ZEW Discussion Papers

Music can be characterized as an information good and is therefore amenable to digitalization and copying through online sharing networks. Chances and risks arise from digitalization for the producers and right…

Religion is increasingly acknowledged to be a cultural dimension which affects economic outcomes in different regards. This contribution focuses on religion’s possible impact on the size of the shadow economy.…

We quantify the fiscal multipliers in response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. We extend the benchmark Smets-Wouters (Smets and Wouters, 2007) New Keynesian model, allowing for…

Environmental regulation. What economists usually associate with these words are barriers to competitiveness. The association of Porter (1991) and Porter and van der Linde (1995) is a different one. By relying…

The pharmaceutical industry has recently experienced numerous mergers and acquisitions. The number of studies which investigate the effects of pharmaceutical mergers is, however, rather limited. This paper…

In 2002, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) introduced a Notice on the Competitive Treatment of Vertical Restraints in Automobile Trade (‘Car Notice’). The objective of the Car Notice has been to…

Economists study the formation of human capital over the life cycle and its welfare consequences. Teaching is regarded as the major channel for fostering skills and human capital. According to political rhetoric…

Numerous empirical studies at different levels of aggregation demonstrate the important role of information and communication technologies (ICT) for economic performance. As general purpose technologies ICT…

The evaluation of long-term effects of climate change in cost-benefit analysis has a long tradition in environmental economics. Since the publication of the Stern Review in 2006 the debate about the…