Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 9 December 2020
You are invited to join the weekly Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 9 December 2020 at 13:15. The seminar will be held via Zoom. Biliana Yontcheva (University of Düsseldorf) will be talking about “Private Monopoly and Restricted Entry – Evidence from the Notary Profession”.
Please find below the abstract:
This paper studies entry and price restrictions in a private monopoly: the Latin notary system. Under this widespread system the State appoints notaries and grants them exclusive rights to produce authentic deeds that certify various important economic transactions, including real estate, business registrations, and marriage and inheritance contracts. We develop an empirical framework to understand the goals behind the entry and price restrictions. Our spatial demand model shows that additional notaries mainly entail business stealing, and limited market expansion. Our production model reveals substantial unexploited scale economies and considerable market power. Conditional on the fixed prices, we find evidence of excessive entry and a bias towards maintaining single-notary firms instead of more efficient associations. A counterfactual analysis evaluates how the present regulations may be revised to improve efficiency and to decrease the cost of these services for the final consumer.