In the European Union (EU) and in Germany the transport sector is the only sector with increasing CO2 emissions (in the EU by about 32% and in Germany by about 1% since 1990). Especially in road freight and air transport a further strong increase is forecasted. In the transport sector this might...

The objective of our analysis is to find out whether an increase in working time without pay compensation can be considered an adequate policy to reduce unemployment. From the perspective of economic theory, the outcome is in general ambiguous: On the one hand, as the increase in working time...

This paper studies the long-term consequences on firms and workers of the credit crunch triggered by the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Relying on a unique matched bank-employer-employee administrative dataset, we construct a firm-specific credit supply shock and examine firms’ and...

Based on a structural model of fertility and female labour force supply with unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence, we evaluate the 2007 reform of parental leave benefits in Germany, which replaced a flat, means-tested benefit by a generous earnings-related transfer. The model predicts a...

This paper analyzes the medium-term growth performance of firms that exclusively received start-up assistance from programs administered by the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank (DtA), a state owned bank, within two years after startup. I apply a parametric selection approach that controls for two...

In this paper we examine causal effects of German public assistance programs for young firms administered by the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank (DtA). The empirical analysis is based on a combined data set with information from the ZEW Entrepreneurship Study and the DtA data base that contains all...

Solo self-employment is on the rise despite less favorable working conditions compared to traditional jobs. We show that the introduction of minimum wages in German industries led to an increase in the share of solo self-employment by up to 8.5 percentage points. We explain our findings within a...