While an increasing number of conceptual studies postulate that vocational education and training (VET) activities have a positive impact on firm-level innovation, empirical evidence on the subject remains scarce. This study exploits establishment data from a representative survey of German...

Many countries have only recently introduced carbon taxation to reduce emissions and the time series data for evaluating these policies is not available yet. Consequently, we use the imposition quasi-carbon-taxes in the German transportation sector, i.e. taxes on fuel that are not calculated...

While an increasing number of conceptual studies postulate that vocational education and training (VET) activities have a positive impact on the innovative capacity of training companies, empirical evidence on the subject remains scarce. This study exploits establishment data from a...

The 'doing-using-interacting mode' of innovation (DUI) is considered an important component of innovative activity. It describes informal innovative activities and complements the 'science-technology-innovation mode' (STI) which is based on research and development. A common demarcation...

The Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship (KSTE) considers determinants of knowledge diffusion as well as their impact on entrepreneurial activities and growth. Extending the KSTE, the role of incumbent firms for the broad diffusion of new knowledge has been emphasized. For those firms,...

Following the 'death of distance' postulate, digitization may reduce or even eliminate the penalty of firms being located in rural areas compared with those in urban agglomerations. Despite many recent attempts to measure digitization effects across space, there remains a lack of empirical...

Difference-in-difference estimation is a popular tool to gauge the effects of economic policies. In recent years, many papers have applied this tool to the German deregulation of the crafts sector in 2004 to draw lessons regarding the economic effects of occupational licensing. However, a...

The European Commission actively evaluates occupational entry restrictions in all member states. This has attracted a growing interest among scholars of the German crafts sector as it is governed by an idiosyncratic national set of rules. We estimate the effects of the deregulation of the German...

The empirical literature on occupational licensing finds standard monopoly effects of entry regulations: Less competition and economic rents for professionals. I exploit the natural experimental design of a change in the German crafts regulation in 2004, which removed the traditional licensing...