I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (Heinrich Heine University) . I have just successfully completed my PhD-Thesis "Five Empirical Essays on Competition Policy and Health Economics" at the University of Giessen.
My main research areas are Applied Microeconomics and Empirical Industrial Organization. In particular, I analyze price regulations in international book markets and competition restrictions in energy markets by employing causal inference methods. I have also evaluated vaccination campaigns in Europe during the Covid-19 crisis. Recently, I have extended my research scope to projects in transport markets as well as to political economy.
I am working as an economic expert in cartel damage claims by preparing reports to companies, authorities and courts. Moreover, I have also gained experience in scientific policy advise.
Contact Details
University e-mail: klotz@dice.hhu.de
Private e-mail: p.klotz@outlook.de
Postal Address: Heinrich Heine University, Oeconomicum, Building No. 24.31, Universitätsstr. 1, D-40225 Düsseldorf
News:
Our working paper Digital vs. Physical Goods: Evidence from the Book Market (with Maximilian Maurice Gail) is now available on SSRN.
Abstract
The digitization has reshaped the multimedia industry in a tremendous way and particularly driven the transition from physical to digital goods. With respect to the book industry, Amazon reported that purchases of e-books had surpassed those of print books for the first time in 2011. The goal of this paper is to examine the substitutability between digital and print book formats in a country with fixed book prices (Germany) and a country without such regulated prices (United Kingdom). We use a unique cross-sectional data set of book prices for these two countries and exploit genre as well as publisher variation to estimate cross-format elasticities in an IV setting. We find that consumers basically consider e-books as substitutes for print books, even though there are country-, genre- and format-specific differences. Our results have important implications for the implementation of fixed book prices and the taxation of different book formats as well as for the release strategies of the publishers for the individual book formats.
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The paper Pass-through of temporary fuel tax reductions: Evidence from Europe (with Chiara Drolsbach and Maximilian Maurice Gail) has been accepted for publication in Energy Policy.
Abstract
Several European countries have implemented temporary fuel tax reductions in 2022 to relieve the financial burden on their citizens. This paper is the first to provide estimates of the pass-through rates as well as the effect on retail margins for France and Italy. Further, it contributes to the recent literature on the fuel tax reduction in Germany. Using a unique data set containing daily consumer prices at service station chain level for gasoline and diesel, we employ a staggered Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design. Our main results imply that in the aggregate there was a full-shifting of the fuel tax reductions in all three countries. Nevertheless, in an event study design we find that the pass-through rates over time are heterogeneous between the countries and types of fuel. Depending on time, heterogeneous effects imply a full-shifting up to a minor over-shifting of the pass-through rates. These findings also have important implications for the effective design of unconventional fiscal policy as well as for competition policy in the fuel market.
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A recent working paper on the effect of superspreading events with a relatively high share of vaccinated people in the population on the Covid-19 case rate and hospitalization is now available on SSRN:
Munich Goes Viral - The Oktoberfest in Times of COVID-19 (with Daniel Herold and Jan Thomas Schäfer)
Abstract
With about 6 million visitors, the 2022 Oktoberfest in Germany has been one of the largest in-person social events following the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite high vaccination rates in Germany at that time, health authorities pointed out the high risk of getting infected at such events. Using a unique dataset, we estimate the causal impact of the 2022 Oktoberfest on the spread of infection by applying an event study design. Our results imply a significant increase in the infection rates during and after the Oktoberfest for middle-aged individuals. However, the case rate drops relatively quickly after the Oktoberfest. This suggests that the event did not trigger an Oktoberfest-wave. We also find no significant effect of the fair on the infection rates of the remaining age cohorts below 15 and above 60 years of age. A robustness check using the hospitalization rate as dependent variable confirms those results. Our findings have important implications for regulations of large social events in times of Covid-19, when the share of vaccinated people in the population is already relatively high.