Newspaper Articles

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) 

• Nachhaltige Landwirtschaft nicht durch Mindestpreise im Einzelhandel 

• English: Minimum retail prices for agricultural products do not increase sustainability

Summary: Like his predecessors, Germany's Agriculture Minister (Cem Özdemir) announced the desire to implement minimum retail prices. The proclaimed reason for this is to increase profits for farmers and increase sustainability. In this guest essay, I use simple economic reasoning to argue why minimum retail prices do not increase farm profits nor lead to sustainability. I then provide four policy instruments to fix the problem where it occurs: at the production level.

Blogs

Kluwer Competition Law Blog: 

• A Bad Apple in the Based. Market Power in Digital Markets illustrated by the Apple-Epic Case

•  Critical acclaim by Olaf Deininger from Agrarzeitung: Konventionelle Lebensmittel müssen teurer, ökologische billiger werden, 

Summary: Using a simple example around the Epic-Apple case, I explain why the EU Digital Market Act is urgently needed to fix competition problems in app markets. Market frictions arise from two types of lock-in effects: (i) locked-in by money because we need to buy a new phone to have choices from Google's Playstore and Apple's Appstore and (ii) locked-in by convenience because we either use Apple's/Google's one-click payment system or we click several times to buy the same item at a cheaper price. I then derive lessons learned for the US: Recent court decisions fail to acknowledge Apple's and Google's monopoly power from those lock-in effects.

Policy Papers 

Die Bestimmung von Nachfragemacht im Lebensmitteleinzelhandel: Theoretische Grundlagen und empirischer Nachweis,  with Justus Haucap, Ulrich Heimeshoff, Gordon J. Klein & Christian Wey, Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb, 64 (10), 2014

• English title: Determination of Buyer Power in Grocery Retailing: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Assessment

• Cited in "Final Report of the Sector Inquiry into the food retail sector" by the German Cartel Office in 2014 (Bundeskartellamt:  "Sektoruntersuchung Nachfragemacht im Lebensmitteleinzelhandel")

Wettbewerbsprobleme im Lebensmitteleinzelhandel, with Justus Haucap, Ulrich Heimeshoff, Gordon J. Klein & Christian Wey, in Schriften des Vereins für Socialpolitik, P. Oberender (ed.), Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2014, 11-38.

• English title: Competition (Problems) in Food Retailing

Policy Briefs 

Private Labels and Inter-Format Competition in Grocery Retail Markets DICE Policy Brief, No. 1, Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (2013), p. 5