Dokument: Three Empirical Essays on Consumer Behavior and Competition
| Titel: | Three Empirical Essays on Consumer Behavior and Competition | |||||||
| URL für Lesezeichen: | https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=56369 | |||||||
| URN (NBN): | urn:nbn:de:hbz:061-20210527-101006-7 | |||||||
| Kollektion: | Dissertationen | |||||||
| Sprache: | Englisch | |||||||
| Dokumententyp: | Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten » Dissertation | |||||||
| Medientyp: | Text | |||||||
| Autor: | Wellmann, Nicolas [Autor] | |||||||
| Dateien: |
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| Beitragende: | Prof. Dr. Haucap, Justus [Gutachter] Prof. Dr. Heimeshoff, Ulrich [Gutachter] | |||||||
| Stichwörter: | competition policy, mobile telecommunication, OTT-messenger, market definition, substitution behavior, market structure, mobile network quality, automobile traffic, negative externalities, willingness to pay, economic policy | |||||||
| Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation: | 300 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie » 330 Wirtschaft | |||||||
| Beschreibung: | How does consumption of one product affect the consumption of another? Is the demand relationship between these two products complementary or are they substitutes and compete in a joint market? What are consumers willing to pay for certain product features and how to quantify negative externalities from their consumption? How do parameters of market structure like the market concentration or the entry position affect the quality of products? This thesis covers these relevant questions in economics and specifically industrial organization in three empirical essays. These essays contribute to the existing literature on various levels: First, their analysis makes use of rich datasets with very detailed information on different variables. Second, their empirical strategy is based on novel approaches to address challenges in the empirical estimation. Finally, their research questions cover current topics which are relevant beyond the academical debate. Consequently, the results of their analyses hold important policy implications for decision makers in regulation authorities, firms and politics.
The second chapter is titled “Are OTT Messaging and Mobile Telecommunication an Interrelated Market? An Empirical Analysis” and is published in Telecommunication Policy. It covers OTT messengers such as Facebook and WhatsApp which have gained wide popularity among mobile users while the traffic of text messaging is in strong decline. As such, there is a debate over whether both services are interrelated and constitute a joint product market, which has important implications for the current wave of mergers in the mobile industry and regulation policy. To the best of my knowledge, this work is the first to provide an empirical analysis of how the consumption of OTT messengers affects demand for text messaging and mobile voice services. It makes use of an innovative dataset which includes very detailed information on smartphone usage in Norway and considers a novel approach to address this question which is embedded in the complexity of two-sided markets. Interestingly, my findings suggest that OTT messengers complement demand for traditional mobile telecommunication services for this context. Consequently, from the perspective of competition policy in Norway both markets are interrelated but do not constitute a joint market. Moreover, I find an explanation for why reductions of text messaging usage have been so drastic in some countries and an analogous development for mobile voice is rather unlikely. Finally, the empirical results provide a new perspective on the modeling of consumer utility in communication networks in the theoretical literature. The third chapter is titled “What Would Households Pay for a Reduction of Automobile Traffic? Evidence From Nine German Cities”. Air pollution, accidents, traffic jams - automobiles face in cities increasing skepticism and their future role in transportation is intensely discussed between residents and politicians. This paper quantifies the marginal and non-marginal willingness to pay for a reduction of automobile traffic. By using a new structural approach in a hedonic framework by Bishop and Timmins (2019) we are able to avoid common issues in hedonic studies using instrumental variables. Our analysis is based on data from nine large cities in Germany between 2016 and 2019 and includes 533,402 detailed observations at the apartment level as well as for various points of interest. To the best of our knowledge this is the first paper to conduct this analysis for Germany. We estimate that the non-marginal willingness to pay for a reduction of traffic per household and year ranges by city between €30.3–59.2 for a 10% reduction, €93.8–158.3 for a 20% reduction and €190.6–252 for a 30% reduction. The highest non-marginal willingness to pay for a reduction of traffic is observed in Frankfurt am Main, the lowest in Leipzig. Further, we compute the expected gains for a reduction of traffic at the city level. In addition to the non-marginal willingness to pay for a reduction of traffic, this considers the composition of the road network as well as for the number of households. Accordingly, these expected gains amount to €163,970–1,019,454€ for a 10% reduction, €484,023–3,261,837 for a 20% reduction, and €1,018,240–6,727,148 for a 30% reduction. The highest expected gains for a reduction of traffic is observed in Munich, the lowest in Leipzig. The fourth chapter is titled “Market Structure and Mobile Network Quality - An Empirical Analysis”. What drives network quality in mobile markets? For the ongoing and upcoming auctioning of 5G spectrum this is an important question. Recent findings in the literature suggest that a higher market concentration may actually raise investments into mobile networks. To the best of my knowledge this paper is among the first to analyze how the market structure affects mobile network quality. The analysis is based on quarterly data from 49 mobile network operators (MNO) from 14 European countries between 2011 and 2016. This makes use of different quality measures which are calculated based on 500 million measurements of mobile network quality. My results indicate that a reduction in market players may potentially increase mobile network quality at the firm and at the market level. Furthermore, late entrants seem to provide a higher share of 3G and 4G connections and connections with different minimum speeds than market incumbents. Market incumbents seem to provide higher maximum speeds instead. | |||||||
| Lizenz: |  Urheberrechtsschutz | |||||||
| Fachbereich / Einrichtung: | Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät » Volkswirtschaftslehre | |||||||
| Dokument erstellt am: | 27.05.2021 | |||||||
| Dateien geändert am: | 27.05.2021 | |||||||
| Promotionsantrag am: | 01.09.2020 | |||||||
| Datum der Promotion: | 17.12.2020 |
