WHU – Working Paper Series in Economics
ISSN 2511-1159
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WP 08/01
Linear demand formulations for price competition in horizontally differentiated products are sometimes used to compare situations where additional varieties become available, e.g. due to market entry of new firms. We derive a consistent demand system to analyze such situations and highlight potential problems that can arise from an inconsistent approach.
WP 08/02
Inflation targeting matters!
(2008)
Proponents of inflation targeting argue that such a strategy directly influences expectation formation processes in financial markets. This paper provides a novel test for the evidence that financial market expectations are formed differently under inflation targeting regimes. Using forecasts for the short-term interest rate, the inflation rate, and output growth for ten emerging markets in Latin-America, central and eastern Europe out of which six economies are inflation targeting economies we estimate expected Taylor-type rules. We find evidence for differences in the expectation formation process in the sense that the well-known Taylor principle fairly holds for countries which adopt an inflation targeting system, while for the other countries it does not.
WP 08/03
"Ex-ante" Taylor rules
(2008)
This paper addresses the question whether financial market participants apply the framework of Taylor-type rules in their forecasts for the G7 countries. Therefore, we use the Consensus Economic Forecast poll providing us a unique data set of inflation, interest and growth rate forecasts for the time period 1989 - 2007. We provide evidence that Taylor-type rules frameworks are present in forecasts of financial markets. Thus, the paper, uses ex-ante data for the estimation of Taylor rules. This is novel, since so far only ex-post (revised) or real-time data have been applied.
WP 08/04
The economic analysis of trade-secret protection has traditionally focused on the interests of companies to conceal information from competitors in order to gain a competitive advantage through trade-secret law. This has neglected cases in which the interest is not in concealing information from competitors, but from trading partners. We investigate the social efficiency effects of trade-secret protection in such cases. Many results from economic theory state that asymmetric information (and therefore also its legal protection) is socially undesirable since it leads to inefficient trade. At the same time, protecting private information might create incentives for socially desirable investments. We model this trade-off in a simple buyer-seller model and
nd that, indeed, trade-secret protection has ambiguous welfare effects. However, a simple, informationally undemanding rule, conditioning the applicability of legal protection on a minimum investment by the informed party to conceal the information, helps to apply trade-secret protection only when it increases welfare. This rationalizes important features of current legal practice.
WP 08/05
Airlines frequently use code-share agreements allowing each other to market seats on flights operated by partner airlines. Regulation may allow code-share agreements with antitrust immunity (cooperative price setting), or without antitrust immunity, or not at all. I compare relative welfare effects of these regulation regimes for complementary airline networks. A crucial point is that such agreements are used to identify and price discriminate interline passengers. I find that interline passengers always benefit from code-share agreements while non-interline passengers are worse off. Furthermore, I show that the second effect questions the overall usefulness of code-share agreements from a welfare perspective.
WP 09/01
WP 09/02
This paper analyzes the expectation formation process in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. We use the Consensus Economic Forecast poll and show that the forecasts are consistent with Taylor-type rules for three countries but not for Norway. This can be attributed to Norway's long period of an exchange rate targetor. Additionally, we provide evidence that the expected long-term inflation rate is consistent with both the actual average in ation rate and the inflation target for all countries. This implies that the professional forecasters understand the different monetary policy strategies among the four countries indicating that all central banks can be regarded as highly credible.
WP 09/03
We use the ECB's Survey of Professional Forecaster to show that euro area expectations are consistent with standard macroeconomic building blocks such as the Phillips curve, Okun's law, and the Taylor rule. Moreover, the paper finds that the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009 did not change the expectation formation process as professional forecasters still adopt macroeconomic building blocks for their forecast. The scepticism that has recently been raised concerning macroeconomic building blocks has apparently not yet affected professional forecasts. On the contrary, we conclude that professional forecasters still have faith in macroeconomic building blocks.
WP 09/04
We use oil price forecasts from the Consensus Economic Forecast poll to analyze how forecaster build their expectations. Our findings point into the direction that the extrapolative as well as the regressive expectation formation hypothesis play a role. Standard measures of forecast accuracy reveal forecasters' underperformance relative to the random-walk benchmark. However, it seems that this result might be biased due to peso problems.
WP 09/05
This paper considers a congested airport that provides aeronautical services to airlines and concessions to retailers or, respectively, car rental companies. It is shown that airport retailers exert downward pressure on the private aeronautical charge. On the other hand, the effect of car rentals on the private aeronautical charge is ambiguous. By contrast, the first-best airfare and aeronautical charge are independent of retail profits, while they are positively related to car rentals. Finally, the comparison of private and welfare-oriented airport behavior shows that private behavior can lead to the welfare-optimal outcome when commercial services exist.