Research

Work in progress

• Evaluating Tampon Tax Reforms using Transaction Based Scanner Data (Together with Klara Kinnl, ongoing work)

  • A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the European Parliament’s FEMM committee workshop on 08/12/2022.

  • In this project we evaluate the causal impact of various tax reductions for mentrual hygiene products on prices as well as quantities purchased. We find close to full pass-through but muted effects on quantities purchased.

  • We find that the tax reduction translates into prices dynamically over a period of at least 12 months.

• Big-tech M&A, Venture Capital and Innovation (Together with Klaus Gugler and Florian Szücs, ongoing work)

  • Lastes version available here
  • We investigate the effects of large technology acquisitions on venture capital investment and innovation in relevant markets covering the universe of all Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft acquisitions. We find strong negative effects on venture capital investment but heterogeneous effects on innovation.

• A Practitioner’s Guide to using Natural Language Processing for Digital Market Delineation (Together with Klaus Gugler and Florian Szücs, ongoing work)

  • In this project we provide antitrust practitioners with pratically relevant guidelines for using text data and natural language processing (NLP) tools in antitrust analysis in general and for (digital) market delineation in particular. This topic is distinctly relevant for nascent technology markets as data for conventional market definition, such as SSNIP tests, is typically not available in such markets. We provide a general overview of NLP concepts and briefly discuss strengths and weaknesses. We show in an empirical exercise that NLP methods can be helpful in delineating nascent digital markets.