FEMM - Working Paper Series - 2026

26011

Omar Martin Fieles-Ahmad, Selina Schulze Spuentrup

The Fentanyl Shock: Synthetic Opioids and the Supply of Organ Donors

We study how the diffusion of illicit synthetic opioids affected the supply of deceased organ donors in the United States after 2012. As fentanyl spread rapidly from east to west, it produced sharp, uneven increases in overdose mortality across states. We first study the arrival of fentanyl as a dichotomous shock in a difference-in-differences framework at the organ procurement organization (OPO) level, contrasting regions east and west
of the Mississippi River due to drug-market segmentation. We then turn to the intensive margin using a state-level IV approach that leverages the westward diffusion of fentanyl over time, with exposure measured using fentanyl mortality. Both approaches show that fentanyl exposure caused large increases in overdose-driven donor supply and transplanted organs, revealing how a lethal epidemic reshaped the availability of transplantable organs.

26010

Omar Martin Fieles-Ahmad, Selina Schulze Spuentrup

Prompted Choice and Organ Donor Registrations: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Italy

We examine the effects of introducing prompted choice on organ donation
behavior. Applying a generalized difference-in-differences design, we take advantage of the gradual roll-out of a policy in Italy that integrated the question of organ donation preference into the process of identity card renewal. Our findings show that municipalities prompting the question saw a significant increase in consent registrations, although individuals retained the option to abstain from making a choice. We also provide
novel evidence that regions with higher levels of registered consent have higher cadaveric organ donation rates.

26009

Omar Martin Fieles-Ahmad, Michael Kvasnicka

Western TV and Crimes against Foreigners in East Germany

Following reunification, anti-foreigner crimes rose sharply in the former GDR. Using countylevel data for the early 1990s, we study if regional access to Western TV, i.e. non-socialist media, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall had an impact on regional levels of serious antiforeigner crime (murder and arson) in East Germany. We find that East German counties with no access to Western TV exhibit higher rates of such crimes, as in the ’valley of the clueless’ around Dresden. This crime-attenuating effect of Western TV proves robust in a battery of robustness checks and underscores the importance of media for anti-foreigner attitudes and crimes well before the rise of the internet and social media.

26008

Thao Bui, Sebastian Eichfelder, Julia Jirmann, Sibel Santiago da Costa

Wie relevant ist die Gewerbesteuer als Standortfaktor? Was wir von Experteninterviews lernen können

Wir untersuchen anhand von qualitativen Experteninterviews die Relevanz der Gewerbesteuer im Verhältnis zu anderen Standortfaktoren am Beispiel von Düsseldorf, Oberhausen und Magdeburg. Besonders relevante Faktoren sind die Verkehrsinfrastruktur, die Verfügbarkeit von Flächen sowie von Fach- und Arbeitskräften. Weitere relevante Faktoren sind Grundstücks- und Arbeitskosten, Erreichbarkeit für Mitarbeitende, Nähe zu Kunden und anderen Unternehmen, das Image und die Lebensqualität einer Stadt, die Schnelligkeit der öffentlichen Verwaltung sowie die Offenheit und Aufgeschlossenheit der Kommune für Unternehmen sowie Förderungsmöglichkeiten. Wichtige Push-Faktoren sind ein Mangel an geeigneten Flächen, mangelnde Zugriffsmöglichkeiten auf Fördermittel sowie im Falle von Oberhausen die sehr hohen Hebesätze der Gewerbesteuer (580 %). Mit Ausnahme von Oberhausen kommt der Gewerbesteuer nach Experteneinschätzungen in den ausgewählten Kommunen keine hohe Bedeutung als Standortfaktor zu. Das gilt insbesondere für Existenzgründer, die eher geringe Gewinne erzielen und auf ein lokales Netzwerk angewiesen sind.

26007

Sebastian Eichfelder, Hang T.T. Nguyen

Corporate Tax Incidence and Tax Avoidance: Evidence from the German Business Tax Reform 2008

This study examines the interplay between corporate tax avoidance and the incidence of the corporate income tax falling on wages and employment. Using the German Business Tax Reform 2008 (GBTR 2008) as a natural experiment, we investigate how a large tax cut of about nine percentage points affected wages and the number of employees of low-avoidance firms compared with high-avoidance firms. We expect an abnormal wage response of low-avoidance firms that are more burdened by corporate taxation and benefitted more from the tax cut. In difference-in-differences and triple-difference regressions, we do not find significant evidence for an abnormal wage response of low-avoidance firms. A potential explanation might be strong labour protection regulations in Germany that might limit the ability of German firms to shift corporate taxes on labour. We find some but not very robust evidence for an abnormal increase in employment of low-avoidance firms after the GBTR 2008. Our findings align with recent evidence that German employees bear only a small fraction of German corporate taxation and that this burden primarily falls on employees of very small firms that are only poorly represented in our Amadeus data.

