ZEW Discussion Papers

Past studies have successfully shown that the level of anonymisation of scientific use files (SUF) is sufficiently high to protect against disclosure attacks that use data from traditional firm databases.…

Why do US college-educated couples with children marry at higher rates than those without a college degree? We argue that investing in children is more valuable for college-educated couples, who are more likely…

Digital therapeutics are increasingly used to complement traditional health care. In a pioneering move, Germany became the first country to introduce a structured regulatory framework — known as the DiGA scheme…

We show that the widespread approach to estimate the career costs of motherhood – so called “child penalties” – is prone to produce biased results, as it pools first-time mothers of all ages without accounting…

We examine the welfare effects of removing explicit and implicit fossil fuel subsidies, the latter entailing Pigouvian pricing of local externalities from fossil energy consumption. We map a multi-region,…

A robust Research & Innovation (R&I) ecosystem is essential for progress, economic resilience, and addressing complex challenges. At the heart of this ecosystem, knowledge fuels innovation and further discovery.…

We study Germany’s photovoltaic (PV) subsidy program, estimating a dynamic model of new technology adoption which accounts for heterogeneity in residential ownership structures. We find that homeowner and…

Climate change can cause major challenges for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Responding and adapting to such challenges is crucial, as SMEs are vital for driving economic growth and employment in…

During the post-pandemic inflation surge, many central banks actively used communication about the inflation outlook as a policy tool to limit spillovers from realized to expected inflation. We present novel…