A national-champions-related industrial policy has become (again) en vogue among European politicians. Against this background, our work orders different types of national champions along the industry lifecycle. Different types of locally bound externalities appear along the lifecycle. In a...

Abatement can be performed by measures that have an impact on present emissions, but no lasting effect, and by long-lived infrastructure investments. We study the optimal combination of short and long-lived options for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, by specifying abatement cost...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid programme for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German state of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using matched difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have - depending on broadband...

We quantify general equilibrium effects of place-based policies in a multi-region framework with mobility, trade and agglomeration economies. Using detailed data on EU transfers, we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity, income and transportation cost. Based on...

In this paper we employ survey information on more than 10,000 Southern and Eastern European firms and panel data methods to assess the effects of the COVID-19-related lockdown and government support policies on the business operations of enterprises. Our findings reveal considerable size- and...

In this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of the French State aid plan for broadband deployment, the Plan France Très Haut Débit. According to State aid rules, public subsidies should not be substitute for private investment and should target areas with market failures. We estimate a...

We study the effects of a large car scrappage scheme in Germany on new car purchases and local air quality by combining vehicle registration data with data on local air pollutant emissions. For identification we exploit cross-sectional variation across districts in the number of cars eligible...

We develop a model of optimal carbon taxation and redistribution taking into account horizontal equity concerns by considering heterogeneous energy efficiencies. By deriving first- and second-best rules for policy instruments including carbon taxes, transfers and energy subsidies, we then...