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During the Great Recession more than half of the total decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the US was, according to Berger and Vavra (2015), assigned to decreases in residential investment and new durable consumption goods. Further, residential investment had accounted for 58 percent and new durable consumption goods for 26.6 percent of GDP changes during recessions between 1960 and 2013. Since both are highly volatile, pro-cyclical, and weaken GDP in particular at the beginning of a recession, Leamer (2007) concludes, "Housing IS the business cycle". Residential structures and durable consumption goods are similar by nature; in contrast to most real assets, both are not input factors of production, but increase the consumer's utility directly. As a consequence, they are rather held by final consumers than firms, and thus, such assets are more private and serve a specific purpose. The similar internal and business cycle characteristics motivate the topics of the three essays in this thesis. These essays deal with puzzles and solution approaches or applications in differentiating between productive, market and utility augmenting, private assets inside Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models. DSGE models are a workhorse of modern business cycle research. In Chapter 2 and 3 the utility augmenting asset is the stock of houses, which is a composite of residential structures and land. In Chapter 4 this asset is represented by the stock of durable consumption goods. While the field of housing and the business cycle was a niche, the Great Recession made it fashionable (see e.g. Davis and Nieuwerburgh (2015) or Iacoviello (2010)). The pioneer work of Davis and Heathcote (2005) takes the neoclassical perspective, where markets are perfect and the supply side induces the entire business cycle fluctuation. The pioneer work of Iacoviellon(2005) uses the New Keynsian perspective, where markets are imperfect and the demand side accounts for business cycles as well. The former work tries to account for stylized facts of the business cycle by modeling a multi-sectoral input-output linked supply structure. The following stylized facts are valid for the most developed economies: i) residential investment is at least moderately more volatile than business investment, ii) house prices are at least twice as volatile as GDP, and iii) house prices, business investment as well as GDP are positively correlated with residential investment. While Davis and Heathcote (2005) achieve success in explaining the stylized facts concerning the quantities, they fail doing so for the facts concerning house prices. Iacoviello (2005) illustrates an amplification of demand shocks through housing collateral constraints, which coincides with observations made during the Great Recession. This is why a huge strand of literature builds on Iacoviello (2005) and reduces the structural form of the supply side to the extent that some business cycle statistics could barely be matched. Further, the literature concludes that supply-side – or strictly spoken technology – shocks solely cannot account for the positive correlation of prices and quantities in the housing market and the high residential investment volatility at once (see e.g. Iacoviello and Neri (2010)). This is first due to the inability of the Davis and Heathcote (2005) model to account for the positive correlation between house prices and residential investment. Additionally, in partial equilibrium, a shift in the demand curve leads to positively correlated prices and quantities and a shift in the supply curve has the opposite effect. However, to account for the volatility of residential investments, it is mostly assumed that large shocks affect the supply of residential goods. Chapters 2 and 3 check to which extent the stylized facts, including quantities and prices, could be explained in neoclassic – strictly spoken Real Business Cycle (RBC) – models with deeper structures and real frictions. To also gain insights into asset pricing in general, Chapter 3 additionally investigates asset return behavior. The large contribution to the business cycle of residential investment and new durables, their high volatility, and their pro-cyclicality make them an interesting object of stabilizing policy. Note that investment goods have a high intertemporal substitutability as long as the depreciation rate is low. Thus, small changes in taxes and subsidies have a leverage effect. Thereby, e.g. by shifting a fraction of investment activities from a potential recovered future into a recessive present, one can smooth the business cycle with low fiscal spending. This is why the German government included a durables subsidy, i.e. a cash for clunkers program, in their fiscal stimulus program during the Great Recession 2008 and 2009. The third essay considers the Great Recession in Germany, the concerning stabilization policy and in particular the cash for clunkers program through the lens of the stochastic neoclassical growth model.

Incentive problems arise in many economic relationships, between workers and firms as well as between those agents and the fiscal authority. If it is well known, in fact, that labor contracts tying wages to performance may mitigate the efficiency costs from unobservable effort, it is also an empirical fact that real word contracts, and the incentives provided wherein, are more frequently based on some sort of non-monetary compensation – fringe benefits, or perks, as they are called. As a result, the fiscal authority is more often called to decide on the eligibility of those perquisite goods and, therefore, on their taxability. In spite of their diffusion, however, there is still little consensus among researchers on the reasons why perks should be provided, and what their effect on welfare might be. The standard explanation for perks usually relies on some form of agency problem. However, monitoring concerns are certainly less relevant when dealing with a fiscal authority, that, for the most part, may monitor the provision of perks better than the payment of cash. Motivated by the concerns about how fringe benefits may restrict the revenue collection problem and affect the redistribution of resources and incentives, this research aims at investigating the relationship between the provision of perks and i) the progressivity/regressivity of the optimal transfer-tax system, and ii) the top-income marginal tax rate. To the best of our knowledge, this thesis constitutes the first theoretical attempt to deal with the issue at hand. In fact, all existing papers that analytically study the moral hazard problem with perks, either focus on their effect on the effort responsiveness to monetary incentives, or they study the cash-perks substitutability in the optimal labor contract, absent any consideration for the insurance/incentive purposes of income taxation. To some extent, we also contribute to the literature on optimal taxation, by emphasizing the connection between the agents' responses to the fiscal system and the structure of the labor market. Methodologically, we investigate our research agenda by following two different approaches. In Chapter 2, we develop a static version of a standard stochastic Ramsey's problem with a representative agent and an utilitarian, resource-seeking government who takes the post of the principal and owner of the only firm in the economy. When designing the optimal rules for cash payment and perk provision, the government, who is constrained by his budget balance, takes into account the agent's unobservable reactions to the tax system, and set optimal taxes so as to provide either insurance and right incentives. In Chapter 3, however, we take an alternative perspective, and study a decentralized economy wherein an independent, self-interest firm retains full control of the provision of perks and wage payments, given the fiscal policy announced by the government. Our analysis aims at highlighting the existence of a trade-off between the opposite interests of the government and the employer, that will serve as a rationale for the characterization of the equilibrium marginal tax rate that we derive from a Nash non-cooperative interaction game between the fiscal authority and the agents in the labor market. Our analysis suggests that, whenever perks are efficiently provided, the government trades off progressivity for perk provision. Our main conclusion, in fact, is that the (centralized) second-best efficient taxation scheme with perks is more regressive compared to its perk-less equivalent. Notably, we also find that, whenever society's preferences for public expenditure and agents' risk aversion are sufficiently low, a regressive top-income marginal tax is also consistent with a positive provision of perks. In a numerical exercise, for example, we show that a marginal tax rate of 30% allows for either i) a positive provision of perks that accounts for 1.6% of the gross income (3.2% of the agent's wage), and ii) a per-capita public expenditure which is 7% of the top-brackets taxpayers' gross income (15% of their earnings). An equilibrium allocation without perks results, instead, for a 45% marginal tax rate. However, in spite of the ability of our theoretical framework to capture the relationship between risk aversion and efficient provision of perks, through their effect on the optimal trade-off between the insurance and incentive motives for taxation, our model has its weakness, as to regard its sensitiveness to the stochastic dominance properties of the probability distribution and the level of income in the economy. If, in the former case, deviations from the benchmark distribution are qualitatively important but quantitatively small, in the latter case, the quantitative implications of different income levels are quite important. A more precise calibration of the models and a better characterization of the results are left to future works.

