The ongoing digital transformation has raised hopes for ICT-based climate protection within manufacturing industries, such as dematerialized products and energy efficiency gains. However, ICT also consume energy as well as resources, and detrimental effects on the environment are increasingly...

Although information and communication technologies (ICT) consume energy themselves, they are considered to have the potential to reduce overall energy intensity within economic sectors. While previous empirical evidence is based on aggregated data, this is the first large-scale empirical study...

Carbon emissions from German manufacturing have increased over the past decade, while carbon intensity (emissions per Euro of gross output) has declined only slightly. We decompose changes in emissions between 2005 and 2017 into scale, composition (changes in the mix of goods produced) and...

The manufacturing sector accounts for a substantial share of German GDP, employment and carbon emissions. Therefore, the manufacturing sector's energy use and carbon emissions are of crucial importance for reaching Germany's climate goals. In this paper, we analyse energy use patterns in German...

Climate policy often implies increasing energy prices. Due to incomplete regulation across the globe, concerns about their competitiveness and employment effects play an important role in the policy debate. Using micro-data on electricity network charges and the official census data for Germany,...

Drastic emission reductions are necessary to combat climate change. However, despite several climate policies, carbon emissions from German manufacturing have actually increased between 2005 and 2017. In this paper, we provide evidence of how the policy mix overall has affected the German...

Recent innovation literature has documented the benefits of cross-pollination of ideas across a wide set of industries and technology fields in an economy. Industrial and trade policies, by contrast, tend to favor economic specialization through the promotion of selected sectors. In this paper...

Hidden Champions (HCs) are small- and medium-sized global market leaders that repeatedly show superior innovation capabilities and economic performance. However, empirical evidence on how the digital transformation may affect their success story remains scarce. I argue that HCs show stronger...

Based on survey responses from more than 1,700 managers in Germany, this study elicits employers’ perceptions of working from home during COVID-19 and their long-term expectations for the time after the pandemic. Based on employers’ forecasts of the share of employees working from home...

Does access to the broadband internet stimulate firm growth? In this paper, I analyze within-firm growth of established firms caused by the access to faster internet using geocoded social-security data. I identify firm responses to the access to the first generation of broadband internet and...