

The current discussion about deregulating the taxi market raises the fundamental question as to whether unregulated competition in this market can lead to efficient results or whether there are sound economic reasons for government intervention. In weighing up different theoretical arguments and...

A manufacturer contracting secretly with several downstream competitors faces an opportunism problem, preventing it from exerting its market power. In an infinitely repeated game, the opportunism problem can be relaxed. We show that the upstream firm's market power can be restored even further...

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...

During the last decades the face of retailing has changed as a result of an ongoing concentration process and the emergence of increasingly large-scale retail outlets. Retailers constitute, therefore, “strategic gatekeepers†to final consumer markets providing them with buyer power...

We explore the strategic role of private quality standards in food supply chains. Considering two symmetric retailers that are exclusively supplied by a finite number of producers and endogenizing the suppliers' delivery choice, we show that there exist two asymmetric equilibria in the...

During the last decades the face of retailing has changed as a result of an ongoing concentration process and the emergence of increasingly large-scale retail outlets. Retailers constitute, therefore, “strategic gatekeepers” to final consumer markets providing them with buyer power...