This paper provides an empirical test of the Coase Theorem. I analyze whether emissions are independent from allowance allocations in the electricity sector regulated under the EU's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Exogenous variation in levels of free allocation for power producing installations enables a difference-in-differences strategy. The analysis reveals that a change in al- location levels ...
Industrial demand response can play an important part in balancing the intermittent production from a growing share of renewable energies in electricity markets. This paper analyses the role of aggregators – intermediaries between participants and the electricity market – in facilitating industrial demand response. Based on the results from semi-structured interviews with German demand response aggregators, ...
We analyze the gross welfare gains from real-time retail pricing in electricity markets where carbon taxation induces investment in variable renewable technologies. Applying a stylized numerical electricity market model, we find a U-shaped association between carbon taxation and gross welfare gains. The benefits of introducing real-time pricing can accordingly be relatively low at relatively high carbon ...
German hard coal production ended in 2018, following the termination of subsidies. This paper looks at 60 years of continuous decline of an industry that employed more than 600,000 people, through a case study comparing Germany’s two largest hard coal mining areas (Ruhr area and Saarland). Although predominantly economic drivers underlay the transitions, both provide valuable lessons for upcoming coal ...
We exploit a new dataset based on European Union (EU) procurement award notices to investigate the relationship between the degree of centralization of public procurement and its performance. We focus on the case of Italy, where all levels of government, along with a number of other public institutions, are involved in procurement and are subject to the same EU regulation. We find that (a) municipalities ...
