Previous research suggests that women tend to self-report higher life satisfaction and happiness, lower health status and trust, and more left-leaning political preferences than men. We revisit the gender gap in these outcome variables using random-effects meta-analysis, aggregating data across 39 countries surveyed in the European Social Survey (n ≈ 500,000). Measured in Cohen’s d units, women, on ...
The energy price crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the heightened vulnerability of low-income households to rising heating costs, particularly those in energy-inefficient buildings. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study examines the distributional impact of heating costs across income deciles and evaluates the effectiveness of policy interventions. We ...
Do long-term improvements in air quality influence children’s educational outcomes? This paper investigates the impact of Low Emission Zones (LEZs), which restrict access to designated areas for emission-intensive vehicles, on the educational achievement of elementary school students in Germany. Using school-level data from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, we exploit the staggered ...
Does increased legal infrastructure empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent victims of intimate partner violence from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents nor accessing support. I study Germany’s 2002 Act on Protection against Violence, which introduced residence bans in shared households and temporarily awarded ...
Abstract: Electricity markets are increasingly shaped by uncertainty in residual demand due to renewable expansion. This weakens the disciplining role of forward markets and amplifies the potential for market power in spot pricing. Understanding this mechanism is essential for informed market design in the context of growing intermittency and structural transformation of energy systems.
This work presents a multi-stage stochastic optimization model to analyze price dynamics and reliability of supply in a 100% renewable power system. The stochastic framework captures uncertainty arising from the intermittency of weather-dependent renewable energy sources and compares three market design options for a future fully renewable German electricity market: an energy-only market without...