Diese Dissertation umfasst drei Studien zu Preistransmission und Marktintegration in Schweizer Agrar- und Lebensmittelmärkten. Der Artikel "Protecting the Swiss milk market from foreign price shocks: Public border protection vs. quality differentiation" analysiert räumliche oder horizontale Preistransmission zwischen der Europäischen Union und der Schweiz am Beispiel des Milchmarkts. Milch ist das wichtigste Agrarprodukt der Schweiz und verschiedene Milchprodukte unterliegen unterschiedlichen Handelshemmnissen und Grenzschutz-Instrumenten. Während für Milchprodukte wie Butter und Milchpulver weiterhin Zölle und Zollkontingente gelten, ist der Käsehandel mit der EU vollständig liberalisiert. Um zu verstehen, wie sich solche unterschiedlichen Schutzniveaus auf die räumliche Preistransmission auswirken, analysieren wir die Preistransmission zwischen Deutschland und der Schweiz für mehrere Produkte auf Großhandelsebene und für Rohmilcherzeugerpreise. Wir stellen fest, dass nicht das Niveau des Grenzschutzes den Grad und die Geschwindigkeit der Preistransmission bestimmt, sondern die qualitative Differenzierung der Schweizer Produkte. Die Preise für zollgeschützte Milchprodukte werden von der deutschen Preisentwicklung beeinflusst, die Käsepreise jedoch nicht. Auch auf Erzeugerebene sind die Milchpreise für die Käseverarbeitung weniger stark an die ausländischen Preise gebunden als die Milchpreise für die industrielle Milchverarbeitung. Unsere Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass für kleine einkommensstarke Länder wie die Schweiz die Förderung hochwertiger Produkte und damit die Verringerung der internationalen Substituierbarkeit den internationalen Preisdruck mehr mindert als den Schutz durch Zölle. Der Artikel "Vertical Price Transmission in Swiss Dairy and Cheese Value Chains" ergänzt diese Analyse durch die Untersuchung der vertikalen Preistranmission innerhalb der Schweiz. In der Schweiz gibt es getrennte Wertschöpfungsketten für Milch- und Käseprodukte, die sich hinsichtlich Branchenkonzentration, Governanceform und Produkteigenschaften unterscheiden. Wir analysieren, wie Milchpreise entlang dieser verschiedenen Wertschöpfungsketten weitergegeben werden. Anhand detaillierter Preisdaten auf Produzenten-, Großhandels-, Export- und Einzelhandelsebene untersuchen wir die vertikale Preistransmission im Schweizer Milch- und Käsemarkt mithilfe von asymmetrischen Vektorautoregressiven und Fehlerkorrekturmodellen. Im Gegensatz zu einem Grossteil der vorhandenen Literatur finden wir fast keine langfristigen Preisbeziehungen und keine signifikanten Asymmetrien zwischen den verschiedenen Wertschöpfungsebenen und Produkten und diskutieren die möglichen Gründe. Die dritte Studie "Market Integration and Market Efficiency under Seasonal Tariff Rate Quotas" geht über die Analyse reiner Preisinformationen hinaus, indem Daten zu Preisen, Handelskosten und Handelsströmen kombiniert werden. Die Schweiz wendet saisonale Zollkontingente für den Import vieler Obst- und Gemüsesorten während der inländischen Erntezeit an. Es ist jedoch nicht bekannt, wie sich dieses System auf Preise, Handelsmuster und räumliche Effizienz mit seinen Handelspartnern auswirkt. Aus diesem Grund analysieren wir die Beziehung zwischen italienischen und schweizerischen Tomatenpreisen und testen die physische Marktintegration und die räumlichen Gleichgewichtsbedingungen im Zeitverlauf. Wir verwenden detaillierte, transaktionsbasierte Daten zu Handelsströmen und Handelskosten und schätzen ein erweitertes Parity Bounds Modell. Wir stellen fest, dass die Märkte in der Sommersaison, wenn Zollkontingente angewandt werden, ineffizient sind. Während Kontingentinhaber positive Renten erhalten, sind die marginalen Renten für Importeure ohne Kontingentanteile negativ. Dies verhindert Handelsströme oberhalb der von den Zollkontingenten zugelassenen Einfuhrmenge; das Instrument wirkt also während der administrierten Sommerperiode wie eine bindende Importquote. In der nicht-administrierten Periode, wenn keine einheimischen Produkte zu schützen sind, sind die Märkte dagegen in einem Wettbewerbsgleichgewicht und durch grosse Handelsströme räumlich integriert. Wir folgern, dass saisonale Zollkontingente ein wirksames Instrument sind, um die inländische Produktion gegen konkurrierende Importe zu schützen, und somit deren Absatz zu stabilen Preisen zu gewähren. Dies geschieht jedoch auch höchst ineffiziente Weise, da Importeure Renten abschöpfen können, und zwar zulasten von Konsumenten, die während der Schweizer Tomatensaison hohe Preise im Einzelhandel zahlen. ; This PhD thesis comprises three papers on price transmission and market integration in Swiss agricultural and food markets. In the paper "Protecting the Swiss milk market from foreign price shocks: Public border protection vs. quality differentiation" we focus on spatial price transmission between the European Union and Switzerland. The milk market is of strategic importance for Switzerland, and the country applies a number of different border protection policies for milk products. While dairy products such as butter and milk powder are still subject to tariffs and tariff rate quotas, cheese trade with the EU is fully liberalized. To understand how such different levels of protection affect spatial price transmission, we analyze price transmission between Germany and Switzerland for several products at the wholesale level, and for raw milk producer prices. We find that not the level of border protection determines the degree and speed of price transmission, but rather the qualitative differentiation of the Swiss products. While prices of tariff-protected dairy products are influenced by German price developments, cheese prices are not. Also at the producer level, milk prices for cheese processing are less strongly linked to foreign prices than milk prices for industrial dairy production. Our results suggest that for small high-income countries such as Switzerland, promoting high-quality products and hence reducing international substitutability alleviates international price pressure more than protection via tariffs. The paper "Vertical Price Transmission in Swiss Dairy and Cheese Value Chains" complements this analysis by investigating vertical price transmission within Switzerland. In Switzerland, there are separated value chains for dairy and cheese products, which differ in terms of industry concentration, value chain governance, and product characteristics. We analyze how milk prices are passed on along these different value chains. Using detailed price data on farm-gate, wholesale, export, and retail levels, we apply asymmetric Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction Models to study vertical price transmission in Swiss dairy and cheese chains. Contrary to most existing literature, we find almost no long-run price relationships and no significant asymmetries between the different stages and products and discuss the potential reasons. Finally, the paper "Market Integration and Market Efficiency under Seasonal Tariff Rate Quotas" goes beyond the analysis of price information by combining data on prices, trade costs and trade flows. Switzerland applies seasonal tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for the import of many fruits and vegetables during the domestic harvest season. Yet, it is not well understood how this system affects prices, trade patterns and spatial efficiency with its trade partners. Therefore, we analyse the relationship between Italian and Swiss tomato prices and test for physical market integration and spatial equilibrium conditions over time. We use detailed, transaction-based data on trade flows and trade costs and estimate an extended parity bounds model. We find that in the summer season, when TRQs are in place, markets are inefficient. While quota holders receive positive rents, the marginal rents for importers without quota shares are negative. This inhibits trade flows above the in-quota import quantity allowed by TRQs. Hence, despite leading to inefficiencies and creating rents for importers, seasonal TRQs are an effective policy instrument to protect domestic production against competing imports.

The impact of mitigation policies on economic activities is a longstanding controversial issue justifying the large strand of literature analysing the effect of climate change policies in terms of environmental and economic costs. From the Kyoto Protocol to the current climate policy agenda approved by the European Union (EU) in October 2014, mitigation of climate change still constitutes a challenging long term objective at the global level, and it is particularly relevant for the EU. Besides the cost-effectiveness issue, and considering the global scope of environmental policies in an open economy, further aspects to carefully account for are the regional distribution of those costs and the impacts on the economic, energy and industrial competitiveness. In this context, it is not surprising the comprehensive use of applied models representing the global economy and the relations between the economic and technological dimension, across countries and the economic sector. In the light of the challenging abatement targets and the assessment of mitigation costs, the current work is organised in three parts. The first part focus on a specific issue under investigation in applied energy economics that is energy substitution and the role of behavioural parameters in influencing cost assessment results. This analysis specifically addresses the computation of energy-output and capital-energy substitution elasticity, which is a measure of the energy-related technological flexibility. Energy-output elasticities are computed for 10 manufacturing sectors for a long time span (1970-2008) for a panel of 21 OECD countries while energy-capital substitution elasticity is estimated at aggregate level for the whole manufacturing industry for the same longitudinal dataset as well for 10 manufacturing sectors, also for separate sub-periods and comparing alternative econometric estimation methods. Results show that the energy long-run elasticity values for specific manufacturing sectors are highly heterogeneous, while the heterogeneity in the energy-capital substitution elasticity shows that the distinction between energy-intensive and non-energy-intensive sectors behaviour is less clear. Consequently, energy intensive sectors may require specific complementary energy conservation policies in order to be compliant with emission targets, hence this heterogeneity in the energy relationships should also be reflected in energy applied models. These results constitute the basis for the second part of the study that is a sensitivity analysis based on a dynamic climate-economy CGE model (GDynE) by computing abatement costs and competitiveness impacts of different climate change policies. In fact, CGE models including energy and CO2 data are particularly suitable to analyse the effect of carbon-abating policies considering they can capture the linkages between regulated and non-abating countries through trade channel and investment dynamics in the long-run. However, these models need to be improved and validated, to increase the reliability of the results, including detailed information on the technological and energy systems, which are represented by elasticities or behavioural parameters. In particular, the energy substitutability is here analysed by taking into account the nest structure and the input mix in the production function, tested for the relationship between capital and energy and among different fuels mix, distinguishing different manufacturing sectors. The simulation exercise reveals that the model produces highly differentiated results when different sets of elasticity parameters are adopted. In general, the reduction in the flexibility of the energy substitution possibilities makes the abatement efforts more expensive at the aggregate level. Moreover, such restriction generates changes in the distribution of the costs associated with the abatement efforts across regions. The direct implication derived by this work is that in order to use energy forecasting models to evaluate costs and feasibility of climate policies, it is necessary to enhance them with empirically estimated behavioural parameters at the highest possible disaggregation level. Finally, the third part focus on the European climate strategy to 2030 recently agreed in October 2014. This framework combines three objectives (GHG abatement, energy efficiency and renewable energy) thus the assessment of the mitigation costs need also to consider the potential trade-offs among simultaneous policies. Hence, in the light of the debate around effectiveness, timing of the abatement targets and optimality of policy mix, the EU approach to climate change represents an interesting case study to be investigated using GDynE model, improved with the sectoral elasticity parameters and including a mechanism to finance technical progress from green investment. Considering the policy mix, the comparison between a pure ETS mechanism and a climate strategy also including RD investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy (financed through a levy on the carbon tax revenue) is analysed. As the results show, in this second case the economic losses are lower and, as the percentage levy increases, reduce up to the point where increasing efficiency gains turn losses into economic gains. Moreover, when focusing on the sectoral differences, manufacturing sectors, and energy-intensive activities in particular, are negatively influenced by the emissions reduction in ETS scenario, however, if a proper policy mix with RD in clean energy technologies is implemented, losses are consistently reduced. When considering different timing of abatement targets, a first evidence is that the choice on whether preferring or not to delay more stringent targets in the future also depend on the selected policy mix. Indeed, if the market-based instrument was the only policy in place, postponing the achievement of more stringent CO2 reduction could seem preferable, however when fostering also energy efficiency and renewable energy support in a well-functioning ETS, the relative suitability of anticipating more challenging target seems to increase.

