The 2022 natural gas price spikes across Europe raised concerns regarding their distributional consequences. This paper investigates the distributional effect of price increases between and, in particular, within different income groups in Germany, accounting for different determinants of gas expenditures. The study finds that low-income households are affected the most by the gas price increase. Low-income ...
What is the impact of housing upgrades on occupant health? Although economists and policymakers are certain about the health implications of housing upgrades, empirical evidence is largely missing or else only based on small-scale experiments in developing countries. This study provides the first population-representative quasi-experimental estimates based on a large-scale refurbishment program that ...
Renewable energy installations are rapidly gaining market share due to falling technology costs and supportive policies. Meanwhile, the energy price crisis resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian war has shifted the energy policy debate toward the question of how consumers can benefit more from the low and stable generation costs of renewable electricity. Here we suggest a Renewable Pool (“RE-Pool”) under ...
In current power markets, the bulk of electricity is sold wholesale and transported to consumers via long-distance transmission lines. Recently, decentralized local energy markets have evolved, often as isolated networks based on solar generation. We analyze strategic pricing, investment, and welfare in local energy markets. We show that local energy markets yield competitive equilibrium prices and ...
This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of rent control. When a part of the market remains unregulated, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents due to the misallocation of households to dwellings. To document this mechanism empirically, we study a large-scale policy intervention in the German housing market. We isolate the misallocation mechanism by exploiting ...
Ein Jahr regieren SPD, Grüne und FDP zusammen – mit erstaunlichem Pragmatismus und Erfolgen für die Sozialpolitik. Doch es gibt Fehler, die schwere Folgen haben könnten. Die Umfragewerte der aktuellen Bundesregierung sind nach ihrem ersten Jahr auf dem Tiefpunkt. Die FDP kratzt nach Niederlagen in den Landtagswahlen in diesem Jahr bei Umfragen bundesweit an der Fünfprozenthürde. Die SPD liegt mit weniger ...
This paper empirically analyses the impact of government ownership on competition. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent governmental equity interventions in the European airline industry provides for a particularly ideal setting to investigate this topic, and this for several reasons. First, airline markets and competition therein are well-defined and well-understood. Second, European countries...