In German mobile phone contracts, calls in the provider's home net are usually less expensive than external calls (to the network of a competitor). Thus customers have to compare vectors of prices, and such a comparison can be the source of a fallacy in the presence of network externalities....

We present laboratory experiments of five different multi-unit auction mechanisms. Two units of a homogeneous object were auctioned off among two bidders with flat demand for two units. We test whether expected demand reduction occurs in open and sealed-bid uniform-price auctions. We also test...

This article studies the design of optimal mechanisms to regulate entry in natural oligopoly markets, assuming the regulator is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market. We adapt the Clark-Groves mechanism, characterize the optimal mechanism that maximizes the weighted...

In the wake of the Enron and Worldcom financial scandals that rocked Wall Street in 2002, the US government’s financial regulatory body, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) took the unprecedented step in June 2002 of requiring that the chief executives and chief financial officers of...

In this paper we propose a three–level computational equilibrium model that allows to analyze the impact of the regulatory environment on transmission line expansion (by the regulator) and investment in generation capacity (by private firms) in liberalized electricity markets. The basic...

Handlungsempfehlungen (deutsch): Gegenseitigkeit und Vertrauen können in verschiedener Weise den Abschluss internationaler Klimaschutzvereinbarungen fördern: 1. Klimapolitische Instrumente sollten derart gestaltet werden, dass sie mit dem Prinzip der Gegenseitigkeit („Reziprozität“)...

The launch of a public project requires “enough” support from a group of n players. If players have only binary decision sets (participate or not, vote approvingly or not) this game is called a Binary Threshold Public Goods game (BTPG). In this paper we keep the individual cost/benefit...

In a laboratory experiment groups of four played a 15-period Public Good game. Each period a player could either invest in a green sector or in a more profitable but polluting brown sector. The pollutant accumulated and decreased the players’ income in all following periods. We conducted...