Superstars in Two-Sided Markets: Exclusives or Not?
In a recent CESifo Working Paper, Elias Carroni, Leonardo Madio, and Shiva Shekhar studied incentives for a premium provider (superstar) to offer exclusive contracts to competing platforms facilitating the interactions between consumers and firms. The results of this analysis highlight several implications for managers and policymakers operating in digital and traditional markets. A summary and the full version of this interesting working paper are available on our website.
Other CESifo Working Papers
Working Paper Submission Form
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Chinese Acquisitions Abroad: Are They Different?
Cross-border company acquisitions by Chinese companies differ from those made by companies in other countries. Chinese investors buy larger companies with higher debt levels and lower profitability. The prices paid by Chinese investors in these transactions are lower than what other investors pay. These are the results of an analysis by a research group led by ifo President Clemens Fuest.
More from and about Clemens Fuest
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 How to Revive Productivity Growth?
Providing financial incentives for companies to invest in productivity-enhancing technologies and practices is the key to productivity growth, according to policy report 13. Substantial investments should also be made in training and workforce skills to exploit the productivity potential of new business models in the digital economy. Competition policy, although not directly related to productivity, is also emerging as an important tool to shape incentives and foster the efficient allocation of resources both across and within sectors and firms. This report analyses the recent trends in labor and total factor productivity in the EU and beyond and identifies factors that influence productivity.
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Government Debt in Times of Low Interest Rates: The Case of Europe
This paper discusses to what extent the declining difference between interest rates and growth rates (r-g) pointed out recently by Olivier Blanchard (2019) for the case of the US also characterizes the economic situation in Europe. It shows that r-g has been positive on average but declining over recent decades in Europe as well. But r-g differs across considerably across European countries, and a continuation of current fiscal policies even under existing conditions would increase the debt ratios further in some countries. This policy brief concludes that the current low levels of r-g should be used to make progress in fiscal consolidation in countries with high debt levels. At the same time, it would be desirable to benefit from the currently low interest rates to boost one-time investment projects.
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Significant Cooling of the Economy – Political Risks High
Germany’s leading economics research institutes have revised their forecasts for economic growth in 2019 significantly downward. They expect Germany’s gross domestic product to increase by 0.8%. This is more than one percentage point less than in autumn 2018, when the forecast was still for 1.9% growth. By contrast, the institutes confirm their previous forecast for the year 2020: gross domestic product is expected to increase by 1.8%. These are the results of the Joint Economic Forecast for spring 2019.
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Sebastian Wichert Receives the Science Award of the German Health Economics Association
Sebastian Wichert, economist at the ifo Center for Industrial Organization and New Technologies and the LMU-ifo Economics & Business Data Center, was awarded the science award of the German Health Economics Association (dggö) for his article "Is it good to be too light? Birth weight thresholds in hospital reimbursement systems." The dggö awards this prize for the best publication in health economics of the year (2018). The article is a joint work with Simon Reif, FAU Nuremberg-Erlangen, and Amelie Wuppermann, MLU Halle-Wittenberg, and was published in the Journal of Health Economics.
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Eurozone Economic Outlook: Eurozone GDP Growth Remains Sluggish
GDP growth is expected to remain weak over the forecast horizon with the lowest growth rate in the first quarter driven by the positive contribution of internal demand, with similar growth rates for consumption and investment. Annual headline inflation is less dynamic in 2019 than in the preceding year, mainly due to lower energy prices. The outlook is subject to mostly downside risks such as an escalation of trade conflicts and a hard Brexit. These are the results of the Eurozone Economic Outlook for April 2019.
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ifo Business Climate Index Falls
The mood among German managers became slightly gloomier this month. The ifo Business Climate Index fell from 99.7 points (seasonally adjusted) in March to 99.2 points in April. Companies are less satisfied with their current business situation. March’s gentle optimism regarding the coming months has evaporated. The German economy continues to lose steam.
Other Economic Indicators:
ifo Employment Barometer
ifo Export Expectations
ifo World Economic Survey
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CESifo Forum 1/2019: The US-China Trade War
The latest issue of CESifo Forum deals with the trade war between the USA and China. The articles discuss the economic effects of this development and suggests ways out of the sometimes muddled situation.