Jeder Mensch steht während seines Lebens einer Vielzahl von finanziellen Risiken gegenüber. So besteht die Gefahr, arbeitslos zu werden und das monatliche Einkommen zu verlieren. Auch Krankheit oder Pflegebedürftigkeit sind Ereignisse, die einen finanziellen Schock zur Folge haben. Das dadurch entstehende finanzielle Risiko kann gegen die Zahlung einer Versicherungsprämie an eine Versicherung abgegeben werden. Dabei ist es nicht in jedem Fall optimal, einen Versicherungsschutz für den gesamten möglichen Schadensanteil zu kaufen. Es gibt Umstände, die zur Folge haben, nur einen Teil des Risikos über eine Versicherung abzudecken: Unfaire Versicherungsprämien oder Moral Hazard. Neben der Versicherung besteht die Möglichkeit, dass Individuen Ersparnisse bilden, um einem zukünftigen Risiko begegnen können. Wenn Vermögen in den Zustand des Schadenseintritts transferiert wird, reduziert sich der zu ertragende Einkommensschock durch den Sparbetrag. Tritt der Schaden hingegen nicht ein, steht dem Individuum der Sparbetrag zusätzlich zur Verfügung. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, Bedingungen darzustellen, unter welchen eine Substitution von Versicherung durch Sparen aus individueller Sicht optimal ist. Insbesondere wird die Möglichkeit einbezogen, dass unvollständige Kapitalmärkte vorliegen und Individuen infolgedessen keine Kredite aufnehmen können. Den betrachteten Modellen ist gemein, dass es nicht optimal ist, das gesamte Risiko an eine Versicherung abzugeben: So steht die Versicherungsnachfrage bei einer aktuarisch unfairen Prämie im Fokus und es wird der Fall untersucht, in dem die Versicherung Verhaltensanreize auf Versicherte ausübt. Kapitel 2 der Arbeit widmet sich aktuarisch unfairen Versicherungen. Zunächst werden Modelle in zwei Perioden betrachtet, bevor Entscheidungen über das Leben hinweg beleuchtet werden. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Frage der Substituierbarkeit nicht nur vom Zeitpunkt der Prämienzahlung, sondern auch von der Länge des Lebenshorizontes abhängt -- insbesondere dann, wenn Individuen liquiditätsbeschränkt sind. In Kapitel 3 wird das einfache Versicherungsmodell in zwei Perioden um die Annahme erweitert, dass Individuen den Schaden beeinflussen können bzw. dass der Abschluss einer Versicherung Einfluss auf das Verhalten eines Individuums hat. In der Modellierung wird zwischen einer ex-post Moral Hazard Problematik, bei der das Individuum bei Schadenseintritt die Höhe des tatsächlichen Schadens durch das Aufbringen von persönlichem Aufwand beeinträchtigen kann, und einem ex-ante Moral Hazard Modell unterschieden. Hier kann das Individuum durch persönlichen Aufwand die Schadenseintrittswahrscheinlichkeit reduzieren. Eine Besonderheit dieser Modelle besteht in der Modellierung der Kosten: Einmal ist die Möglichkeit gegeben, dass Konsum und Aufwandskosten additiv in die Nutzenfunktion eingehen. Eine andere Variante besteht in der multiplikativen Zusammensetzung dieser Variablen. Es wird sich zeigen, dass je nach Modellierung unterschiedliche Ergebnisse in Bezug auf die Substituierbarkeit von Versicherung durch Ersparnisse zutage treten. Insbesondere wird deutlich werden, dass nicht nur Versicherung, sondern auch die Höhe der Ersparnisse einen negativen Einfluss auf die Aufwandserbringung haben kann. Diese Analyse wirft ein neues Licht auf die Diskussionen von Sparkonten in der Arbeitslosen-, aber auch in der Krankenversicherung. Im vierten Kapitel dieses Buches wird ein Modell präsentiert, welches die Versicherungs- und Sparentscheidung von quasi-hyperbolischen Individuen darstellt, die sich gegen das Risiko der Pflegebedürftigkeit absichern wollen und sich aufgrund der speziellen Diskontierungsfunktion -- anders wie exponentielle Diskontierer -- zeitinkonsistent verhalten. Hyperbolische Diskontierer haben auf kurze Sicht wenig Interesse daran, Ersparnisse zu bilden. Vielmehr bewerten sie den aktuellen Konsum sehr hoch. Es wird deutlich, dass dieses Verhalten nicht nur die Sparentscheidung, sondern auch die Nachfrageentscheidung nach Versicherung beeinflusst, wobei es einen Unterschied macht, ob das Individuum liquiditätsbeschränkt ist oder nicht. Insbesondere wird deutlich werden, dass liquiditätsbeschränkte, quasi-hyperbolisch diskontierende Individuen weniger Versicherung nachfragen als exponentiell diskontierende Individuen. Das stellt auch eine Begründung für die geringe Nachfrage nach einer privaten Pflegeversicherung dar, wie es z.B. in Deutschland beobachtet werden kann. Im Rentenalter könnten Individuen es bedauern, einen so geringen Versicherungsschutz gekauft zu haben. Darauf basierend wird eine Pareto-superiore Politikempfehlung vorgeschlagen. ; Every person faces a variety of financial risks throughout his life. There is a risk of becoming unemployed and losing the monthly income. Illness or long-term care are also events that can lead to a financial disaster. The resulting financial risk can be transferred to an insurance company against payment of an insurance premium. It is not optimal to buy full insurance in all cases. There are circumstances that lead to cover only part of the risk: Unfair insurance premiums or moral hazard. Besides insurance, there is also the possibility that individuals accrue savings to address a future risk. If property is transferred to the state of an occurrence of a loss, the income shock will be reduced by the savings. But if damage not occurs, the amount of savings will be available. The goal of this book is to present conditions under which the substitution of insurance through savings from an individuals' perspective is preferred. In particular the possibility is included, that there are imperfect capital markets and therefore individuals can not borrow. All models have in common that it is not optimal to buy full insurance: actuarially unfair premium are investigated as well as moral hazard. Chapter 2 of the book deals with actuarial unfair insurance. First, two-period-models are considered before decisions are illuminated through the life time. It will show that the answer to the question of substitutability of insurance through personal savings depends not only on the date of premium payment, but also on the length of the life expectancy - particularly if individuals are liquidity constrained. In chapter 3 the simple two-period-insurance-model is extended by the assumption that individuals can influence the level of damage. It is assumed that insurance influences the behavior of an individual: Ex-post moral hazard is analyzed as well as ex-ante moral hazard. The former affects individuals' effort to reduce the amount of loss after a loss occurrence through personal costly effort. Ex-ante moral hazard model deals with the reduction of loss probability through personal effort. A special feature of these models is the modeling of costs: Once there is the possibility that consumption and effort costs enter the utility function additively. Another variant is the multiplicative composition of these variables. It is shown that the results depend strongly on the cost function. In particular it becomes clear that not only insurance but also the amount of savings can have a negative impact on individual effort. This analysis gives important insights for the judgement of the reform proposal of savings accounts in the unemployment and health care system. In the fourth chapter a model is presented that analyzes the insurance and savings decisions of quasi-hyperbolic individuals who seek to cover against long-term care and also behave time-inconsistent – in difference to exponential discounting individuals. Quasi-hyperbolic individuals are more impatient when they make short-run trade-offs compared to long-run trade-offs. Individuals tend to revise their savings decisions at a later stage and typically save less than initially planned. This behavior affects also the time-inconsistent insurance demand. Especially binding liquidity constraints changes individuals' insurance decision. In the presence of a binding liquidity constraint in old age, they tend to buy less insurance than initially planned. The model provides an explanation for the low demand of long-term care insurance, as it can be observed in Germany. At old age, individuals may regret having bought too little insurance coverage. Based on a pareto-superior policy proposal is given.

As indicators of social welfare, the degree of inequality and the incidence of deprivation are a concern to policy makers and researchers. Other things being constant, higher degrees of inequality and deprivation correspond to lower levels of social welfare. The availability of inequality and deprivation measures is essential if governments are to assess, analyse, and monitor the degrees of inequality and deprivation accurately over time and make appropriate decisions in order to reduce inequality and deprivation, and provide sustainable development to the society. This thesis examines the degree of inequality and the incidence of deprivation in Australia over the period 2001 - 2010 using income, mental health status, and education level as indicators of well-being. The study is a multidimensional one using Bayesian inference. A comparison of levels of well-being over time and for different population subgroups is done using Bayesian methodology for assessing unidimensional and multidimensional stochastic dominance. These well-being comparisons depend on the joint and marginal distributions of well-being and how they are estimated. Thus, the general objective is accompanied by several secondary objectives. Given that Bayesian inference is used, and that the available data are assigned survey sampling weights, our secondary aim is to propose and assess Bayesian methodology for including sampling weights in density estimation. We propose a new Bayesian weighted sampling algorithm to take into account the sampling weights in joint and marginal density estimation. It is applied to estimate a mixture of gamma densities to model income distributions, a mixture of beta densities to model mental health distributions, and an ordinal categorical model to model education distributions. The joint distribution of income and mental health and education level is modelled using a parametric class of copula. In Chapter 4, two new Bayesian methodologies that allow information from sampling weights to be incorporated into the estimation and inference of unknown parameters are proposed. They are a Bayesian pseudo posterior estimator (BPPE) and a Bayesian weighted estimator (BWE). The Monte Carlo simulation results show that the BPPE and BWE produce estimates whose means are close to the true values. However, the posterior variance associated with the BPPE is too small in the sense that it does not reflect the variance of the estimates in repeated samples. The posterior variance of BWE is comparable to the sandwich variance estimator used by pseudo maximum likelihood estimation (PMLE). Also, the BPPE approach does not extend easily to more general econometric models, such as mixture and latent variable models. A major advantage of BWE is its ability to be applied in a more general set of models that can be estimated by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Chapter 5 contributes to the empirical stochastic dominance literature by developing a Bayesian approach, rather than continuing the current trend in the literature of further developing the sampling-theory approach. In this chapter, the proposed methods are applied to income distribution and welfare and inequality analysis in Australia. The results from the Bayesian analysis are reported as posterior probabilities of each of the possible outcomes, the probability that X dominates Y, the probability that Y dominates X, and the probability that neither dominates. This chapter extends the stochastic dominance analysis of Chotikapanich and Griffiths (2006) in several ways. Firstly, a mixture of gamma distributions is chosen as a more flexible model for the income distributions. A gamma mixture is specifically chosen to analyse data defined over the positive real line, which is appropriate for income distributions. Secondly, estimates of lower and upper bounds for the posterior probability of dominance are provided. Thirdly, using the Bayesian weighted estimator (BWE), the sampling weights provided are included in the estimation of gamma mixture models to ensure that conclusions drawn from the sample analysis apply to the general population as well. Lastly, the methodology developed is applied to analyse the individual disposable income distribution in Australia for the period 2001-2010. Chapter 6 considers estimation of the joint distribution of income, mental health score and education level using a Gaussian copula model. In this chapter, we show that all parameters of the marginals and copula functions can be estimated jointly by using MCMC to draw observations from the joint posterior density of all the unknown parameters. Flexible mixtures of beta and gamma densities are used as models for mental health and income distributions, respectively. A gamma mixture model is specifically chosen to analyse data defined over the positive real line and a beta mixture model is chosen to analyse data defined over the range (0,1), which is an appropriate for the index of mental health. An ordinal categorical model is used to model the education distribution. In Chapter 7, we introduce Bayesian test procedures for multidimensional stochastic dominance. In particular, we present a Bayesian framework for assessing multidimensional stochastic dominance involving two or more dominance conditions over the entire, or a subset of, the multidimensional distribution of well-being. We propose dominance conditions that belong to the classes of utility functions U1, U2, and U3. The dominance conditions that belong to the class U3 are related to the Muller and Trannoy (2011) conditions that include preference for more equal marginal distributions of income, mental health, and education, and substitutability among attributes such that priority is given to income-poor people by providing them with better access to mental health care and education to improve their level of these factors. Using income, level of mental health, and level of education as measures of well-being, we use the Bayesian test procedures to compare the social welfare and poverty for individuals 15 years of age or older in Australia over the period 2001 - 2010. Comparisons are made using the overall distribution and different population subgroups.

