ZEW Discussion Papers

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a Digital Layer to empirically investigate inter-firm relations at any geographical scale of analysis. The Digital Layer is created from large-scale, structured web…

First-past-the-post elections in single-member districts make legislators more accountable to their district of election compared to proportional electoral systems. Accountability makes politicians more…

We show that the discontinuity in the distribution of surveyed female income shares at the margin where a woman would outearn her partner is primarily driven by norm induced misreporting in surveys. We draw on…

Policy makers are increasingly concerned about the combination of market power and massive data collection in digital markets. This concern is fueled by the theoretical prediction that more market power causes…

Web-based innovation indicators may provide new insights into firm-level innovation activities. However, little is known yet about the accuracy and relevance of web-based information for measuring innovation. In…

We study the role of commitment in a first-price auction environment. We devise a simple two-stage model in which bidders first submit an initial offer that the auctioneer can observe and then make a…

The targeted design of auctions has to take behavioral regularities into account. This paper explores whether procurement auction formats can take advantage of bidders' willingness-to-pay-willingness-to-accept…

We show that it is beneficial for a buyer to conduct a multi-stage mechanism if bidders are loss averse. In a first step, we derive a revenue equivalence principle. Fixing the multi-stage structure, the revenue…

Most school systems grant teachers and school principals considerable discretion in grade retention decisions. This paper argues that schools can exploit this discretion by selectively retaining students to…