ZEW Discussion Papers

Since the crisis of the Metallgesellschaft AG in 1993, their roll over hedging strategy with short-term oil futures has been a subject of controversal debate. Main issues of this controversy are whether a woll…

Finance theory does not provide a comprehensive framework for explaining risk management within the imperfect financial environment in which firms operate. Corporate managers, however, rank risk management as…

This paper investigates empirically the interrelationships between the daily stock market returns of the Nikkei 225, DAX and Dow Jones Industrial index. Contrary to former work this paper uses the succession of…

In this paper, a short survey is given on the contents and some problems of the theory of optimal currency areas. In addition, a new criterion for the assessment of the optimality of a currency area is proposed:…

In this paper, four commonly provided explanations for the shift in labour demand for different skill groups are investigated: the substitutability of inputs; the own-price sensitivity for different types of…

National economic concerns still hinder the implementation of effective policy measures that would enable a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Considering other economic problems like…

Gerlach and Stephan (1994) proposed a test based on the idea that the "wage premium", the part of the wage which is not explained by the stock of human capital, should help predict variables such as career…

In this paper, we analyse the influence of firm characteristics and the regional environment on employment growth of East German manufacturing firms between 1992 and 1996. Our results confirm the negative impact…