Environmental policies may have important consequences for firms’ competitiveness or profitability. However, the empirical literature shows that hardly any statistically significant effects on firms can be…
This paper tests a number of hypotheses on the use and effectiveness of patents and trade secrets designed to protect innovation. While previous studies have often considered patents and trade secrets as…
Decisions taken at the start of one’s career have long-term consequences and one important decision graduates have to make is whether to be regionally mobile when looking for the first job. We investigate…
How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2004, the German pension authority started to send out annual…
Im Rahmen eines Kooperationsprojekts mit der KfW Bankengruppe führt das Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW) seit 2009 jährlich eine Befragung unter allen durch das Europäische…
Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers…
