Publikationen der Abteilung Unternehmen und Märkte

The Impact of Financial Support to Firms During Crises: The Case of Covid aid in the EU

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a global economic crisis, leading governments to provide substantial State aid to support firms. This paper examines the effectiveness of Covid-related financial support in Spain and Italy, focusing on its impact on firm recovery. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach combined with propensity score weighting, it compares outcomes of similar firms receiving aid ...

Disentangling Structural Change, Servitization, and Skill-Biased Change

This paper analyzes three key labor market trends – structural change, servitization, and skill-biased change – using German data from 1975 to 2017. Through a decomposition analysis, we discern their individual impacts on employment shifts, revealing their distinct roles in the German labor market’s evolution. Servitization and skill-biased change significantly influence employment growth alongside ...

Broadband and Productivity: Structural Estimates for Germany

We employ a control function methodology, complemented by various identification strategies, to causally estimate the heterogeneous effects of broadband availability on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) across 46 two-digit manufacturing and service industries in Germany from 2010 to 2015. Throughout this period, the availability of broadband, defined as access to transmission rates of at least ...

Let's Switch to the Cloud: Cloud Usage and Its Effect on Labor Productivity

The advent of cloud computing promises to improve the way firms use IT solutions. Firms are expected to replace large and inflexible fixed-cost investments in IT with more targeted, variable spending on cloud solutions. This is also expected to increase firms' productivity by allowing them to quickly adapt their IT infrastructure to their specific needs. We assess this claim using firm-level data provided ...

Brothers in Arms: The Value of Coalitions in Sanctions Regimes

This paper examines the impact of coalitions on the economic costs of the 2012 Iran and 2014 Russia sanctions. By estimating and simulating a quantitative general equilibrium trade model under different coalition setups, we (1) dissect welfare losses for sanctions senders and target; (2) compare prospective coalition partners; (3) investigate ‘optimal’ coalitions that maximize payoff from sanctions; ...

Agglomeration Economies: Different Effects on TFP in High-tech and Low-tech Industries

We study the impact of agglomeration effects on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) for industry groups defined by technology intensity. This allows for non-uniform effects on firms depending on their technological level. We find that urban economies have the largest impact on firm productivity in high-technology industries, while they have no effectin low-technology industries. For firms in the ...

The Evolution of "Theories of Harm" in EU Merger Control

We discuss the main theories of harm in EU merger control and their evolution since the 1990s. We present stylized facts and trends using data extracted from EU merger decisions by natural language processing tools. EU merger policy has adapted over time, both in terms of legislation and theories of harm, as well as in terms of the investigative tools and evidence used. The introduction of the new ...

Intangible Capital and Productivity Divergence

Understanding the causes of the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is key to maintaining the competitiveness of advanced economies and ensuring long-term economic prosperity. This paper provides evidence that investment in intangible capital, despite having a positive effect on productivity at the micro level, is a driver of the weak productivity performance at the aggregate level as it amplifies ...

German Financial State Aid during Covid-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

VAT Pass-through and Competition: Evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes in VAT rates are passed through to consumers in islands with different market structure. We show that pass-through increases with competition, going from 50% in monopoly to around 80% ...