ZEW Discussion Papers

Free competition on markets is a major concern in competition policy. The cartelization of firms is a threat to free competition. One major instrument antitrust authorities have and use increasingly frequently…

Research conducted by university researchers for industry constitutes one of the main channels through which knowledge and technology are transferred from science to the private sector. Since the value of such…

The present study analyses the role that human capital in childhood plays for the duration of an unemployment spell in adolescence and early adulthood. It thus asks the question how early in life we can detect…

Germany’s 2005 welfare reform introduced two competing organizational systems for the administration and activation of welfare recipients. In the majority of the 439 German districts, a centralized organization…

This study sheds light on the return-to-job of female employees after first birth based on exceptional longitudinal data from personnel records of a large German company. Our empirical analysis investigates a…

The recent decade has shown a surge of firms globalising their innovation activities. This means that these firms have enlarged the number of countries where they perform R&D projects. Hence, for more and more…

Although the educational attainment gap between boys and girls has been reduced in the last years, boys still outperform girls in mathematics starting from the end of primary school. This has lasting…

Enterprise software systems support service firms in planning, supporting and managing business processes. In general, these software packages can be categorized in standardized generic applications, software…

By internationalising R&D activities, firms can improve their chances to respond to local demands and benefit from local knowledge globally. However, differences in culture and the legal system can challenge…