Research areas
In the following you find an overview of some of the topics on which we conduct research. Visit the individual profiles on the team page for more details and individual projects.
Political Economy
The area of Political Economics deals with the economic analysis of politics and the behavior of individuals which engage in politics. This includes voters, political candidates, legislatures, political parties and the media. Applications include the analysis of voting behavior, the platform choice of political parties and the behavior of legislatures.
Public Economics
Public Economics analyzes the role of the state in an economy. Topics include, among others, optimal taxation and the provision of public goods. The area of optimal taxation deals with the impact of taxes and subsidies on an economy, which a government is implementing in order to achieve specific goals (as for instance the provision of public goods, incentivizing a desired consumption and investment behavior or redistribution). Public Good provision analyzes how much the government should invest into the provision of public goods, as for instance education or infrastructure as streets, to maximize total welfare.
Industrial Organization
In the area of Industrial Organization, the behavior of firms and consumers engaging in imperfect competition is analyzed. Contrary to perfect competition, single firms can affect prices either directly or indirectly through the supply of a particular number of goods. Contrary to a market which consists of a monopolist, the behavior of rivals has an impact on the strategic decision making of a firm. To model situations like this, tools from the area of Game Theory are used. Further topics are product differentiation, horizontal mergers and vertical integration. The related area of Competition Polity takes a regulatory approach, where one analyses the impact of market regulations on the total welfare of an economy.