German Title: Aufsätze über Preise und Preiskonvergenz

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Abstract

This thesis looks at prices in two different markets.

The first one is the market for food products in Europe. With the introduction of the common market in 1992, most European markets have been integrated. When 10 more countries joined the EU in 2004, another round of integration took place and the common market was extended to these countries as well. We analyse if retail prices for food products have converged in the time after this "shock" of the EU enlargement. While there exists an extensive literature on convergence in general, this chapter is the first to be able to look at retail price convergence within the European Union at a micro-data level. By decomposing price convergence into within sub-groups and between sub-groups of countries convergence, we add further insight to the literature on what causes the strong price convergence within the enlarged EU.

The second market this thesis looks at is the one for internet facilitated sexual services in Germany. Sex work and the advertisement thereof is legal in Germany, which has led to a range of internet platforms concerned with selling sexual services. While many platforms only contain advertisements, one of these platforms gives sex workers the opportunity to sell their services either as an auction or at a fixed price. This has allowed us to create a dataset on sex work with information based on actual concluded contracts, which is a very unique feature in this kind of literature. Furthermore, each data point is geo- and time-referenced. This dataset is used to show that 1) offering unprotected sexual services is endogenous, 2) local events influence the supply, demand and price of sexual services, and 3) regional effects influence local prices and habits.