This article contributes to the debate on the systemic effects of technology policy by investigating knowledge spillovers of pre-competitive publicly funded Industrial Collective Research (ICR) in Germany. The ICR aims to compensate for obstacles faced by SME in carrying out research and...

This paper evaluates the impact of a training voucher program on establishments' investments in further training. The voucher program that was implemented in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia increased training incentives for employees in small and medium-sized establishments by...

The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany's experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere,...

The reliability of general self-rated health status is examined using the reform of the public health insurance system of Germany in 2004 as a source of exogenous variation. Among others, the reform introduced a co-payment for ambulatory doctor visits and increased the co-payments for...

Over the last decades many OECD countries introduced parental leave regulations in order to counteract low and decreasing birth rates. In general, these regulations aim at making parenthood more attractive and more compatible with a working career, especially for women. The recent German...

Numerous econometric studies fail to detect a signicant and robust relationship between international aid and economic growth in the recipient countries. Dutch Disease effects might be responsible for this result.This paper examines the relation between aid and its effectiveness in a...

We estimate CO2 implicitly contained in traded commodities based on the GTAP 7 data: While net carbon imports into the industrialized countries amount to 15% of their total emissions, net carbon exports of the developing countries amount to 12% of their total emissions, and net carbon exports of...

This paper is based on the conjecture that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by drawing on a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a pricipal component analysis, seven aspects of both...

It has long been argued that the implementation of market-based environmental policy instruments such as environmentally-related taxes and tradable permits is likely to lead to greater technological innovation than more direct forms of regulation such as technology-based standards. One of the...

This paper develops sufficient conditions under which the Weak Green Paradox may (and may not) hold in terms of subsidies for biofuel production such that the supply-side responses by fossil fuel producers may more than offset the substitution to biofuels. Analytical results are derived and...