ZEW Discussion Papers

The following paper assesses whether current policy environments are appropriate for the emergence of cloud computing technology. In particular, this research uses firm-level data for Germany and the UK to…

This report provides an overview on the economics of attention intermediaries. It addresses the following questions: What are the economics of attention intermediaries? For competition policy, how should markets…

The rapid spread of COVID-19 forced policy-makers to swiftly find solutions to reduce infection rates and keep mortality as low as possible. Empirical analyses on the effectiveness of control measures are hereby…

Despite the importance of business creation for the economy and a relevant share of new firms being started out of unemployment, most research has focused on analyzing the effect of unemployment insurance (UI)…

We study the welfare effects of school district consolidation, i.e. the integration of disjoint school districts into a centralised clearinghouse. We show theoretically that, in the worst-case scenario, district…

Is trade liberalization contributing to cleaner production amongst manufacturing firms? Theoretical predictions and empirical evidences are mixed. This study utilizes China’s dual trade regime and China’s…

In a recent paper, Bloom et al. (2020) find evidence for a substantial decline in research productivity in the U.S. economy during the last 40 years. In this paper, we replicate their findings for China and…

Although merger and acquisitions (M&As) are acknowledged as an important means to access innovative assets and know-how, firms’ inventive output often declines in the post-M&A period. Financial, managerial and…

What are the effects of austerity on distributional policy? We exploit the autonomy of Italian municipalities in setting non-linear income taxes and the exogenous introduction of a fiscal rule to show that…