ZEW Sponsors’ Association Awards Science Prizes Again
Awards
For the second time, the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice has awarded two science prizes, honouring outstanding scientific performances and economic policy advising projects at ZEW Mannheim. The prizes each come with a €5,000 endowment and were handed over by Dr. Georg Müller, chairman of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association and CEO at MVV Energie.
The prize for the best scientific performance went to Dr. Reinhold Kesler and his co-authors, ZEW Research Associate Assistant Professor Ulrich Laitenberger from Télécom ParisTech and Junior Professor Matthias Hunold from the University of Siegen, for their study “Hotel Rankings of Online Travel Agents, Channel Pricing, and Consumer Protection”. In their study, the researchers examine the criteria used by online hotel booking portals to create their ranking lists for search results.
The results show that hotels get worse positions in the recommended search results, if they offer lower prices on other platforms or on the hotels’ own website. This means that the order of the search results on booking portals does not necessarily depend on which hotel is the best choice for the customer. For the study, the authors evaluated search results from three different booking portals for 250 cities in various countries over a period of six months, and tracked more than 18,000 hotels. The award-winning paper will soon also be published in the journal “Marketing Science”.
The study is of key importance for politics and consumers, said Georg Müller, chairman of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association, at the award ceremony following the lecture by Professor Christoph M. Schmidt, chair of the German Council of Economic Experts, in the ZEW event series “First-Hand Information on Economic Policy”. So far, there has been little science-based knowledge on the regulation of online platforms. The question of what consequences certain business practices of online platforms can have for competition and consumer protection is highly relevant in times when consumer behaviour is being tracked digitally, Müller said. “With these two prizes, the Sponsors’ Association wants to honour outstanding work by ZEW researchers that is scientifically excellent, attracts strong interest in politics, society and the media, and builds a bridge between science and practice,” he said in his laudatory speech.
“Excellent research and policy advice at ZEW”
The study “How Europe Can Deliver”, conducted in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung, was awarded the prize for the best economic policy advising project. The project team, led by Professor Friedrich Heinemann, head of the ZEW Research Department “Corporate Taxation and Public Finance”, and Dr. Stefani Weiss, director of the Brussels office of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, closely followed the negotiations on the EU’s new Multiannual Financial Framework for one year. At the core of the study was the question of what a new division of tasks between the EU and the Member States could look like in order to save costs and effectively tackle problems depending on policy area and level of competence. The researchers came to the conclusion that restructuring expenditure in the areas of agriculture and development aid in particular could create European added value.
In his speech, Georg Müller from the ZEW Sponsors’ Association emphasised that the project had attracted a great deal of political attention, both in the German Bundestag and in the EU Commission. It thus made a significant contribution to strengthening ZEW’s visibility in Germany and Europe.
“The two science prizes honour excellent research and advisory projects at ZEW,” said ZEW Director Thomas Kohl. “This year’s winners have made a particularly great contribution to boosting knowledge transfer and strengthening ZEW’s reputation. I am very pleased that the ZEW Sponsors’ Association is honouring these achievements and that the prizes have been awarded for the second time now.”
Last year the prizes were awarded for the first time, with Dr. Dominik Rehse receiving the prize for the best scientific performance, while the prize for the best economic policy advising project went to the ZEW researchers Professor Irene Bertschek, Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Dr. Thomas Niebel and Dr. Christian Rammer.