Esta investigación se enfoca principalmente en el análisis de las relaciones entre el fenómeno del cambio climático (CC) y la inequidad económica a nivel teórico y para el caso de Colombia. En primer lugar, se procura discutir las perspectivas e identificar las posibles interacciones entre los dos fenómenos a nivel teórico. En segundo término, se plantea un análisis de la incidencia de la inequidad en la generación de gases de efecto invernadero para el caso colombiano y, en tercer lugar, se explora cómo el CC puede afectar la inequidad también a nivel de Colombia. La metodología se fundamenta, primero, en la causalidad circular y acumulativa entre los dos fenómenos, lo que permite entender los procesos sociales y biofísicos como uno solo. Además, las escalas y su interacción son el segundo elemento metodológico que utiliza el trabajo de manera transversal, enfatizado en las dinámicas global y nacional. Desde el punto de vista teórico, se plantea el CC como un problema de inequidad intergeneracional y la inequidad económica se ve como uno de inequidad intrageneracional. En el primer caso, se realiza una crítica a la corriente dominante que ha analizado el tema, la economía del bienestar, que ve el CC como una externalidad y su análisis se centra en los modelos integrados y la actualización del bienestar futuro a través de la tasa de descuento, manteniendo criterios normativos como la creencia en el crecimiento indefinido, la sustituibilidad perfecta de factores y la conmensurabilidad de valores. Se plantea un giro hacia la sostenibilidad fuerte con el reconocimiento de los límites, la irreversibilidad, la complejidad y la incertidumbre extrema. En el segundo, se propone el carácter multidimensional de la inequidad intrageneracional y se analiza su relación con el ambiente desde diferentes concepciones, como las necesidades, los derechos y las oportunidades; luego se discuten posiciones en el contexto del CC en particular y se resalta el intercambio ecológicamente desigual. Finalmente, se propone una síntesis que involucra ambos tipos de inequidad concebida como el espacio de la suficiencia, en el cual se respeten unos umbrales de bienestar inferiores y superiores que permiten una equidad intrageneracional que además respeta las condiciones mínimas del bienestar de las generaciones futuras. Respecto al caso colombiano, en primer lugar, esta investigación encuentra que pese a ser un país con bajos niveles de responsabilidad frente al CC, está conectado al proceso global de generación de emisiones a través de la exportación de combustibles fósiles. A nivel nacional, resalta que la ganadería es el sector que causa la mayoría de las emisiones y plantea que su proceso histórico está íntimamente relacionado con la inequitativa tenencia de la tierra. En segundo lugar, el trabajo evidencia que los efectos del CC sobre la inequidad, que pasan por la vulnerabilidad frente al sus impactos, tienen el potencial de generar inequidades mediante varios mecanismos. En ambos casos se discute la relevancia de la política ambiental y se resalta la tensión contradictoria entre ésta y la visión general del desarrollo. Finalmente, se concluye que el CC y la inequidad pueden concebirse en un estado en que haya una interacción benéfica, pero la evidencia para Colombia señala que la retroalimentación refuerza los fenómenos. ; Abstract. This research focuses on the analysis of the relationship between climate change phenomena and economic inequality at a theoretical level and also for the Colombian case. In the first place, it seeks to discuss perspectives and identify potential interactions between the two phenomena at a theoretical level. Second, an analysis of inequality incidence on the generation of greenhouse gases for the Colombian case is posed and, thirdly, the ways climate change might affect inequality in Colombia are explored. Methodology is based, first, on circular and cumulative causation between the two phenomena, which allows us to understand the social and biophysical processes as one. Additionally, scales and their interaction are the second methodological component this work uses transversely, through the emphasis on the global and national dynamics. From a theoretical viewpoint, climate change is seen as an intergenerational inequality problem while economic inequality arises as one of intragenerational inequality. In the first case, this document critically assess the mainstream viewpoint that has analyzed the issue, welfare economics, which sees climate change as an externality and focuses on integrated models and updating the future well-being through the discount rate, assuming normative criteria as the belief in unlimited growth, perfect factor substitutability and commensurability of values. A shift towards strong sustainability arises, recognizing ecological limits, complexity, irreversibility and extreme uncertainty. Second, multidimensional character of intra-generational inequality is proposed and its relationship with the environment is analyzed for different conceptions as needs, rights and opportunities and there are also discussed particular positions in the context of climate change, where the ecologically unequal exchange is highlighted. Finally, the space of sufficiency is conceived as a synthesis that involves both types of inequality, where lower and upper well-being thresholds are respected allowing intra-generational equality and also respecting minimum conditions for future generations. Relative to the Colombian case, firstly, the research finds that despite being a country with low responsibility for climate change, it is connected to the overall process of emissions generation through the export of fossil fuels. Nationwide, it is highlighted that the livestock sector causes most of the territorial emissions, and it is posed that in its historical process it has been closely related to the inequitable land ownership. Secondly, this research finds that the effects of climate change on inequality, through vulnerability to impacts, have the potential to create inequalities by several mechanisms. The relevance of the perspective of policy towards climate change is discussed in both cases and it is emphasized that there is a contradictory tension between the political focus on climate change in relation to the overall development vision. Finally, it is concluded that climate change and inequality may be conceived within a state of beneficial feedback, but evidence for Colombia points towards a negative reinforcing character of the relationship. ; Maestría

Supplementary material: Tierfutter von einheimischen Wiesen und Feldern - Recherchebericht Nr. 1 zum Forschungsprojekt «Schweizer Futtermittelimporte» https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4572514 Tierfutter aus anderen Ländern (Importe) - Recherchebericht Nr. 2 zum Forschungsprojekt «Schweizer Futtermittelimporte» https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4572534 Soja – das global wichtigste Eiweissfutter für die Tierproduktion - Recherchebericht Nr. 3 zum Forschungsprojekt «Schweizer Futtermittelimporte» https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4572541 Brasilien – Sojaproduzent im Rampenlicht - Recherchebericht Nr. 4 zum Forschungsprojekt «Schweizer Futtermittelimporte» https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4572547 Kalorienverluste durch die Tierproduktion - Recherchebericht Nr. 5 zum Forschungsprojekt «Schweizer Futtermittelimporte» https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4572664 ; The aim of this research project is to demonstrate the many dimensions of importing feedstuff, to clarify the significance of imported feedstuff for animal production in Switzerland, as well as to assess the negative environmental impacts of such importation both within Switzerland and in the countries of origin. In particular, the importance of soy as an element in feedstuff is examined in depth. The analysis is centred around the misleading statement that 84% of the feedstuff in Switzerland comes from 'native meadows and fields'. This percentage is based on the combination of roughage and concentrated feed, two categories of feedstuff that must not be added because they have limited substitutability and are therefore not directly comparable. Roughage is eaten mainly by ruminants. Meat, however, comes primarily from pigs and poultry which are both dependent on concentrated feed. Roughage is almost 100% domestically sourced, while more than 50% of concentrated feed comes from abroad. Protein is particularly scarce: around 70% of the protein in concentrated feed comes from imports (mainly soy). Therefore, if today's feedstuff were not imported, livestock populations would decline significantly, particularly those that are dependent on concentrated feed. According to model calculations, it would be possible to keep 94% of sheep and goats, 85% of cattle, 39% of pigs and 17% of poultry on the basis of domestic feed alone. At 21 kg per capita per year, meat production would be halved in comparison to the present day. Pork would remain the most important type of meat, although it would be over 50% less compared to today. Poultry meat would virtually disappear. However, around 350 kg of milk could still be produced per capita annually. Swiss agriculture specialises in the production of livestock. About 90% of agricultural land is used for animal feed, in addition to the at least 200,000 hectares of arable areas abroad which are used for the cultivation of animal feedstuff for the Swiss market. Soybeans, wheat, corn, etc. grow on these areas. Since the mid-1990s, the importing of feedstuff has increased sharply, most of which is imported from Europe. The most important protein feed which is imported is soy, which, due to public criticism, now tends to increasingly come from Europe. Most of the imported feedstuffs are in direct competition with human foods. This is because they come from crops that we humans can eat directly, including not only all cereals such as wheat, corn, rice, oats and barley, but also soybeans. In intensive livestock farming, the calorie content present in plant-based foods that we humans are able eat directly is converted into a lot less in animal food products. In this process, the production of meat 'destroys' significantly more plant-derived calories than that of milk. This is because milk still contains a lot of grass that only cows and other ruminants can digest. Soy is the world's most important animal protein feedstuff. Originally, soybeans were cultivated in Asia for human consumption. Today, about 75% of global production is used to feed livestock, more than half of which is used for chicken fattening. While poultry consume by far the most soy protein feed on a global scale, in Switzerland it is cattle which rank first in this regard. This is the result of the central importance of milk production and the breeding of performance breeds that depend on protein-rich concentrated feed. Global soy production has grown steadily in recent years, and in Brazil even exponentially. Approximately half of all soy is used for feeding or consumption purposes in growing countries, while the other half is traded internationally. The main producing and exporting countries are the U.S. and Brazil while the main importing countries are China and the EU. Brazil is still the most important source region for Swiss soybean imports. The country grows soybeans for the global market: around 90% of production is exported. Only 5% of Brazil's farms cultivate soybeans and only 16% of soybean farms are family-owned. In the past 20 years production has expanded, especially in the ecologically valuable Cerrado and Amazon biomes. There, the average soybean acreage is 930 ha (Amazonas) and 550 ha (Cerrado). The supply chains for soy imported into Switzerland are not transparent. The description 'responsibly produced' glosses over soy production in Brazil and the soy trade. According to research, Swiss soy imports from Brazil come from specialised, large-scale farms with intensive soy cultivation, monotonous crop rotations and high pesticide use. Most of these farms are located in the state of Mato Grosso, i.e. in the Cerrado or Amazon biome, where most land has been cleared in recent decades. ProTerra-certified soy also comes from original rainforest (Amazon) or savanna (Cerrado) areas. 