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DIW Discussion Papers 1187 / 2012
The German potable water supply industry is regarded as being highly fragmented, thus inhibiting high potentials for efficiency improvements through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze the potential efficiency gains from mergers between water utilities at the county level. A conditional efficiency framework is ...
2012| Michael Zschille
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DIW Discussion Papers 1184 / 2012
Based on representative data, the German Micro-Census, we provide an overview of the development of self-employment and entrepreneurship in Germany between 1991 and 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic background of these individuals, their education, previous employment status, and their income level. We observe a unique increase in self-employment in Germany ...
2012| Michael Fritsch, Alexander S. Kritikos, Alina Rusakova
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DIW Discussion Papers 1156 / 2011
Increasing utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) is a priority worldwide. Germany has been a forerunner in the deployment of RES and has ambitious goals for the future. The support and use of renewables affects the economy: It creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable energy facilities, but also comes along with costs for supporting the deployment of renewables. This paper ...
2011| Jürgen Blazejczak, Frauke G. Braun, Dietmar Edler, Wolf-Peter Schill
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DIW Discussion Papers 1154 / 2011
Decarbonisation of energy and transport infrastructure requires significant private sector investments. The natural gas industry has demonstrated such large scale private sector infrastructure investment over the last decades, typically using long-term contractual arrangements. Are therefore institutional frameworks necessary that facilitate long-term contracting or provide regulation reassuring about ...
2011| Anne Neumann, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1152 / 2011
This paper considers the question of whether changes in persistence have occurred during the long-run evolution of U.S. prices of the non-renewable energy resources crude oil, natural gas and bituminous coal. Our main contribution is to allow for a structural break when testing for a break in persistence, thus disentangling the effect of a deterministic break from that of a stochastic break and advancing ...
2011| Aleksandar Zaklan, Jan Abrell, Anne Neumann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1150 / 2011
Using data for 14 OECD countries and 13 sectors for the period 1985-2004, this paper analyzes the significance of the linkage between channels of international knowledge spillovers and total factor productivity. We distinguish between domestic and international intra- and inter-sectoral spillover sources. Patent applications are exploited to estimate the contribution of technology transfer to industrial ...
2011| Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 1148 / 2011
This paper assesses the validity of the perception-based governance indicators used by the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) for aid allocation decisions. By conducting Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of data from 1996 to 2009, we find that although the MCA purports to measure seven distinct dimensions of governance, only two discrete underlying dimensions, the perceived 'participatory ...
2011| Martin Knoll, Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 1145 / 2011
We propose a merchant-regulatory framework to promote investment in the European natural gas network infrastructure based on a price cap over two-part tariffs. As suggested by Vogelsang (2001) and Hogan et al. (2010), a profit maximizing network operator facing this regulatory constraint will intertemporally rebalance the variable and fixed part of its two-part tariff so as to expand the congested ...
2011| Anne Neumann, Juan Rosellón, Hannes Weigt
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DIW Discussion Papers 1135 / 2011
This paper addresses the relationship between the utilization of temporary agency workers by firms and their competitiveness measured by unit labor costs, using a rich, newly built, data set of German manufacturing enterprises. The analysis is conducted by applying different panel data models while taking the inherent selection problem into account. Making use of dynamic panel data models allows us ...
2011| Sebastian Nielen, Alexander Schiersch
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DIW Discussion Papers 1130 / 2011
Efforts undertaken by France to restructure the allocation of governmental competencies increased the importance of subnational governments by transferring additional tasks. This paper analyzes the efficiency of public spending on an intermediate government level for a sample of 96 départements in metropolitan France in 2008. Spending efficiency is measured using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Results ...
2011| Maria Nieswand, Stefan Seifert