1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-132 // 2008

    Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?

    Even though wage inequality in West Germany started to rise at the top of the wage distribution in the 1980s, this rise was delayed for about ten years at the bottom. Our paper investigates the changes in the…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-131 // 2008

    Crime and the Labour Market: Evidence from a Survey of Inmates

    Economists think that unemployment is an important cause for crime. From the theoretical point of view, this belief seems to be reasonable, since, according to the standard economic theory of crime by Nobel…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-130 // 2008

    Firm Heterogeneity and Wages Under Different Bargaining Regimes: Does a Centralised Union Care for Low-productivity Firms?

    In recent decades, German industry-level bargaining has often been blamed for the deterioration of firms’ competitiveness, as centrally negotiated wages are perceived to be particularly harmful to those firms…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-129 // 2008

    Do Older Workers Lower IT-Enabled Productivity? Firm-Level Evidence from Germany

    The role of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a driving force for productivity and competitiveness is in the meanwhile well recognized. A look at the country level, however, reveals that the…

  5. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-127 // 2008

    ICT, Consulting and Innovative Capabilities

    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…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-128 // 2008

    FDI and Taxation - A Meta-Study

    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…

  7. Refereed Journal // 2008

    Informelle Förderangebote - Eine empirische Analyse ihrer Nutzung in der frühen Kindheit

    More than half of the children in Germany under the age of six attend some sort of informal early education activities other than formal early education in daycare centers or family daycare. Among these…

  8. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 08-126 // 2008

    Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity, ICT and R&D Incentives

    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…