ZEW Discussion Papers

We study the extent of automation angst and its role for policy preferences, labor market choices and real donation decisions using a customized survey in Germany and the US. We first document that a majority…

We examine how the adverse impacts of weather shocks are distributed through the trade network. Exploiting a rich, theoretically derived, fixed effects structure, we find significant negative short-run effects…

How do intellectual property rights influence academic science? We investigate the consequences of the introduction of software patents in the U.S. on the publications of university researchers in the field of…

We investigate how intangible capital in form of intellectual property, such as patents, might mitigate financing constraints. While scholars have already argued that patents might have a signalling value…

We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across…

Employment responses to the COVID-19 crisis differed widely across German local labour markets at the beginning of the pandemic, with differences in short-time work rates of up to 20 percentage points. We show…

A set-aside restricts participation in procurement contests to targeted firms. Despite being widely used, its effects on actual competition and contract outcomes are ambiguous. We pool a decade of US federal…

We study how the presence of a college affects the local economy using administrative data. Our analysis exploits the opening of new institutions of tertiary education across Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The…

To adequately design and implement effective environmental policies, it is paramount for policymakers to understand preferences for regulatory instruments as well as their individual level determinants. In this…