Timing,order and durability of new product advantages with imitation

This research examined the effects of timing, order and the durability of first mover advantages by analyzing the stock market reactions to new product introductions and imitations. The major findings are that both timing and order of moves are important and that rival reactions undermine the durability of first mover advantages. More specifically, (1) early and fast movers achieve greater gains than late and slow movers, and (2) first movers suffer at the time of new product imitations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An economy with personal currency: theory and experimental evidence

Is personal currency issued by participants sufficient to operate an economy efficiently, with no outside or government money? Sahi and Yao (in J Math Econ, 1989) and Sorin (in J Econ Theory, 1996) constructed a strategic market game to prove that this is possible. We conduct an experimental game in which each agent issues his/her personal IOUs, and a costless efficient clearinghouse adjusts the exchange rates among them so the markets always clear. The results suggest that if the information system and clearing are so good as to preclude moral hazard, any form of information asymmetry, and need for trust, the economy operates efficiently at any price level without government money. These conditions cannot reasonably be expected to hold in natural settings. In a second set of treatments when agents have the option of not delivering on their promises, a high enough penalty for non-delivery is necessary to ensure an efficient market; a lower penalty leads to inefficient, even collapsing, markets due to moral hazard.     

Experimental asset markets with endogenous choice of costly asymmetric information

Asymmetric distribution of information, while omnipresent in real markets, is rarely considered in experimental financial markets. We present results from experiments where subjects endogenously choose between five information levels (four of them costly). We find that (i) uninformed traders earn the highest net returns, while average informed traders always perform worst even when information costs are not considered; (ii) over time traders learn to pick the most advantageous information levels (full information or no information); and (iii) market efficiency decreases with higher information costs. These results are mostly in line with the theoretical predictions of Grossman and Stiglitz (Am. Econ. Rev. 70:393–408, 1980) and provide additional insights that studies with only two information levels cannot deliver.     

What drives our Beer Consumption?---In Search of Nutrition Habits and Demographic Patterns

Conventional wisdom in Germany claims pork hocks with sauerkraut and beer. But is it really that simple? In an unbalanced cross-country panel covering 169 nations and time-series records of up to 52 years, we analyse drivers behind beer consumption. Based on data gathered from Worldbank and Faostat, we run multivariate panel regressions and test for the explanatory power of three categories of food and six macroeconomic and demographic variables. Indeed, we confirm most clichés of a typical beer drinker being a middle-aged urbanite with a strong desire for pork and potatoes, however, disliking cheese and wine.     

Glasfaserausbau: Das wirtschaftspolitisch Heikelste kommt noch!

Economic growth is greatly influenced by digital transformation. One condition is powerful high-capacity broadband connectivity based on fiber optic cables. A large part of German network infrastructure is still based on fiberglass. However, there is still a bottleneck: the “last mile”, which consists of copper wire leading to the end user. At this point the data flow is highly decelerated so that applications which require gigabit connectivity will not be possible. It is questionable whether continuing economic competition among network providers will remove this remaining bottleneck. Going forward the government should not trepidate any longer in closing the gap. As in physical infrastructure such as roads and bridges, the maintenance and upgrading of digital infrastructure is its economic responsibility, too.