ZEW Discussion Papers

Researchers at the ZEW participate in scientific debates by publishing their papers. The papers are predominantly in English (marked). For the German papers an English abstract is available. The contributions are intended for a final publication in special interest titles. The discussion papers can be downloaded as PDF or PostScript files starting from 1.1.1998. They aimed at national and international target groups.

  1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-044 // 2025

    Congestion Management Games in Electricity Markets

    This paper proposes a game-theoretic model to analyze the strategic behavior of inc-dec gaming in market-based congestion management (redispatch). We extend existing models by considering incomplete information…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-042 // 2025

    Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America: The Multiple Facets of Social Status and the Role of Mothers

    We assess intergenerational mobility in terms of education and income rank in five Latin American countries—Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama—by accounting for the education and occupation of both…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-041 // 2025

    Biodiversity Engel Curves: Estimating How Income and Inequality Shape Consumption- Driven Biodiversity Loss

    We examine the relationship between household incomes and the biodiversity footprints of consumption in the United States from 1996 to 2022. Combining detailed household expenditure surveys…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-040 // 2025

    Beyond Content: Investors’ Chatter, Interaction and Earnings Announcement Returns

    We study the relationship between investors’ social media activity and earnings announcement returns. To distinguish between information contained in peer-to-peer interaction and user-posted content, we analyze…

  5. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-039 // 2025

    Auctions vs. Negotiations: The Role of Communication in an Experiment With Procurement Managers

    We investigate how buyer-supplier communication affects procurement prices, comparing auctions without direct communication to negotiations allowing it. In controlled experiments involving students and…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-038 // 2025

    Profit-Share Auctions in Procurement

    We investigate profit-share auctions in a procurement context,comparing them with traditional cash auctions to identify which mechanism yields lower expenses for buyers. We also explore whether specifying a high…

  7. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-037 // 2025

    “Dance to my Tune!” Discovery Mode and Built-In Recommendation Bias

    We examine the strategic considerations and effects of product placement services in digital content aggregators, focusing in particular on Spotify’s “Discovery Mode”. Discovery Mode introduces bias in users’…

  8. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-036 // 2025

    Disclosure Risk for Firms in Combined Firm-Datasets

    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.…

  9. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 25-035 // 2025

    Cohabitation, Child Development, and College Costs

    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…