26006

Hang T.T. Nguyen

The Productivity Paradox of Corporate Taxation: A Nonlinear Tale of Growth and Constraints

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate income tax rates (CITR) and firm-level productivity growth using AMADEUS data of 304,410 observations from 79,842 European firms from 2006 to 2019. The results imply a robust non-linear relationship: higher CITRs are positively associated with productivity growth for high-productivity firms near the technological frontier and negatively associated with the productivity catch-up of less productive firms. Heterogeneity tests suggest a stronger productivity response to tax rate changes of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and domestic firms, while  I do not find a significant productivity response to tax rate changes for large and multinational firms. The main findings are robust across various productivity estimation methods and model specifications and challenge the conventional view that higher business tax rates have a linear and negative effect on productivity growth. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the role of corporate taxation in shaping  economic competitiveness and long-term growth.

26005

Sebastian Eichfelder, Jochen Hundsdoerfer, Martin Kaltenhäuser,
Mona Noack

The Cost of Inattention: Deadline and Media Effects on Implicit Taxes

We provide evidence that the capitalization of taxes in share prices depends on
investor attention and can create additional implicit taxes for inattentive investors.
Interpreting a German capital gains tax reform as a natural experiment, we identify
investor attention by the temporal distance to the deadline (deadline effect) and
media coverage (media effect). Although the reform was announced 18 months
in advance, we find evidence for large abnormal returns around the deadline. In
the two days preceding it, daily returns (share prices, trading volumes) of treated
stocks increased abnormally by 2.5 pp (7.0%, 296.7%). The cumulative abnormal
return CAR one day before the deadline was 10.7%. The media coverage also
abnormally increased returns and trading activity. In the last months of 2008, 20
additional articles per week on the reform resulted in a CAR of about 2% in one
week. Inattentive investors paid abnormally high prices in periods of high attention,
implying an implicit tax burden of up to 67.9% of realized and 130.5% of expected
returns one day before the deadline.

26004

Sebastian Eichfelder, Yannis Kiel, Jonas Knaisch

Wie hoch sind die Bürokratiekosten der Grundsteuerreform 2022/2025?

Der vorliegende Beitrag schätzt die Bürokratiekosten der Grundsteuerreform 2022/2025 mit Hilfe des Standardkostenmodells der Bundesregierung (SKM) und qualitativer
Experteninterviews auf eine Bandbreite von 3,92 Mrd. € und 6,50 Mrd. € (im Mittelwert
5,21 Mrd. €). Dies entspricht 3,38 % bis 5,61 % des voraussichtlichen Steueraufkommens im
Hauptfeststellungszeitraum von 2022 bis 2028. Die im vorliegenden Beitrag geschätzten
Bürokratiekosten betragen das 3,6-fache bis 6,0-fache des 2019 durch den Nationalen
Normenkontrollrat (NKR) ermittelten Erfüllungsaufwandes. Damit dokumentiert die
vorliegende Untersuchung eine massive Unterschätzung der Bürokratiekosten der
Grundsteuerreform 2022/2025 durch den NKR und die deutsche Bundesregierung.

26003

Anke Hielscher

Green Real Estate Nudges: A Note on Behavioral Approaches to Promoting Sustainability in the Real Estate Sector

This short paper examines how green nudges can be utilized to promote sustainable behavior in the real estate sector. Based on central nudge approaches, concrete fields of application along the stages of development, usage, and marketing of real estate are identified. The objective is to provide impulses for practice-oriented measures as well as to highlight the need for further empirical research. 

26002

Manja Derlin, Carina Keldenich, Andreas Knabe

Connecting the dots: continuity in the relationship between income and emotional well-being

We examine how functional-form assumptions affect conclusions about the existence of
satiation in the relationship between income and emotional well-being. Previous studies have estimated a piecewise log-linear model with one structural break in both intercept and slope, which may lead to discontinuities in the estimated relationship. We show that imposing continuity in this type of model in OLS and quantile regressions substantially alters inferences about income satiation. At commonly applied thresholds, satiation disappears. The threshold shifts upwards when determined by best statistical fit and satiation re-emerges only at very high incomes. These findings demonstrate that the presence and location of satiation are highly sensitive to modeling choices.

26001

Felix Josua Lang

Context effects in consumer decision-making: developments in experimental realism and a framework to establish practical relevance

There are repeatedly raised concerns that marketing and consumer research often neglects to implement realistic studies that foster generalizability to real-world contexts, thereby limiting their findings’ practical relevance. Representative of this issue, confidence in context effects’ (i.e., shifts in consumer preferences based on specific choice set compositions) applicability to actual consumer decisions was challenged. Indeed, prior investigations demonstrated that context effects research generally contained low levels of realism, resulting in calls to implement a set of proposed guidelines (e.g., consequential instead of hypothetical choices) to produce generalizable and practically relevant insights. This present systematic literature review analyzes a total of 460 individual assessments of 15 context effects in product choice from over 40 years in 30 top-tier marketing journals whether they implemented these guidelines as well as further experimental characteristics. Despite notable improvements, there are still overall low levels of realism—most critically by not imposing economic consequences—but pronounced differences in the degree of generalizability between the analyzed context effects, with the attraction and compromise effect having the most solid foundation regarding relevant results. Consequently, this article presents a refined and easy-to-follow framework to implement realistic context effects research as well as a research agenda to generate practically relevant future findings in a systematic approach. For practitioners, this article provides an overview of context effects’ level of confidence regarding their current real-world applicability as well as guidance on how to identify research that is relevant for their application scenarios.