Other Publications of Interest:
CESifo Working Papers
CESifo Forum
ifo DICE Report
ifo World Economic Survey
CESifo Economic Studies
Economic Policy
 EconPol Publications
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Guests
CESifo is hosting guest researchers from Canada, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA in May 2019. Learn a bit about what they are working on, and about who they are:
Libertad González, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, will be visiting CESifo 5 May to 12 May 2019.
Andreas Marcel Oestreich, Brock University, will be visiting CESifo 6 May to 19 May 2019.
Jan Bietenbeck, Lund University, will be visiting CESifo 13 May to 24 May 2019.
Michael Kaganovich, Indiana University, will be visiting CESifo 21 May to 01 June 2019.
Sascha O. Becker, The University of Warwick, will be visiting CESifo 27 May to 29 May 2019.
Gordon B. Dahl, University of California, San Diego, will be visiting CES 1 April to 31 May 2019.
Antonella Nocco, University of Salento, will be visiting CES 14 April to 13 May 2019.
Peter Grajzl, Washington and Lee University, will be visiting CES 3 May to 22 May 2019.
Michael Reiter, Institute for Advanced Studies, will be visiting CES 5 May to 17 May 2019.
Almut Balleer, RWTH Aachen University, will be visiting CES 13 May to 7 June 2019.
Woan Foong Wong, University of Oregon, will be visiting CES 13 May to 30 June 2019.
Mark Colas, University of Oregon, will be visiting CES 13 May to 30 June 2019.
Sinan Sarpca, Koc University, will be visiting CES 24 May to 21 June 2019.
Peter Egger, ETH Zurich, will be visiting CES 25 May to 7 June 2019.
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Call for Papers: AASLE 2019
The annual Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE) Conference will take place in Singapore on December 12–14 this year. In its third instalment, it gives us great pleasure to host the conference and bring labor economists and key policy stakeholders together to share research, methodologies, and applications. We are currently inviting submissions on any topic related to labor and applied economics with a deadline of June 30, 2019.
Over the course of three days, there will be an exciting selection of keynote speakers, parallel sessions covering academic research on various topics in labor economics, and opportunities to network with experts from various institutions. Professors David Autor (MIT) and Hilary Hoynes (UC Berkeley) have both agreed to be keynote speakers. The speakers for the invited sessions are Jerome Adda (Bocconi University), Seema Jayachandran (Northwestern University), Basit Zafar (Arizona State University), and Yves Zenou (Monash University).
The details of the conference, including the link for paper submissions, are available on the conference website. Let us know if you would like us to send a hardcopy of the poster to any particular addresses by emailing contact@aasle.org.
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Call for Papers: Antitrust in the Digital Economy
We invite submissions to a special issue of Information Economics and Policy on antitrust in the digital economy.
The spread of digitalization has had many disparate effects on the competitiveness of markets. On the one hand, costs of entry have fallen in many industries, giving rise to unprecedented fragmentation. On the other hand, platforms operating with various degrees of network effects have created substantial concentration in other areas. Antitrust agencies around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about the potential market power of large platforms that provide digital content and services. Furthermore, digitalization has given rise to whole set of new antitrust issues, including the competitive effects arising from big data, algorithmic pricing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Moreover, digitalization has renewed longstanding interest in traditional antitrust issues such as price discrimination, MFNs and price-parity clauses, and monopoly leveraging.
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Professorship at Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
The Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano seeks to appoint a Full or Associate Professor in Economics. The candidate should hold a PhD in Economics, an excellent record of international scientific publications and an excellent record of teaching. All fields of economics will be considered. This is a tenured full-time position with a teaching load of 120 hours/year. Deadline for expressions of interest is June 17, 2019. More information is available here.
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PhD in Management and Economics at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
The 4-year full-time PhD program at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano combines methodological and theoretical courses with additional individualized training as recommended by the supervisor depending on the specific research interests and objectives of the PhD student. Topic-specific individual tutoring and mentoring, as well as funding for research stays abroad are among the special components of our program. Several scholarships are available. Application deadline is July 8, 2019. More information is available here.
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For new postings on the Bulletin Board, please contact us at services@cesifo.de.
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