A non-trivial fraction of people cannot afford to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated market prices. Therefore, the paper analyzes the public insurance of the pharmaceutical products in terms of price controls and the socially optimal third-degree price discrimination. It characterizes...

Fuel prices are commonly perceived to be excessively high, which regularly triggers political discussions about fuel price regulations. Consumers demand stricter fuel price regulations to provide transparency about the current price level and to protect them from sudden price fluctuations. Such...

Fuel prices are commonly perceived to be excessively high, which regularly triggers political discussions about fuel price regulations. Consumers demand stricter fuel price regulations to provide transparency about the current price level and to protect them from sudden price fluctuations. Such...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

After controversial public debates, fuel price regulations were implemented in Austria prohibiting fuel retailers from raising their prices more than once per day. This paper investigates whether these policy measures affected the price transmission dynamics from crude oil prices to retail fuel...

Standards often require the use of patented technologies. Holders of standard-essential patents (SEPs) typically commit to make their patents available on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms. National competition authorities increasingly intervene against perceived FRAND...

In 2005 the EU lowered the guaranteed minimum prices for crops in its Common Agricultural Policy and stopped market interventions. Consequently, prices started to fluctuate more intensively, and farmers' incomes are now subject to higher price volatility. A crop price insurance scheme could...

We take advantage of a natural experiment to document an emergence of a new price ending that has the same effects as 9-endings. In January 2014, the Israeli parliament has passed a law prohibiting the use of non 0-ending prices. We find that one year after 9-ending prices have disappeared,...

We take advantage of a natural experiment to document an emergence of a new price ending that has the same effects as 9-endings. In January 2014, the Israeli parliament has passed a law prohibiting the use of non 0-ending prices. We find that one year after 9-ending prices have disappeared,...

A non-trivial fraction of people cannot afford to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated market prices. Therefore, the paper analyzes the public insurance of the pharmaceutical products in terms of price controls and the socially optimal third-degree price discrimination. It characterizes...

The factor X in the RPI-X regulation aims to adjust price or revenue allowances to changes in total factor productivity and input prices. A cost Malmquist index can be applied to determine the efficient cost change (ECC). However, regulators typically do not have the necessary data on input...

The factor X in the RPI-X regulation aims to adjust price or revenue allowances to changes in total factor productivity and input prices. A cost Malmquist index can be applied to determine the efficient cost change (ECC). However, regulators typically do not have the necessary data on input...

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a...

Renewable energy (RE) policies are widely used to decarbonize power generation and implemented at various governance levels. We use an analytically tractable two-level model to study the effects of overlapping RE policies from the federal and state governments. We find that there are contrasting...

This study follows from the recent move by most developing economies to introduce price support programs for selected cereals. For Ethiopia, we examine the price, quantity, welfare and government intervention effects of alternative producer and consumer price policies backed-up by public cereal...

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a...

In this paper, we explore the impact of a housing rent inflation cap of 4 per cent on price changes for tenancy contracts. We assess the implications of the regulations on the share of the market experiencing: 1) a price decline; 2) unchanged rents (nominal rigidity); 3) a positive growth rate...

In this paper, I study the effect of parallel trade (cross border resale of goods without the authorization of the manufacturer) on pharmaceutical regulation in a North-South framework with a firm's endogenous decision to export to the South. Governments in both countries may limit prices...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

After controversial public debates, fuel price regulations were implemented in Austria prohibiting fuel retailers from raising their prices more than once per day. This paper investigates whether these policy measures affected the price transmission dynamics from crude oil prices to retail fuel...

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This...

Feed-in tariffs are a widespread policy instrument to support the diffusion of renewable energy technologies. I investigate the impact of the size-based differentiation of these tariffs on the adoption of residential scale solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in Germany. Exploiting a policy...

In this work, we address the problem of simultaneously determining a pricing and inventory replenishment strategy under reference price effects. This reference price effect models the fact that consumers not only react sensitively to the current price, but also to deviations from a reference...

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This...

Energy Price Reform in ChinaThe Chinese leadership has determined to assign the market a decisive role in allocating resources. To have the market to play that role, getting the energy prices right is crucial because this sends clear signals to both producers and consumers of energy. While the...

We analyze the extent to which sales prices for residential housing react to rent-price regulation. To this end, we exploit changes in apartment prices across the regulation treatment threshold. We examine a quasi-natural design in the German federal state of Brandenburg using transaction price...

We experimentally examine the effects of drip pricing on seller strategies and buyer behavior as well as the implications for regulation. Sellers set two prices: a base price and a drip price. At first, buyers only observe the base prices and make a tentative purchase decision. Revealing the...