This paper studies the determinants of firms' business outlook and managerial mitigation strategies in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis using a representative panel of German firms. We first demonstrate that the crisis amplifies pre-crisis weaknesses: Firms that appear relatively weak before the...

COVID-19 hit firms by surprise. In a high frequency, representative panel of German firms, the business outlook declined and business uncertainty increased only when the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to domestic policy changes: The announcement of nation-wide school closures on March 13...

This paper analyzes behavioral responses to a 2014 reform in the German public pension system that lowered the full retirement age (FRA) of individuals with a long contribution history by up to two years and framed the new FRA as reference age for retirement. Using administrative data from...

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed...

Armed conflicts, natural disasters and infrastructure projects continue to force millions into migration. This is especially true for developing countries. After World War II, about 8 million ethnic Germans experienced a similar situation when forced to leave their homelands and settle within...

We study price-setting behavior in German firm-level survey data to infer the relative importance of supply and demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. Supply and demand forces coexist, but demand shortages dominate in the short run. A reported negative impact of Covid-19 on current business is...

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher...

This paper estimates the causal effect of corporate tax hikes on firm investment based on more than 1,400 local tax changes. By observing planned and realized investment volumes in a representative sample of German manufacturing firms, we can study how tax hikes induce firms to revise their...

This paper studies the price and employment response of firms to the introduction of a nation-wide minimum wage in Germany. Widely throughout the economy, affected firms responded by rapidly and frequently increasing prices without cutting employment. These decisions are strongly interrelated:...