'Zero deforestation' refers only to the last decade. Animal food products constitutes a billion-dollar business in Switzerland. The supply chains show a high market concentration in inputs (feedstuff), in processing (meat, dairy milk) and in wholesale and retail trade. A few companies, especially the conglomerates Coop, Migros and fenaco, dominate the markets. The industrialisation of production in efficient international supply chains is most advanced in the production of eggs and chicken. Here, too, the supply chains are not very transparent. According to model calculations, more than 50% of the total greenhouse gas emissions due to Swiss agriculture are directly attributable to livestock farming, 20% to the rest of agriculture and about 30% occur in the countries where animal feedstuff is grown. If feedstuff were not imported, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 40%. The nitrogen surpluses in Swiss agriculture are also largely a result of livestock farming. More than 90% of the surpluses occur in Switzerland. Without feedstuff imports, the nitrogen surpluses in Switzerland would be reduced by 26%. The results of the research and model calculations thus lead to five conclusions: I. The industry's advertising images and messages are misleading and gloss over livestock farming in Switzerland and its dependence on imports. They shape the perceptions of the population and increase the demand for animal food products "from Switzerland". II. Governmental agencies do little to educate the population about Swiss livestock farming. They support the misleading images and messages through official terminology and reporting. Political interests favour production and sales interests over the many other societal concerns (e.g. health, environment, animal welfare, transparency, economic costs, reliability of supply). III. It is not Swiss agriculture that benefits most from fedstuff imports. This is because agriculture does not depend solely on production for its income; it receives income-securing direct payments. Rather, imports are in the interest of upstream and downstream industries. They are the ones who mainly benefit from a high rate of livestock farming at discounted prices. IV. Swiss chicken production is a clear example: the doubling of production in the last 20 years has benefited a few upstream and downstream companies, a handful of global breeding companies and only a very small proportion of farms. The expansion of chicken fattening is a questionable development in Swiss livestock farming. It is further encouraged by the current debate concerning the environment and the climate as chicken is considered resource-efficient and 'climate friendly'. V. As a guiding principle for the future, it is proposed that Swiss livestock farming be adapted to the local ecosystem boundaries in Switzerland, and that the consumption by the Swiss population be adapted to global ecosystem boundaries. This would mean being able to halve meat consumption at the very least.

Der Verlust der biologischen Vielfalt stellt eines der größten Umweltprobleme dar. In der 1992 gegründeten Konvention zur Biologischen Vielfalt (CBD) koordinieren sich nun die bislang 196 Mitgliedsstaaten in ihrem Bestreben, die Biodiversität zu erhalten. Jedoch wurden die globalen Biodiversitätssziele für 2010 weit verfehlt. Die Analysen des vierten Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-4) sowie aktuelle wissenschaftliche, globale Studien zeigen auf, dass bei derzeitigen Entwicklungen auch die in Aichi (Japan) beschlossenen Biodiversitätssziele des Strategischen Planes für die Periode bis 2021 nicht erreicht werden (Tittensor et al. 2014). Sich dieser Entwicklung entgegenzustellen ist eine besonders schwierige Aufgabe für biodiversitätsreiche Länder des globalen Südens, die Umweltschutzziele mit ökonomischen Interessen koordinieren müssen. Peru ist eines der 20 megadiversen Länder der Erde, Mitglied der CBD und verfolgt eine ambitionierte Strategie zum Schutz und zur nachhaltigen Nutzung von Biodiversität. Zum anderen ist Perus ökonomische Entwicklung auf Expansion und Extraktion von natürlichen Ressourcen ausgerichtet. Politische Maßnahmen zum Schutz der biologischen Vielfalt sind somit stets einem starken Interessenkonflikt ausgesetzt. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, am Beispiel Perus Ansatzpunkte zu identifizieren, mit deren Hilfe die Politik zum Schutz der biologischen Vielfalt effektiver gestaltet werden kann. Nach einer Einleitung in die Debatte der Effektivität der Biodiversitätspolitik und einer Vorstellung der Fallstudie Peru werden die folgenden wissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen untersucht (die Nummerierung entspricht der jeweiligen Publikation): 1. Welcher Narrative bedienen sich peruanische Biodiversitätsexperten, um das Problem des Biodiversitätsverlustes und ihre Perspektive auf eine nachhaltige Entwicklung zu beschreiben? 2. Wie sind Biodiversitätsnarrative im Verhältnis zur geschichtlichen Entwicklung Perus entstanden und welchen Einfluss hatten diese Bewegungen auf den nationalen Diskurs? 3. Wie bewerten lokale Experten die Auslöser und Effekte des Biodiversitätsverlustes und welche Schlussfolgerungen können daraus für die nationale Politik gezogen werden? 4. Inwieweit ist der Schutz der Biodiversität in die Strategien der nationalen, politischen Sektoren integriert? 5. Welche Bedingungen bei der Landnutzungsplanung in Migrantengemeinden in der Pufferzone des Nationalparks Cordillera Azul ermöglichten die Integration von lokalem und technischem Wissen zur Bildung von adaptiver Kapazität? Für die Betrachtung des Problems "Biodiversitätsverlust" und der Herausforderung, Naturschutzpolitik effektiver zu gestalten, war eine Verwendung von verschiedenen methodologischen Blickwinkeln notwendig. So wurden 72 semi-strukturierte, qualitative Einzelinterviews mit Experten, die im Bereich der Biodiversitätsschutzes tätig sind, durchgeführt. Durch die Anwendung des theoretischen Samplings wurde sichergestellt, dass möglichst verschiedene Perspektiven und Akteursgruppen repräsentiert werden. Alle interviewten Experten wurden danach befragt, wie sie das Biodiversitätsproblem bewerten, auf welche Auslöser oder Ursachen es zurückzuführen ist und wie mögliche Lösungsansätze aussehen könnten. Unter Anwendung der Grounded Theory konnten dann die fünf Narrativgruppen "Biodiversity Protectionists", "Biodiversity Capitalists", "Biodiversity Traditionalists", "Biodiversity Localists" and "Biodiversity Pragmatists" identifiziert werden. Publikation 1 analysiert die Narrativgruppen und diskutiert ihre Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in den fünf biodiversitätsrelevanten Kategorien "Konzept von Biodiversität", "Rolle von Akteuren", "Werte- und Wissenssysteme und Nachhaltigkeit" sowie "politische Lösungsstrategien". Publikation 2 setzt die Narrativgruppen in den historischen Kontext, auf den sie sich aufgrund ihrer Argumentationslinien beziehen. Für Publikation 3 wurden im Rahmen des partizipativen Prozesses zur Entwicklung einer neuen Biodiversitätsstrategie im Jahre 2012 Fokusgruppendiskussionen mit verschiedenen, von Regionalregierungen entsandten Experten aus Politik, Forschung, Wirtschaft und Naturschutzverbänden durchgeführt. In diesen Fokusgruppen - Diskussionen sollten die Experten die wichtigsten Auslöser und Effekte des Biodiversitätsverlustes in ihrer Region bestimmen. Durch die Anwendung einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse wurden diese Auslöser und Effekte charakterisiert und gruppiert. Es wird so ein Kontext des Biodiversitätsverlustes aufgezeigt, anhand dessen sich eine Reihe wichtiger Implikationen für die nationale Biodiversitätspolitik herauskristallisieren. Die Berücksichtigung dieser Implikationen in den Strategien der nationalen, politischen Sektoren wird in Publikation 4 untersucht. Dem Ansatz der "Environmental Policy Integration" (EPI) folgend wird hier untersucht, inwieweit nationale, politische, biodiversitätsrelevante Sektoren in Peru das Ziel des Biodiversitätsschutzes in ihre politischen Strategien integrieren. Für die Untersuchung wurden neben den Strategieplänen der einzelnen Sektoren Experteninterviews geführt und weitere Dokumente analysiert, die sich im Zuge der Untersuchung als für die Fragestellung besonders relevant erwiesen. Für Publikation 5 wurden die Faktoren analysiert, die während der partizipativen Landnutzungsplanung in Migrantengemeinden in der Pufferzone des Nationalparks Cordillera Azul zur Entwicklung von adaptiven Kapazitäten geführt haben. Eine kartographische Analyse von Satellitenbildern half bei der Erhebung der Entwaldungsrate in der Region. Basierend auf qualitativen Interviews mit Gemeindemitgliedern und -vertretern, NGO-Angestellten und den Prozessmoderatoren wurden Faktoren identifiziert, die die erfolgreiche Integration technischen und lokalen Wissens in das Ressourcenmanagement der Gemeinden ermöglichten. In einer abschließenden Synthese ergeben sich vier Faktoren, die sich, basierend auf den Ergebnissen der induktive Forschungsansätze der Publikationen, als wesentlich für die Effektivität der peruanischen Biodiversitätspolitik ergaben. Diese sind: die Definition von Biodiversitätszielen unter Einbindung verschiedener Wissens- und Wertesysteme, das Operationalisieren von Biodiversitätszielen, die Kapazitätenentwicklung für integrierte Biodiversitätsplanung sowie die Bildung von Sozialkapital für Zusammenarbeit. Abschließend wurde untersucht, inwieweit diese Faktoren in den Aktivitäten des Biodiversitätssektors aufgegriffen werden. Als empirisches Material dienten dazu die Peruanische Biodiversitätsstrategie, qualitative Experteninterviews und Beobachtungen aus der Teilnahme am partizipativen Prozess zur Erstellung der Biodiversitätsstrategie. ; Biodiversity loss is one of the most pressing global environmental problems of our generation. Member states to the Convention on Biological Diversity are developing national biodiversity strategies to conserve biodiversity in their countries. In the current global negotiations, different financial mechanisms are developed to particularly support poor, biologically diverse countries in the global South in their conservation efforts. In order to assure effectiveness of those efforts, research is needed to shed light on the policy processes in those countries. My research aims at developing a model to evaluate the effectiveness of biodiversity policies on various levels. As a first step towards this ambitious target, factors that are found to be crucial for the performance of biodiversity policies are evaluated in separate sub-projects and published as articles. Those aspects will later add to a comprehensive model for the assessment of biodiversity policies. Article 1 (Conservation Narratives in Peru - Envisioning Biodiversity in Sustainable Development) use grounded theory to distinguish the five groups of conservation narratives Biodiversity Protectionists, Biodiversity Traditionalists, Biodiversity Localists, Biodiversity Pragmatists and Biodiversity Capitalists. These groups are each presented along comparable aspects, such as the location of biodiversity in relation to the human life, valuation and knowledge systems, participation and leadership, substitutability of natural capital and its predominant political strategy. The presented results present an analytical scaffold to organise the conservation debates in Peru. These findings serve an example of how to break down the complex concepts of biodiversity conservation and sustainability and relate them to their political context and local implementation. Article 2 (Incorporating Biodiversity Conservation in Peruvian Development - A history with different episodes) connects the narrative groups identified in article 1 to historical conservation movements in Peru. This article analyses how these different groups emerged and started to develop a discourse on biodiversity conservation. After conducting qualitative interviews with stakeholders, discourse groups were identified and described with regard to their historical appearance. While those different discourse groups do not automatically contradict or exclude each other, this article sheds light on the different historical situations and motivations underlying these discourses. Article 3 (Learning from local knowledge in Peru—Ideas for more effective biodiversity conservation) explores the causes and effects that experts from Peruvian political regions connect to biodiversity loss. In four macro-regional workshops, experts from 22 Peruvian political regions were asked to state causes and effects of biodiversity loss in focus groups. Analysing this data, I show that even though biodiversity appears as a