ZEW Discussion Papers

Motivated by substantial cross-sectional variation in banks’ leverage, which stands in contrast to the conventional wisdom that capital regulation is the main driver of banks’ capital structures, this paper…

The vitality and stability of our democracy - as well as the economy - eventually depend on the social permeability of our society. (Horst Köhler, German Federal President, 29.12.2007, own translation) This…

Uncertainty is intrinsic to research and development (R&D) and has a fundamental influence on the decision to invest in such activities. Real options theoretical models with irreversible investment are a…

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the sectoral level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are…

Angesichts der persistent hohen Arbeitslosigkeit steht die Notwendigkeit von Arbeitsmarktreformen seit Jahren außer Frage. Tatsache ist, dass in vielen Bereichen der Arbeitsmarktpolitik neben den vielbeachteten…

In der folgenden Studie möchten wir ausgewählte Aspekte von intra- und intergenerationalen Umverteilungseffekten im System der bundesdeutschen Alterssicherung auf der Basis der Humankapitalheorie mit…

Although there is anecdotal evidence that merger control may constitute a barrier to the integration of European retail banking markets, systematic empirical evidence is missing until now. This paper aims to…

This study investigates how local milieus foster innovation success of firms. We complement the common practice of linking firm performance indicators to regional characteristics with survey evidence on the…

The paper attempts to provide an appropriate model specification for identifying technology and other macroeconomic shocks in a structural VAR framework. The investigation is conducted based on two seminal…