1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-009 // 2016

    Strategic Capacity Withholding Through Failures in the German-Austrian Electricity Market

    In electricity day-ahead markets organized as uniform price auction, a small reduction in supply in times of high demand can cause substantial increases in price. We use a unique data set of failures of…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-008 // 2016

    Book-Tax Conformity and Reporting Behavior - A Quasi-experiment

    We examine how a comprehensive change in book-tax conformity affects firms' reporting behavior. To this end, we exploit a Reform Act as a quasi-natural experiment which implied a decrease in book-tax conformity…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-007 // 2016

    Taxing Away M&A: The Effect of Corporate Capital Gains Taxes on Acquisition Activity

    Taxing capital gains is an important obstacle to the efficient allocation of resources because it imposes a transaction cost on the vendor which locks in appreciated assets by raising the vendor's reservation…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-006 // 2016

    Asymmetric Labor-Supply Responses to Wage-Rate Changes - Evidence from a Field Experiment

    The standard labor-supply literature typically assumes that the labor supply response to wage increases is the same as that for equivalent wage decreases. However, evidence from the behavioral-economics…

  5. Refereed Journal // 2016

    Using time-stamped survey responses to measure expectations at a daily frequency

    This article addresses one of the drawbacks of survey-based measures of expectations, the fact that updates are relatively infrequent, due to the monthly or quarterly frequency of survey waves. To obtain a more…

  6. ZEW-PwC-China Economic Barometer // 2016

    First Quarter 2016

    • Economic Outlook Slightly Brighter but Remains Negative Overall
    • Growth Supported by Private Consumption and Investment
    • New Five-Year Plan: Expected to Bring Improvements for German Companies too; Continuing Urgend…
  7. Refereed Journal // 2016

    Forecasting with Bayesian Vector Autoregressions Estimated Using Professional Forecasts

    We propose a Bayesian shrinkage approach for vector autoregressions (VARs) that uses short-term survey forecasts as an additional source of information about model parameters. In particular, we augment the…

  8. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-005 // 2016

    Concentration on the Few? R&D and Innovation in German Firms 2001 to 2013

    Innovation activities in the German enterprise sector showed two opposing trends over the past two decades: While total innovation expenditures grew substantially, the number of firms conducting innovation…

  9. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-004 // 2016

    The Dynamic Relationship Between Investments in Brand Equity and Firm Profitability: Evidence Using Trademark Registrations

    Most marketing practitioners and scholars agree that marketing assets such as brand equity significantly contribute to a firm's financial performance. In this paper, we model brand equity as an unobservable…

  10. Refereed Journal // 2016

    The Role of Banks if Firms are Financially Distressed

    Banks are better suited than other financing partners to process information in order to make efficient liquidations. But their ability depends on bank characteristics and incentives. In addition, the strength…