ZEW Discussion Papers

Volunteering is a widespread allocation mechanism in the workplace. It emerges naturally in software development or the generation of online knowledge platforms. Using a field experiment with more than 2000…

We study consumer debt relief as a tool of distributive politics and ask if debt relief can influence elections. We utilize quasi-experimental variation generated by a very large debt relief program enacted in…

In this paper, we study whether performance feedback can serve as an instrument for firms to increase employee retention. Feedback on the relative performance may affect individual job search behavior…

In May 2018, a new regulation by the European Commission on data protection came into force, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It requires many firms to update their data protection strategy. It may…

How should students be assigned to schools? Two mechanisms have been suggested and implemented around the world: deferred acceptance (DA) and top trading cycles (TTC). These two mechanisms are widely considered…

In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on…

We follow the migration patterns of European inventors and find evidence of a novel emigration determinant: policy uncertainty. We find that policy uncertainty raises the rate of inventor emigration by a notable…

When firms are forced to publicly disclose financial information, credit rating agencies are supposed to improve their risk assessments. Theory predicts such an information quality effect but also an adverse…

As an example of supranational climate policy coordination for sectors not covered by carbon trading, the European Effort Sharing Decision set national targets for emission reductions for the time period…