Defense of Thomas Müllner

Thomas Müllner successfully defended his Doctoral thesis “Disclosure in Vertically Related Markets: The Effects of Relative Supplier Reliance, Dual-Purpose Suppliers, and Regulatory Interplay” at the University of Graz on September 28th. His thesis was supervised by CAR’s Georg Schneider and Alfred Wagenhofer. The dissertation consists of three essays that address issues of vertically related markets and their impact on firms’ disclosure practices. In the first essay, Thomas examines the impact of different input-output ratios on the disclosure decisions of retailers in vertically related markets. In his second essay, he analyzes the effects of dual-purpose suppliers on the disclosure incentives of retailers in Cournot competition within vertically related markets. In the third essay, he studies the interaction effects between accounting conservatism and input price discrimination, exploring their implications for firms’ innovation decisions and overall welfare.