The exemption for Value Added Taxation (VAT) can be used to pursue distributive objectives. Goods like food, housing, medicine, or infrastructure services (water, telecommunication, postal) are very often partially or totally exempted from VAT. The exemption of infrastructure services had been...

We study how human preferences affect the resilience of economies that depend on more than one type of natural resources. In particular, we analyze whether the degree of substitutability of natural resources in consumer needs may give rise to multiple steady states and path dependence even when...

We analyze the formation of environmental policy to regulate transboundary pollution if governments are self-interested. In a common agency framework, we portray the environmental policy calculus of two political supportmaximizing governments that are in a situation of strategic interaction with...

We argue that economics – as the scientific method of analyzing trade-offs – can be helpful (and may even be indispensable) for assessing the trade-off between intergenerational and intragenerational justice. Economic analysis can delineate the “opportunity set” of politics with respect...

Using the approach suggested by Gabaix (Econometrica 2011) this paper demonstrates that idiosyncratic shocks in the largest firms are important for an understanding of aggregate volatility in German manufacturing industries. The implications of this finding for theoretical and empirical research...

This study presents the first investigation into the performance of foreign-controlled enterprises in German manufacturing based on new micro-data from official statistics. A comprehensive set of performance variables was examined not only by comparing unconditional mean values but also by...

The zero inflated Poisson regression model is very common when analysing economic data that comes in the form of non-negative integers since it accounts for excess zeros and over-dispersion of the dependent variable. This model may be used in innovation analysis to see for example the impact on...

In this paper we introduce an interesting feature of the Generalized Least Absolute Deviations (GLAD) method for Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations (SURE) models. Contrary to the collapse of Generalized Least Squares (GLS) parameter estimations of SURE models to the Ordinary Least Squares...

In this paper the relationship between firm growth and external knowledge sources, such as related firms and universities, is studied. The spatial characteristics of these relationships are examined by geolocating firms into a more realistic relational space using travel time distances and using...

In recent years, it has widely been accepted that the ability to create, access and use knowledge and technology is becoming a fundamental determinant of long-term development and competitiveness. Thus, it is not surprising that universities have increasingly become involved in economic...