ZEW Discussion Papers

We investigate whether the local economic effects of niche university actors depend on regional context. Focusing on private university campuses in Germany, we exploit their staggered foundation between 1990 and…

Policy makers increasingly recognize circular public procurement as a demand-pull instrument for stimulating the transition to a circular economy. However, empirical studies on circular public procurement have…

Public procurement is widely regarded as an important instrument to foster innovation. We examine how additional award criteria beyond price relate to firms’ realized innovation performance by combining…

Histogram forecasts of inflation and growth from the US Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) allow for an assessment of the evolution of forecast uncertainty. However, this assessment is complicated by…

Recent literature has increasingly focused on deciphering the modern productivity puzzle, with particular attention given to the link between digital technologies and firm-level productivity. So far, much of…

Online brokers and robo advisors frequently use investment simulation tools to visualize portfolio choices and illustrate investment scenarios to their clients. I conduct a survey experiment to study whether…

Default settings strongly increase pension enrollment, especially when savings incentives are high and choices are complex. We show that the effect is weaker when incentives are low, options are simple, and…

Competitive public research funding is an important policy instrument to foster scientific progress. The effective design of such funding schemes and whether they generate knowledge spillovers to industrial…

We conduct a data-based policy evaluation of the first large-scale, EU-wide excess profit tax, implemented during the 2022 European energy crisis to tax the windfall profits of inframarginal electricity…