In a long-run social experiment, personal budgets have been tested as an alternative to the home care programs of the German long-term care insurance (LTCI). Due to extending the coverage beyond LTCI approved services and agencies, personal budgets may improve care outcomes compared to the...

Setting minimum tax rates is a well discussed way of mitigating pressure from tax competition. This paper investigates which motives shape the support for a minimum corporate tax among politicians. We make use of a unique data base: a survey among members of the European parliament. Our results...

This paper investigates the impact of in-house R&D and innovation management practices on innovation success in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). While there is little doubt about the significance of technology competence for generating successful innovations, inhouse R&D activities may be a...

Start-up subsidies play an important role in supporting start-up innovation and performance. However, what characteristics help and hinder start-ups to seek start-up subsidies remains unclear. We study whether and how founder personality, as captured by the big five personality traits and...

I examine the financial fragility of German households during the second wave of COVID-19 infections in the winter of 2020/21 by analyzing the households’ ability to come up with EUR 2,000 within one month. About one in three households reports being unable to cover an unexpected expense of...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected firms in all economies worldwide. We investigate the impact of the pandemic on firms’ innovation activities. Employing data from a representative sample of German firms, we find consistently with real options theory that negatively affected firms...

The paper aims at testing Florida's concept of the Creative Class using panel data for 323 West German regions for the time period 1975-2004. Applying a dynamic system approach based on GMM, we find that the local concentration of the Creative Class has predictive power for the economic...