ZEW Discussion Papers

Over the last decade, industrialized economies have experienced a dramatic increase in their expenditures on information and communication technologies (ICT) and there is broad evidence indicating that the…

Despite the continuing political interest in the usefulness of tax competition and tax coordination as well as the wealth of theoretical analyses, it still remains open whether or when tax competition is…

The economic literature has provided robust evidence indicating that the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) has positively affected productivity at aggregate and firm levels. Given the…

This paper characterizes a firm’s optimal offer of service plans in a monopoly market. In this market only informed customers know already at the contracting stage whether their demand is high or low, while…

The structure of public support to corporate R&D has been rapidly changing over the last decade. Government R&D policies are increasingly oriented towards market signals and competition in order to minimise the…

Economic approaches explain charitable contributions by assuming that donors are interested in the provision of certain public goods by the respective charity. Indeed, many individuals donate money or time to…

In the advent of postal market liberalization in several European countries this analysis provides an understanding in which dimensions entering firms will compete with the incumbent and how incumbents may act…

Google was involved in a series of deals, all of them related to the online advertising industry: two mergers with YouTube and DoubleClick and one arrangement with Yahoo!. Scholars in competition policy question…

The automobile industry is one of the most innovative sectors in the economy and has become also very competitive in spite of its oligopolistic market structure. Besides, the triad traditional automotive markets…