ZEW Discussion Papers

Many of today’s challenges require regulative interventions by policymakers. From an economic perspective, effectiveness, cost-efficiency and distribution issues are crucial for any form of future regulation.…

In a controversial political debate, new environmental technologies are often regarded as a job creator or – due to strict environmental policy – as a job killer. A detailed analysis for these employment effects…

In this paper we use survey responses of mayors from cities and municipalities in the German state of Baden-Württemberg to study the "true" spatial structure of local tax competition. The size of the…

Awards increase in popularity in the corporate sector, where managers consider innovative human resource practices such as awards to be essential for firm competitiveness. The prevalence and popularity of…

Among the Member States of the European Union, Romania is considered to be a low tax country. This is mainly due to the fact that the Romanian corporate income tax rate of 16 per cent currently undercuts the…

Many modern macroeconomic models either adopt a representative agent setup or introduce heterogeneity among individuals that leads only to trade in assets, while excluding the possibility that agents gain from…

Economists study the intergenerational transmission of skills and optimal human capital investment. Recent research has examined intergenerational associations of cognitive skills, trust and risk attitudes,…

In this paper, we analyze if the integration of the European mutual funds industry has brought advantages to private and institutional investors. Moreover, we examine the possible determinants of fund fees as…

Analyzing the link between market structure and market performance is of central importance in the field of industrial organization. The aim is to understand the role of market structure, i.e., the number of…