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DIW Discussion Papers 1172 / 2011
In this paper a mixed-frequency VAR à la Mariano & Murasawa (2004) with Markov regime switching in the parameters is estimated by Bayesian inference. Unlike earlier studies, that used the pseuo-EM algorithm of Dempster, Laird & Rubin (1977) to estimate the model, this paper describes how to make use of recent advances in Bayesian inference on mixture models. This way, one is able to surmount some well-known ...
2011| Paul Viefers
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DIW Discussion Papers 1166 / 2011
Integrating large quantities of supply-driven renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns. We model the current methodology for controlling congestion ...
2011| Karsten Neuhoff, Rodney Boyd, Thilo Grau, Julian Barquin, Francisco Echavarren, Janusz Bialek, Chris Dent, Christian von Hirschhausen, Benjamin Hobbs, Friedrich Kunz, Hannes Weigt, Christian Nabe, Georgios Papaefthymiou, Christoph Weber
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DIW Discussion Papers 1162 / 2011
EU Member States increase deployment of intermittent renewable energy sources to deliver the 20% renewable target formulated in the European Renewables Directive of 2008. To incorporate these intermittent sources, a power market needs to be flexible enough to accommodate short-term forecasts and quick turn transactions. This flexibility is particularly valuable with respect to wind energy, where wind ...
2011| Frieder Borggrefe, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1161 / 2011
EU Member States are pursuing large scale investment in renewable generation in order to meet a 2020 target to source 20% of total energy sources by renewables. As the location for this new generation differs from the location of existing generation sources, and is often on the extremities of the electricity network, it will create new flow patterns and transmission needs. While congestion exists between ...
2011| Karsten Neuhoff, Benjamin F. Hobbs, David Newbery
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DIW Discussion Papers 1160 / 2011
This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earning biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around .2 for cohorts born in the late 1930s and early 1940s; this amounts to about 2/3 of the value of the Gini ...
2011| Timm Bönke, Giacomo Corneo, Holger Lüthen
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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 1132 / 2011
As building-integrated photovoltaic (PV) solutions can meet around one-third of electricity demand in Germany and China, both countries are interested in exploring this potential. PV technologies have demonstrated significant price reductions, but large-scale global application of PV requires further technology improvements and cost reductions along the value chain. We analyze policies in Germany and ...
2011| Thilo Grau, Molin Huo, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1104 / 2011
Good decision-making often requires people to perceive and handle a myriad of statistical correlations. Notably, optimal portfolio theory depends upon a sophisticated understanding of the correlation among financial assets. In this paper, we examine people's understanding of correlation using a sequence of portfolio-allocation problems and find it to be strongly imperfect. Our experiment uses pairs ...
2011| Erik Eyster, Georg Weizsäcker
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DIW Discussion Papers 1102 / 2011
We construct a new, direct measure of female autonomy in household decision-making by creating an index from the principal components of a variety of household variables on which mother of a child takes decision. We then examine its impacts on her child's secondary education in Mexico and find that the children of Mexican mothers with greater autonomy in domestic decision making have higher enrolment ...
2011| Tanika Chakraborty, Prabal K. De
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DIW Discussion Papers 1096 / 2011
Whether Europe will be able to stand up to its internal and external challenges crucially depends on its ability to manage its internal mobility and inflows of international migrants. Using a unique expert opinion survey, we document that Europe needs skilled migrants, and skill mismatch is to be expected. A review of current immigration policies shows that despite a number of positive recent developments ...
2011| Martin Kahanec, Klaus F. Zimmermann