ZEW Discussion Papers

Individual risk preference may change after experiencing external socio-economic or natural shocks. Theoretical predictions and empirical studies suggest that risk taking may increase or decrease after…

We shed light on a money-for-privacy trade-off in the market for smartphone applications ("apps"). Developers offer their apps cheaper in return for greater access to personal information, and consumers choose…

The economic meltdown since 2008-9 has created disinflation, and even deflation in some countries in the Euro-area, in a period with large debt overhang, creating the condition for a continuing financial market…

We investigate the impact of consumer search and competition on pricing strategies in Germany’s electricity retail. We utilize a unique panel dataset on spatially varying search requests at major online price…

This paper studies whether the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy offers new perspectives for those who, in economic terms, were relatively deprived under the old regime. Previous empirical…

We implement a meta-regression-analysis for the budgetary impact of numerical fiscal rules. Based on 30 studies published in the last decade, we offer a consensus estimate with respect to the level of…

We study how European climate and energy policy targets affect different member states and households of different income quintiles within the member states. We find that renewable energy targets in power…

A challenge for many cartels is avoiding a destabilizing increase in non-cartel supply in response to having raised price. In the case of the German cement cartel that operated over 1991-2002, the primary source…

We estimate the effects of income from various sources on charitable giving using administrative German income tax data. We demonstrate that charitable contributions are not uniformly affected by different…