ZEW Discussion Papers

How do retirees choose among home equity release products? Despite housing wealth being households’ largest asset, little is known about preferences for different equity release products. We conduct a survey…

We investigate whether firms engage in VAT evasion at the retail stage—typically a point of weakness in VAT systems—in a high-enforcement, low-informality setting. To measure evasion, we exploit a reform of VAT…

We evaluate a tax reform in Ecuador that introduced generous deductions from personal income taxes (PIT), encouraging consumers to request receipts. The reform addresses tax evasion by targeting small…

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of reverse-charge mechanism (RCM) implementation on VAT compliance using an overall, countrylevel measure of VAT compliance, the VAT gap. The VAT gap is…

In response to growing economic and environmental concerns, companies in a range of industries seek to repurpose products (assets) that retain functional capacity beyond their initial first life. This paper…

Women are significantly less likely to participate in the stock market than men. We show that financial socialization plays an important role in explaining this gap. Survey data from Germany and the U.S.…

Intangible assets have increasingly been identified as a main source of productivity gains. Since the pioneering work by Corrado, Hulten, and Sichel (2005), empirical research has largely focused on macro and…

This paper explores a novel web-based indicator to examine how firms’ disclosure of university ties on their websites shapes their innovation performance. First, using data from the German Community Innovation…

Urged by the European Energy Crisis and the threatening consequences of severe natural gas shortages, energy providers launched gas-saving initiatives incorporating financial incentives to reduce residential…