Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore...

Our paper contributes to the discussion about Europe’s digital sovereignty. We analyze the relationship between firm performance and the diversification of sourcing countries for imported ICT goods. The analysis is based on administrative data for 3888 German manufacturing firms that imported...

Previous research has established a link between democratic governance and sustainable economic growth. Yet, over the past decade, we have witnessed a global decline of democratic institutions across a wide range of political contexts. How has this erosion of democracy affected countries'...

We present a simple model, illustrating how democracy may improve the quality of the economic institutions. The model further suggests that institutional quality varies more across autocracies than across democracy and that the positive effect of democracies on economic institutional quality...

This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The...

After the beginning of the war in Ukraine, energy prices in Germany increased drastically. The paper analyses responses of German firms to this energy price shock. A variety of measures and reactions at the firm-level are explored, such as substituting machinery and equipment by less energy...

This policy report studies the effects of a sudden stop of natural gas imports from Russia on the German economy. The analysis focuses on the supply-side effects that arise when a gas shortage affects production in the gas-intensive manufacturing sectors, with a corresponding production...

This policy paper studies the effects of a sudden stop of natural gas imports from Russia on the German economy. The analysis focuses on the supply-side effects that arise when a gas shortage affects production in the gas-intensive manufacturing sectors, with a corresponding production...