ZEW Discussion Papers

We study how mandatory climate-related disclosure affects bank lending using the phased introduction of the EU Taxonomy Regulation. Exploiting the staggered development and implementation of the regulation, we…

We find a substantial and long-lasting positive effect of the introduction of regional minimum wages on training incidence and intensity. We apply a stacked difference-in-differences estimation to identify the…

This paper examines the causal impact of ESG ratings and their divergence on retail investors’ sustainable investment decisions. Using a survey with a framed choice experiment conducted with 2,025 German retail…

In many decentralized countries, local tax rates are set by local governments but are simultaneously linked to tax schedules that are determined by superior governments. In such systems, a change to the tax…

Rising political polarization generates significant negative externalities for democratic institutions and economic stability, yet scalable interventions to reduce polarization remain scarce. In this paper, I…

The advantages of adaptive experiments have led to their rapid adoption in economics, other fields, as well as among practitioners. However, adaptive experiments pose challenges for causal inference. This note…

How do retirees choose among home equity release products? Despite housing wealth being households’ largest asset, little is known about preferences for different equity release products. We conduct a survey…

We investigate whether firms engage in VAT evasion at the retail stage—typically a point of weakness in VAT systems—in a high-enforcement, low-informality setting. To measure evasion, we exploit a reform of VAT…