This study analyzes the exchange rate pass-through into German import prices based on disaggregated data taken on a monthly basis between 1995 and 2012. Our main contribution is twofold: firstly, we employ various time-series techniques to analyze data for different product categories, and also...

Given various recent antitrust investigations on the retail sector, we deal with uncovering demand systems substitution patterns for a particular market (diapers) to investigate the inter-format competition (supermarkets vs. discounters vs. drugstores). Using the uncovered demand system we...

This paper examines field experiment in which we encourage the use of computer-based tests (quizzes) through a set of non-financial incentives and test their effect on effort and performance of students. Our identification strategy exploits cross-cohort experimental variation in assessment rules...

We study decision rules for committees that repeatedly take a binary decision. Committee members are privately informed about their payoffs and monetary transfers are not feasible. In static environments, the only strategy-proof mechanisms are voting rules which are criticized for being...

In the academic literature, the economic interpretation of stock market volatility is inherently ambivalent, being considered an indicator of either information flow or uncertainty. We show in a stylized model economy that both views suggest volatility-dependent cross-market spillovers. If...

We investigate the role of competition on the outcome of Austrian Treasury auctions. EU accession by Austria provides a natural experiment causing an exogenous increase in the number of bidders in Treasury Auctions. Difference-in-difference estimates suggest that the increased number in bidders...

We integrate systemic financial instability in an empirical macroeconomic model for the euro area. We find that at times of widespread financial instability the macroeconomy functions fundamentally differently from tranquil times. We employ a richly specified Markov-Switching...

This paper examines the impact of implicit guarantees and capital regulations on the behavior of a bank and on the expected losses for its depositors. I show that implicit guarantees increase the incentives of the bank to enhance leverage and/or risk taking and that this leads to higher expected...

We argue that entrepreneurial choice proceeds in at least two steps, with vocational choice nearly always preceding choice of employment status, whether that be self-employment or dependent employment. Since the two decisions are interrelated, analysis of entrepreneurial choice as a single act...

This paper develops a fairly general model of platform competition in media markets allowing viewers to use multiple platforms. This leads to a new form of competition between platforms, in which they do not steal viewers from each other, but affect the viewer composition and thereby the...