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DIW Discussion Papers 1579 / 2016
A world of unequal carbon prices requires measures aimed at preventing carbon leakage. Climate policy imperatives demand that such measures must be compatible with the goal of sending a carbon price signal down the value chain. For carbon intensive materials, the combination of dynamic free allocation combined with Inclusion of Consumption (IoC) into emissions trading systems such as the European Union ...
2016| Roland Ismer, Manuel Haussner, Karsten Neuhoff, William Acworth
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DIW Discussion Papers 1578 / 2016
We estimate economic incidence of social security contributions (SSC) on the basis of cross-sectional earnings distributions. The approach exploits discontinuities in earnings distributions at kinks in the budget set which are informative about tax incidence. Contrary to most research on SSC incidence, it does not rely on policy reforms, panel data, or hours information. When the location of kinks ...
2016| Kai-Uwe Müller, Michael Neumann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1577 / 2016
The deployment of battery-powered electric bus systems within the public transportation sector plays an important role to increase energy efficiency and to abate emissions. Rising attention is given to bus systems using fast charging technology. This concept requires a comprehensive infrastructure to equip bus routes with charging stations. The combination of charging infrastructure and bus batteries ...
2016| Alexander Kunith, Roman Mendelevitch, Dietmar Goehlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1576 / 2016
Potable water supply in Germany is highly fragmented. A consolidation of the industry could, therefore, lead to lower cost of water supply and price savings for the customers. In this paper we estimate a total cost function for potable water supply based on a unique sample of German water utilities observed between 2004 and 2010. Newly available data allows for a detailed cost modeling approach. Capital ...
2016| Michael Zschille
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DIW Discussion Papers 1575 / 2016
We present a medium-term market equilibrium model of the North American crude oil sector via which we develop a scenario analysis to investigate strategies to mitigate the environmental and public-safety risks from crude-by-rail transportation across the United States. The model captures crude oil movements across rail- roads, pipelines and waterways, while distinguishing between light and heavy crude ...
2016| Olufolajimi Oke, Daniel Huppmann, Max Marshall, Ricky Poulton, Sauleh Siddiqui
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DIW Discussion Papers 1574 / 2016
The increasing scale and dynamics of the global market for renewable energy technologies has often resulted in unexpected high deployment volumes in EU Member States. These deployment peaks were particularly strong for solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies in countries using feed-in tariff remuneration mechanisms. In this paper, we develop an analytic model to capture the interactions of national remuneration ...
2016| Thilo Grau, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1573 / 2016
This paper is a comprehensive investigation of calendar anomalies in the Ukrainian stock market. It employs various statistical techniques (average analysis, Student's t-test, ANOVA, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and regression analysis with dummy variables) and a trading simulation approach to test for the presence of the following anomalies: Day of the Week Effect; Turn of the Month Effect; Turn of ...
2016| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Alex Plastun
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DIW Discussion Papers 1572 / 2016
We live in a time of increasing publication rates and specialization of scientific disciplines. More and more, the research community is facing the challenge of assuring the quality of research and maintaining trust in the scientific enterprise. Replication studies are necessary to detect erroneous research. Thus, the replicability of research is considered a hallmark of good scientific practice and ...
2016| Benedikt Fecher, Mathis Fräßdorf, Gert G. Wagner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1571 / 2016
Scale characteristics are key properties of production functions that determine optimal firm sizes, and have considerable policy implications for sectors undergoing restructuring. However, estimates of scale characteristics typically vary with the assumptions of the underlying empirical model. This paper derives estimators of scale efficiency and scale elasticity for semi-parametric stochastic non-smooth ...
2016| Stefan Seifert
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DIW Discussion Papers 1570 / 2016
After the Paris Climate Agreement, it is anticipated that carbon prices will differ across regions for some time. If countries use free allowance allocation as carbon leakage protection, only a fraction of carbon prices are passed through to consumers particularly by carbon intensive materials producers. Adding a consumption charge based on benchmarks applied to the material content can reinstate the ...