broad, complex concept of human-nature interactions, it can be clustered into different categories of tangible aspects. Furthermore I propose analysis of the problem of biodiversity loss in three dimensions of ecological impacts, human activities and developments, and political output. I argue that doing so can help enhancing transparency and effectiveness of biodiversity policies. Article 4 (Biodiversity Policy Integration as Conceptual Approach to Mainstreaming - Experiences from Peru) evaluates the inclusion of biodiversity conservation into sectoral policies along the dimensions inclusion, operationalization, coherence, capacity and weighting. Sectoral action plans, the design and institutional arrangement of policy instruments and qualitative expert interviews serve as the main sources for this study. As part of the participatory process leading to the development of the updated Peruvian Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), the integration of biodiversity targets into the national development plan, and the organisation of the different political actors in a national commission on biodiversity further help integrating the target of biodiversity. However, while the issues of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are taken up by the strategy plans, they lack operationalization and institutional capacity for its implementation. Economic processes with a high potential of threats to biodiversity, such as overfishing, ecosystem degradation through extractive processes and infrastructural expansion are only marginally targeted. Possible institutional mechanisms for the coordination of political interests, such as an integrated land-use planning on the regional and local level still lack a necessary legal framework and appear to lack the necessary political commitment. Artikle 5 (Building adaptive capacity in changing SES: Integrating knowledge in communal land-use planning in the Peruvian Amazon) analyses adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems (SES) in the buffer zone of Cordillera Azul national Park (Peru). Communal participative land use planning (Zonificación Participativa Comunal– ZPC) is a tool designed for communities to organize their land use integrating conservation measures, while building knowledge on the SES. In this article, we assess to what extent the ZPC process has led to the development of adaptive capacities within SES around local communities along the dimmensions social capital, learning capacities, adaptive management and governance. Analysing these dimensions helps understanding the needs for resilient SES to cope with environmental, political, economic or social changes. It was particularly the long-term process building social capital between the instrument and local stakeholders, as well as continuously integrating, testing and reflecting technical and local knowledge that enabled communities to develop internal mechanisms supporting their adaptive capacities. Furthermore, taking leadership throughout the process, communities could adjust the ZPC to be integrated in existing formal and informal institutions governing resource use. The factors specification of contextual biodiversity targets, operationalization, social capital and the use of integrative planning instruments were identified as conditioning effective biodiversity governance. In a test of the Peruvian National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) strengths and weaknesses are assessed and options for effective implementation are identified.

Recently, a rising interest in political and economic integration/disintegration issues has been developed in the political economy field. This growing strand of literature partly draws on traditional issues of fiscal federalism and optimum public good provision and focuses on a trade-off between the benefits of centralization, arising from economies of scale or externalities, and the costs of harmonizing policies as a consequence of the increased heterogeneity of individual preferences in an international union or in a country composed of at least two regions. This thesis stems from this strand of literature and aims to shed some light on two highly relevant aspects of the political economy of European integration. The first concerns the role of public opinion in the integration process; more precisely, how economic benefits and costs of integration shape citizens' support for European Union (EU) membership. The second is the allocation of policy competences among different levels of government: European, national and regional. Chapter 1 introduces the topics developed in this thesis by reviewing the main recent theoretical developments in the political economy analysis of integration processes. It is structured as follows. First, it briefly surveys a few relevant articles on economic theories of integration and disintegration processes (Alesina and Spolaore 1997, Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina et al. 2000, Casella and Feinstein 2002) and discusses their relevance for the study of the impact of economic benefits and costs on public opinion attitude towards the EU. Subsequently, it explores the links existing between such political economy literature and theories of fiscal federalism, especially with regard to normative considerations concerning the optimal allocation of competences in a union. Chapter 2 firstly proposes a model of citizens' support for membership of international unions, with explicit reference to the EU; subsequently it tests the model on a panel of EU countries. What are the factors that influence public opinion support for the European Union (EU)? In international relations theory, the idea that citizens' support for the EU depends on material benefits deriving from integration, i.e. whether European integration makes individuals economically better off (utilitarian support), has been common since the 1970s, but has never been the subject of a formal treatment (Hix 2005). A small number of studies in the 1990s have investigated econometrically the link between national economic performance and mass support for European integration (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993; Anderson and Kalthenthaler 1996), but only making informal assumptions. The main aim of Chapter 2 is thus to propose and test our model with a view to providing a more complete and theoretically grounded picture of public support for the EU. Following theories of utilitarian support, we assume that citizens are in favour of membership if they receive economic benefits from it. To develop this idea, we propose a simple political economic model drawing on the recent economic literature on integration and disintegration processes. The basic element is the existence of a trade-off between the benefits of centralisation and the costs of harmonising policies in presence of heterogeneous preferences among countries. The approach we follow is that of the recent literature on the political economy of international unions and the unification or break-up of nations (Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina and Wacziarg 1999, Alesina et al. 2001, 2005a, to mention only the relevant). The general perspective is that unification provides returns to scale in the provision of public goods, but reduces each member state's ability to determine its most favoured bundle of public goods. In the simple model presented in Chapter 2, support for membership of the union is increasing in the union's average income and in the loss of efficiency stemming from being outside the union, and decreasing in a country's average income, while increasing heterogeneity of preferences among countries points to a reduced scope of the union. Afterwards we empirically test the model with data on the EU; more precisely, we perform an econometric analysis employing a panel of member countries over time. The second part of Chapter 2 thus tries to answer the following question: does public opinion support for the EU really depend on economic factors? The findings are broadly consistent with our theoretical expectations: the conditions of the national economy, differences in income among member states and heterogeneity of preferences shape citizens' attitude towards their country's membership of the EU. Consequently, this analysis offers some interesting policy implications for the present debate about ratification of the European Constitution and, more generally, about how the EU could act in order to gain more support from the European public. Citizens in many member states are called to express their opinion in national referenda, which may well end up in rejection of the Constitution, as recently happened in France and the Netherlands, triggering a European-wide political crisis. These events show that nowadays understanding public attitude towards the EU is not only of academic interest, but has a strong relevance for policy-making too. Chapter 3 empirically investigates the link between European integration and regional autonomy in Italy. Over the last few decades, the double tendency towards supranationalism and regional autonomy, which has characterised some European States, has taken a very interesting form in this country, because Italy, besides being one of the founding members of the EU, also implemented a process of decentralisation during the 1970s, further strengthened by a constitutional reform in 2001. Moreover, the issue of the allocation of competences among the EU, the Member States and the regions is now especially topical. The process leading to the drafting of European Constitution (even if then it has not come into force) has attracted much attention from a constitutional political economy perspective both on a normative and positive point of view (Breuss and Eller 2004, Mueller 2005). The Italian parliament has recently passed a new thorough constitutional reform, still to be approved by citizens in a referendum, which includes, among other things, the so called "devolution", i.e. granting the regions exclusive competence in public health care, education and local police. Following and extending the methodology proposed in a recent influential article by Alesina et al. (2005b), which only concentrated on the EU activity (treaties, legislation, and European Court of Justice's rulings), we develop a set of quantitative indicators measuring the intensity of the legislative activity of the Italian State, the EU and the Italian regions from 1973 to 2005 in a large number of policy categories. By doing so, we seek to answer the following broad questions. Are European and regional legislations substitutes for state laws? To what extent are the competences attributed by the European treaties or the Italian Constitution actually exerted in the various policy areas? Is their exertion consistent with the normative recommendations from the economic literature about their optimum allocation among different levels of government? The main results show that, first, there seems to be a certain substitutability between EU and national legislations (even if not a very strong one), but not between regional and national ones. Second, the EU concentrates its legislative activity mainly in international trade and agriculture, whilst social policy is where the regions and the State (which is also the main actor in foreign policy) are more active. Third, at least two levels of government (in some cases all of them) are significantly involved in the legislative activity in many sectors, even where the rationale for that is, at best, very questionable, indicating that they actually share a larger number of policy tasks than that suggested by the economic theory. It appears therefore that an excessive number of competences are actually shared among different levels of government. From an economic perspective, it may well be recommended that some competences be shared, but only when the balance between scale or spillover effects and heterogeneity of preferences suggests so. When, on the contrary, too many levels of government are involved in a certain policy area, the distinction between their different responsibilities easily becomes unnecessarily blurred. This may not only leads to a slower and inefficient policy-making process, but also risks to make it too complicate to understand for citizens, who, on the contrary, should be able to know who is really responsible for a certain policy when they vote in national,local or European elections or in referenda on national or European constitutional issues.

