ZEW Discussion Papers

The budgetary problems of many governments which emerged as a consequence of the economic and financial crisis are on top of the political agenda. Simultaneously to the increasing debt levels, investors demanded…

There is an intensive debate among academics as well as policymakers on which of the two options of unbundling, either ownership unbundling or non-discriminatory third party access, is more appropriate to foster…

Parental investments are crucial for the children’s skill development, especially in the early years of the life-cycle. In this paper, we examine how parental health, which may cause variation in investments to…

We examine variations in the South-North ratios (emerging vs. industrialized countries) of energy and labor intensities driven by imports. We use the novel World Input-Output Database (WIOD) that provides…

Merger control has become an important part of antitrust policy in many countries around the world. In an ex-ante assessment of horizontal mergers, antitrust authorities typically have to investigate whether the…

Most competition law enforcement systems are based on two enforcement pillars: public enforcement and private enforcement. While private enforcement is often treated as something new or at least marginally…

We study the consumer welfare effects of mergers in airline networks. Based on the development of a general classification of affected routes, we apply a difference-indifferences approach to exemplarily…

Households do not follow the finance industry's model of a homo oeconomicus - a rational planner. To the contrary, their financial decisions are influenced by character traits (e.g. self-control), (a lack of)…

This paper studies popular macroeconomic factors based on the gross domestic product (GDP) in a unified framework. Based on theoretical reasons, aggregate GDP as a measure of fundamental risk is an obvious risk…