2016| Stefan Pauliuk, Karsten Neuhoff, Anne Owen, Richard Wood
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DIW Discussion Papers 1569 / 2016
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine that started in March 2014 resulted in bilateral economic sanctions imposed by Russia and Western countries, including the members of the euro area (EA). The paper investigates the impact of sanctions on the real side of the economy of Russia and the EA. Using an index that measures intensity of sanctions the effects of sanctions shocks are analyzed by the means ...
2016| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Aleksei Netsunajev
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DIW Discussion Papers 1568 / 2016
In 2013, around 121 billion US-Dollar were spend worldwide to promote the investment into renewable energy sources. The most prominent support scheme employed is a feed-in tariff, which guarantees a fixed price for electricity produced by renewable energies sources, usually for around 15 years after the installation of the plant. We study the incidence of wind turbine subsidies, due to a feed-in tariff ...
2016| Peter Haan, Martin Simmler
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DIW Discussion Papers 1567 / 2016
Electricity storage plants can be used for many applications, with one of the most studied applications being arbitrage in the day-ahead market. Although the arbitrage value is related to the presence of price spreads, it also depends on the effect of (dis)charge actions on prices, as arbitrage generally reduces price spreads by increasing off-peak prices when charging and decreasing peak prices when ...
2016| Tom Brijs, Frederik Geth, Sauleh Siddiqui, Benjamin F. Hobbs, Ronnie Belmans
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DIW Discussion Papers 1566 / 2016
This article proposes a new electricity storage business model based on multiple simultaneously considered revenue streams, which can be attributed to different market activities and players. These players thus share electricity storage resources and compete to obtain the right to use them in a dynamic allocation mechanism. It is based on the design of anew periodically organized auction to allocate ...
2016| Tom Brijs, Daniel Huppmann, Sauleh Siddiqui, Ronnie Belmans
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DIW Discussion Papers 1565 / 2016
The Italian white certificate scheme is the main national policy instrument to incentivise energy efficiency of the industrial sector. The mechanism sets binding energy-saving targets on electricity and gas distributors with at least 50,000 clients and includes a voluntary opt-in model for participation from other parties. This paper investigates and assesses the elements of the scheme that help overcome ...
2016| Jan Stede
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DIW Discussion Papers 1564 / 2016
This paper proposes a new non-parametric method of constructing joint confidence bands for impulse response functions of vector autoregressive models. The estimation uncertainty is captured by means of bootstrapping and the highest density region (HDR) approach is used to construct the bands. A Monte Carlo comparison of the HDR bands with existing alternatives shows that the former are competitive ...
2016| Helmut Lütkepohl, Anna Staszewska-Bystrova, Peter Winker
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DIW Discussion Papers 1563 / 2016
This paper proposes a Bayesian approach to assess if the data support candidate set-identifying restrictions for Vector Autoregressive models. The researcher is uncertain about the validity of some sign restrictions that she is contemplating to use. She therefore expresses her uncertainty with a prior distribution that covers the parameter space both where the restrictions are satisfied and where they ...
2016| Michele Piffer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1562 / 2016
In a meta-analysis of 126 impact evaluation studies, we find that financial education significantly impacts financial behavior and, to an even larger extent, financial literacy. These results also hold for the subsample of randomized experiments (RCTs). However, intervention impacts are highly heterogeneous: Financial education is less effective for lowincome clients as well as in low and lower-middle ...
2016| Tim Kaiser, Lukas Menkhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1561 / 2016
Do increased instruction hours improve the performance of all students? Using PISA scores of students in ninth grade, we analyse the effect of a German education reform that increased weekly instruction hours by two hours (6.5 percent) overalmost five years. In the additional time, students are taught new learning content. On average, the reform improves student performance. However, treatment effects ...
2016| Mathias Huebener, Susanne Kuger, Jan Marcus
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DIW Discussion Papers 1560 / 2016
This paper examines how families adjust their private old-age savings in response to a change in individual pension wealth. The regression discontinuity approach exploits two expansions of the child care pension benefit, in 1992 and in 1999, as natural experiments. The empirical analysis is based on three waves of the Survey of Income and Expenditure (EVS): 1998, 2003 and 2008. All results indicate ...
2016| Andreas Thiemann