Summary of Doctoral Dissertation Assessment of Innovation Effects of Mergers The adequate consideration of innovation effects of mergers in merger review was ; and still is ; one of the most controversially discussed issues between antitrust scholars. In this connection the question has been raised whether the traditional categories in competition law are sufficiently suitable for dealing with innovation aspects or whether new concepts for the assessment of innovation effects of mergers are needed. This argument relates to the question whether the firms who compete in regard to existing products necessarily play a role in regard to innovation competition. Or ; by asking the opposite question ; whether there are perhaps additional firms (by also accounting for firms outside the current product market) that actually compete with one another in the sphere of innovation. Thus ; although the assessment of product markets as a device to identify the relevant competitors is a well-founded step to protect static price and non-price competition ; the sole assessment of the respective product market will probably not reflect the true situation regarding innovation competition. Accordingly ; each of the five articles of this thesis builds on the idea that the relevant competitors in terms of innovation do not necessarily correspond to the relevant competitors on existing product markets. From an economic perspective the definition of "markets" was always only a vehicle for identifying the set of relevant competing firms. In a concept of static competition ; it was logical to use the set of current products ; and analyze their substitutability conditions from the demand and the supply side in order to determine the set of relevant competitors. However ; the attempt to stick to the product market concept for defining the relevant competitors for innovation is theoretically deeply flawed. Since the production and sale of products does not require the same resources and capabilities as the generation of innovations ; a general assumption of such an identity cannot be defended. This discussion led to the development of the so-called "Innovation Market Analysis" (IMA) ; an innovation-specific assessment approach ; in the 1990s. Even though the IMA was also applied to a significant number of U.S. merger cases in the years thereafter ; it was heavily criticized by many lawyers and economists. Hence ; it is still not clear how antitrust agencies should deal with innovation aspects in the review process of mergers. This research project assesses how and to what extent the U.S. antitrust authorities in their case practice investigated mergers on possible negative effects on innovation and whether the investigation concepts are appropriate or need to be developed. Particular relevant questions which arise in this connection are: (1) how the firms ; which compete with one another in the sphere of innovation ; should be identified. This raises the question whether the identification of the relevant competitors should be carried out by relying on the traditional product market concept ; or whether there is a need to use/develop alternative approaches ; such as the "Innovation Market Analysis". (2) In this connection it is also necessary to consider the theory of harm behind the claimed negative effects of mergers on innovation. Should competition authorities rely predominantly on well-established arguments about innovation incentives ; provided by the neoclassical industrial organization literature ; or is it instead advisable to also include the insights provided by other strains of literature ; e.g. the evolutionary economics literature? (3) How should an adequate assessment framework ; which would help competition authorities to deal with innovation effects of mergers look like? How can it account for the complex and often divergent effects between competition and innovation while providing legal guidance at the same time? These research questions are addressed by this dissertation ; both from a theoretical/conceptual (articles 1-3) ; as well as from an empirical perspective (articles 4-5). It is remarkable ; that the data set which was generated in connection with the empirical part of the present work is unique and provides the basis for the only econometric analysis of the U.S. merger control practice with respect to the consideration of innovation aspects which exists so far. The first article deals with the question of how the firms which compete with one another in the sphere of innovation should be identified and whether these mergers should be assessed under the theory of Innovation Markets ; Future Markets or Potential Competition. Traditionally ; competition authorities tend to focus on the assessment of competition on relevant product markets. Hereby ; the relevant firms that compete with one another are identified ; and possible anticompetitive effects are revealed. But ; in contrast to competition concerning prices ; quantities ; or product quality ; competition in the sphere of innovation is not necessarily tied to existing product markets. The same holds true for the counterexample. Competition authorities might find that a certain product market is highly concentrated. However ; by also accounting for innovation competitors outside the current product market (e.g. ; firms that are well situated to undertake R&D in a particular field or firms that are already undertaking R&D) ; the merger could appear less anticompetitive ; at least in respect to innovation. Hence ; this first article reviews the (existing) approaches that can generally be used for the assessment of anticompetitive innovation effects in merger control and explores these approaches through exemplary merger cases. In this connection the paper develops six case groups of merger cases in which innovation aspects play a role. Based on these case groups ; the paper demonstrates that the traditional approaches of 'potential competition' and 'future markets' cannot account for all aspects of innovation competition. In addition ; the article also shows that it is furthermore questionable whether the 'future market' concept can capture innovation competition to its full extent ; even in those merger cases in which it can generally be applied. However ; the 'Innovation Market Analysis' ; the only tool especially designed to account for innovation competition so far ; also has several shortcomings. Hence ; at present there is no clear-cut approach which the antitrust agencies in the U.S. as well as in the E.U. could utilize as reference for an intervention aimed at the protection of innovation competition. The development of a revised approach for the assessment of potential anticompetitive innovation effects in merger reviews is therefore required. Nevertheless ; the 'IMA' might still serve as a good starting point for the development of such a revised framework. Specifically ; the framework should incorporate the concept of assessing relevant innovation competitors independently of their role on current product markets – a breakthrough idea that was introduced in the 'IMA'. The second article builds on the results of the first article. Hereby the paper aims to develop the basic outlines for an assessment framework which could help competition authorities to deal with innovation effects of mergers and which could furthermore provide legal guidance. In addition ; this contribution will specially cater for the implications which result from the separate consideration of innovation competition from actual product markets for the relationship between competition ; concentration and innovation. These implications arise from the fact that the differentiation into product market competition on the one hand and innovation competition on the other ; does not only have consequences for the identification of the relevant competitors ; but is also crucial for assessing the anticompetitive effects of mergers on innovation. Consider for instance a merger which takes place between firms that compete with one another only in terms of innovation (leaving product market competition unaffected). This would imply that only a fraction of the insights ; provided by the vast array of theoretical models ; matters in this concrete merger review. Hence ; these types of mergers require focusing on different models in order to gain insights for the assessment of possible anticompetitive innovation effects ; than a merger taking place between two firms that do also compete with one another on pre-innovation product markets. As a consequence ; since mergers of firms that compete with one another in the sphere of innovation could leave product market concentration unaffected ; it is very questionable whether the findings about the ambiguous interrelationship between product market competition and innovation can be transferred one-to-one to the assessment of those mergers. Therefore ; this paper analyzes the model-theoretic industrial organization literature and its findings about competition and the incentives to invest in product innovation oriented R&D against the background of this distinction into innovation competition on the one hand and product market competition on the other. For this purpose ; we firstly reviewed the broad range of theoretical models ; provided by the industrial organization literature. Hereby we particularly examined the underlying mechanisms of the models with respect to the question whether they rely on pre-innovation product market competition ; or not. As a consequence ; we received two distinct groups of potential innovation effects of mergers. The first group consists of effects which hinge on a change of current product market concentration ; while the second group encompasses those kinds of effect which come into play even though pre-innovation product market competition is unaffected. Consequently ; the effects of the first group are only relevant ; if pre-innovation product market structure is affected by a certain merger ; while the effects of the second group have to be considered even in those situations in which mergers do only affect innovation competition. Due to the fact that not every innovation effect is always relevant and since these innovation effects can furthermore have different impacts due to prevailing industry- and competition characteristics ; it is helpful to assess the effects of mergers on innovation within certain case groups. However ; in order to build these case groups ; it is necessary to find the appropriate differentiation criteria. For this purpose ; this article aims at identifying the relevant determinants ; which are decisive for how a certain effect (e.g. the escape competition effect or the replacement effect) acts on the incentives to innovate. The identification and categorization of the innovation effects and relevant determinants thereby provides (1) a checklist of assessment criteria which antitrust authorities should take into account when analyzing innovation effects of mergers. (2) Besides this ; this paper furthermore demonstrates how the development of such a decision theoretic assessment framework could be achieved. Such an assessment approach would allow combining the objective of a case-specific analysis with the requirement that this analysis is carried out in a consistent and transparent manner. It would therefore be in the spirit of a rule-based competition policy which is ; from a law and economics perspective ; ought to reduce error costs ; give legal guidance and reduce legal uncertainty. Apart from that ; the paper aims to demonstrate that the link between competition and the incentives to undertake product innovation oriented R&D ; which can be derived from the industrial organization literature ; is not always that