ZEW Discussion Papers

In many markets prices react stronger to rising than to falling costs. This asymmetric cost pass-through is still not fully understood, but recent theories suggest that asymmetric adjustments of consumers’…

Search engines allow users quick access to information, which they are trying to find or discover through the search engine. Thus, search engines have become important information intermediaries. Due to their…

It is well understood that political participation is stratified by socio-economic characteristics. Yet it is an open question how this finding bears on the normative evaluation of the democratic process. In…

I study the causal effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on the productivity of German manufacturing firms. Using administrative firm-level data, I estimate robust production functions…

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of more than 45,000 hotels in different countries. Although OTAs apparently have not changed their standard…

Using panel data on the full population of corporate tax returns of Armenian firms, we study the behavioral response of firms to three size-dependent regulations. We find: i) a strong response to an accounting…

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid program for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German State of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using difference-in-differences estimation…

We provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of cartels and the related cartel enforcement process in the European Union (EU) from 2001 to 2015. In a first step, we present a detailed characterization of…

Environmental policies may have important consequences for firms’ competitiveness or profitability. However, the empirical literature shows that hardly any statistically significant effects on firms can be…