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Combinatorial auctions are an important part of many frameworks for carrier collaboration in logistics. In the last years, many innovative auction mechanisms have been developed in the economic literature that could potentially be applied in this context and that could significantly simplify the process of determining efficient allocations of requests. These mechanisms rely on certain assumptions about the valuations of bidders. In this paper, we perform computational experiments to analyze to which extent these requirements are fulfilled for valuations derived from a simple logistics problem, the Traveling Salesman Problem. We find that bidders' valuations typically violate even very elementary requirements, but that these violations affect only a limited number of request bundles. We further analyze whether these violations exhibit a consistent pattern across multiple carriers and check consistency if route lengths are calculated exactly or approximated., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10100-023-00873-1., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of the results of an earlier paper which presented and analyzed a dynamic game model of a monetary union with coalitions between governments (fiscal policy makers) and a common central bank (monetary policy maker). Here we examine alternative values of the parameters of the underlying model to show how the earlier results depend on the numerical parameter values chosen, which were obtained by calibration instead of econometric estimation. We demonstrate that the main results are qualitatively the same as in the original model for plausible smaller and larger values of the parameters. For the few cases where they differ, we interpret the deviations in economic terms and illustrate the policies and their macroeconomic effects resulting from the change to the parameter under consideration for one of these cases., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

In the post-Covid world, our online personae have become increasingly essential mechanisms for presenting ourselves to the world. Simultaneously, new techniques for hacking online personae have become more widely available, easier to use, and more convincing. This combination, of greater reliance on online personae and easier malicious hacking, has created serious societal problems. Techniques for training users to detect false content have proved ineffective. Unfortunately, legal remedies for dealing with hacked personae have also been inadequate. Consequently, the only remaining alternative is to limit the posting of false content. In this discussion paper, we provide an overview of online personae hacking. As potential remedies, we propose to redesign search engine and social media algorithms allowing platforms to detect and restrict harmful false content and a new fundamental right for the EU Charter that would provide legal justification for platforms to protect online reputations. For those platforms that might choose not to protect online reputations, this new right would require that they do so., (© The Author(s) 2024.)