unclear as it seems on the first sight. Especially with respect to mergers between firms that compete with one another in terms of innovation ; absent/detached from actual product markets ; the relationship appears to be far less cloudy. The third article then focuses on the question about the appropriate theory of harm behind the claimed negative effects of mergers on innovation. Traditionally ; the discussion about anticompetitive innovation effects of mergers focused on the question whether a more or rather a less concentrated market structure (mostly narrowed to product market structure) is beneficial to innovation. However ; until to date ; theoretical as well as empirical contributions delivered rather contradictory results in the sense that they support the proposition that highly competitive just as much as more concentrated markets can basically spur innovation. Hence ; from this perspective ; it is not clear whether a merger ; which leads to a higher market concentration ; is detrimental or maybe even beneficial to innovation. However ; while mainstream economics focuses almost exclusively on the likely effects of a change of market structure on the firms' incentives to invest in R&D and their ability to innovate ; a change of the market structure can also have an additional effect on innovation. This effect originates from the fact that a merger ; which causes a reduction of the number of innovation competitors ; can also harm innovation because it reduces the variety of heterogeneous entities which are currently undertaking R&D or which are well situated to undertake R&D in a certain field. Assuming that companies differ not only with respect to their cost functions ; but also in terms of their resources ; organizational structure ; corporate culture ; as well as with respect to their expectations about promising areas of business and research projects ; then the reduction of the number of competitors may already be detrimental to the overall innovativeness of an industry. Against this background ; "diversity" can be considered as another dimension of the process of innovation competition - a dimension which ; in addition to the firms' incentives and capabilities to innovate ; might be worth protecting. However ; this property of competition is much less recognized in the respective antitrust literature. One explanation for this phenomenon might be the fact that mainstream economics and especially the modern industrial organization literature have fundamental difficulties to capture this dimension of competition ; which Joseph Farrell therefore called vividly "the dark matter of competition". Apart from that it is also argued that ; if "diversity" indeed has a noticeable effect on innovation ; a merged entity should have an incentive to preserve such a fruitful environment in-house. Hence ; a reduction of "diversity" among different firms ("inter-firm diversity") might get balanced by an increase of the diversity within the remaining firms ("intra-firm diversity") by itself. As a consequence ; if one had to expect such an effect ; antitrust authorities would have no reason to further consider this issue. By assessing the management and organizational science literature ; this first article aims to bring to light whether and how firms consider the preservation of "diversity" ; (1) either as a consequence of a newly created "intra-firm diversity" ; or (2) because of a direct maintenance of an acquired firm's autonomy ; after a merger. For this purpose this contribution firstly investigates the "Corporate Entrepreneurship" (CE) literature which highlights the creation of independent subunits and spinoffs within a corporation. It is thereby demonstrated that the idea of a creation of independent entities in-house is indeed considered as an important determinant for the innovativeness and general performance of firms. However ; it is also shown that firms ; pursuing a CE strategy ; will most likely face several grave implementation problems and trade-offs. The same holds true for a direct maintenance of "diversity" after a merger. Although the examined literature on post-merger integration presents strong arguments in favor of securing an acquired firm's independence and autonomy in order to keep its innovation capacity ; it also indicates that there will emerge a trade-off between this objective and the realization of efficiency gains through integration. Hence ; on the one hand ; the extensive management and organizational science literature suggests that considerations about the preservation of "diversity" in merger review might be exaggerated because firms should indeed have a strong incentive to preserve "diversity" in-house. On the other hand the analysis also shows that antitrust authorities cannot trust in the creation/maintenance of such an "intra-firm diversity" after a merger ; since the merged entity will most likely face grave implementation problems and trade-offs. Whilst the first three articles focus on theoretical/conceptual questions ; the forth article analyses empirically how the applied U.S. antitrust dealt with these issues in connection with the assessment of innovation effects in merger reviews. The decision to analyse the U.S. merger control practice stems from the fact that the U.S. authorities have examined a far greater number of mergers also towards innovation effects ; than the European Commission. In this respect the paper analyzes the "complaints" and "decision and orders" in the course of an exhaustive survey from all 399 mergers ; challenged by the DOJ or FTC in the period between 1995 and 2008. By using probit techniques ; the econometric study tackles the question of how and to what extent the U.S. agencies have assessed innovation effects of mergers. Additionally ; it is also asked whether the two agencies have used the same or different approaches in regard to innovation effects of mergers ; and whether we can observe developments during this period 1995 until 2008 in regard to these assessments. Important questions in that regard were (1) whether the U.S. authorities used predominantly a traditional assessment approach based upon the product market concept or whether they also used more innovation-specific assessment approaches ; e.g. the "Innovation Market Analysis". (2) In addition ; it is important what theory of harm was brought forward in connection with the claimed anticompetitive innovation effects. Overall ; the results about the practice of the assessment of innovation effects of mergers by the two U.S. antitrust authorities are very mixed and ambivalent. It is shown ; that the agencies had innovation concerns in 135 mergers and that both agencies did consider for innovation effects in a third of all cases. However ; on the basis of the 323 relevant markets with innovation aspects ; the study also reveals that the two agencies did not have a clear and consistent assessment approach ; and that both of them differed significantly also in regard to the question whether a more traditional product market approach should be used (mainly the DOJ) or whether a more innovation-specific approach should be applied ; in which innovation is already considered in the market definition. A problematic outcome of our investigation is that in most cases the agencies gave no specific reasoning why the merger should lead to negative effects on innovation. Only in a minority of cases innovation incentive arguments and in some cases diversity arguments were mentioned. Another surprising and puzzling result is that the agencies increasingly have claimed simultaneously negative innovation and static price effects which can be interpreted as a sign of insecurity of the agencies ; leading them to backing up their innovation concerns with more traditional and well-established claims about price effects. As a result ; the article demonstrates that ; on the one hand ; assessing innovation effects is a well-established practice in U.S. merger policy ; but ; on the other hand ; there are also a lot of inconsistencies and open conceptual questions in regard to the assessment approach ; which also have not diminished over time. The fifth and last paper of the dissertation builds mainly on the empirical results of the forth paper and aims to put the observations into a wider picture by also incorporating the findings of the three theoretical/conceptual articles. For this purpose ; the paper starts with reviewing the rich theoretical and empirical literature on competition and innovation. Hereby the theoretical models and reasonings get examined against the background of the differentiation into models which rely solely on innovation competition and those which do also incorporate current product market competition ; proposed in the second paper of this dissertation. This structured overview is followed by an investigation of the vast array of the empirical studies on industry structure and innovation ; market structure and innovation ; and mergers and innovation. After introducing the existing assessment concepts for innovation effects of mergers ; the empirical results of the forth article are introduced and subsequently assessed from a high-level competition policy perspective. Besides this ; the article also provides a qualitative analysis of important merger cases after 2008 as well as an analysis of the U.S. Merger Policy under the Obama Administration and the reform discussion leading to the revision of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2010. Hereby it is shown (1) that the cautious approach of assessing innovation effects has not changed under the Obama Administration ; and (2) that despite the general consensus about the importance of innovation effects ; the U.S. discussion is still very critical to more innovation-specific approaches in merger reviews. This can also be seen in the revised U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines ; which stick entirely to the traditional product market approach. In that respect ; the guidelines also do not seem to reflect the already well-established practice of the U.S. antitrust agencies of using innovation-specific assessment approaches to a considerable extent. Instead ; the results provided by the empirical analysis of the fourth paper of this dissertation offer good reasons to assume that this reluctance to consider innovation effects in the Guidelines lies to a large extent in the uncertainty about how competition authorities should assess the impact of a merger on innovation. This uncertainty appears to be the consequence of the disagreement about how competition authorities should grasp and assess the innovation effects of mergers properly. Finally the article concludes by proposing different perspectives for future research. In this connection it is proposed to (1) base the theory of harm regarding mergers and innovation not exclusively on neoclassical economics ; but to also include the evolutionary economics literature which is generally more suited to deal with dynamic innovation effects. (2) Besides this ; future research should focus on the question of how the relevant innovation competitors should be identified most reliable. The first article of this dissertation showed that the "Innovation Market Analysis" started to ask the right questions about "overlapping R&D" and about the existence of "specialized assets" ; which can be interpreted as barriers to entry into innovation competition. (3) Last but not least ; this paper establishes reference to the second article of this dissertation which already discussed the necessity of developing a structured investigation and assessment approach ; capable of dealing with the problem that the innovation effects of mergers might be very different under different circumstances.