Externe referierte Aufsätze

Optimising the Framework for Innovation in the Electricity System: Lessons from Five Case Studies in Germany

This paper examines success factors for five emerging innovations in the electricity system under the influence of current environmental and economic paradigms such as climate policy and market liberalisation. It widens the conventional focus on technological innovations to encompass organisational and behavioural innovations. The investigation builds on five empirical studies of recent developments ...

Countervailing Power and Dynamic Efficiency

This paper studies the impact of buyer power on dynamic efficiency. We consider a bargaining model in which buyer power arises endogenously from size and may impact on a supplier's incentives to invest in lower marginal cost. We challenge the view frequently expressed in policy circles that the exercise of buyer power stifles suppliers' incentives. Instead, we find that the presence of larger buyers ...

Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in a Carbon Constrained World: The Role of Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) promises to allow for low-emissions fossil-fuel-based power generation. The technology is under development; a number of technological, economic, environmental and safety issues remain to be solved. CCS may prolong the prevailing coal-to-electricity regime and countervail efforts in other mitigation categories. Given the need to continue using fossil-fuels for some ...

A Modified Yardstick Competition Mechanism

This paper expands Shleifer's (Rand J Econ 16:319-327, 1985) theory of yardstick competition and develops a modified yardstick competition mechanism (MYC), where the yardstick employed consists of a tariff basket and total costs. This mechanism has a significant information advantage: the regulator "only" needs to observe total costs, prices and output of all firms. The MYC mechanism can ensure a socially ...

Distributional Impacts of Car Road Pricing: Settlement Structures Divergence across Countries

Social questions of distribution and equity are of major importance for the political acceptance of car road pricing. The argument that kilometre-based private vehicle charging disadvantages the poor is often the core reason for opposing its introduction. An article in this journal [Steininger, K.W., Friedl, B., Gebetsroither, B., 2007. Sustainability impacts of car road pricing: a computable general ...

Estimating Gravity Equations: To Log or Not to Log?

In this study we compare the traditional OLS approach applied to the log-linear form of the gravity model with the Poisson Quasi Maximum Likelihood (PQML) estimation procedure applied to the non-linear multiplicative specification of the gravity model. We use the trade flows for all products, for all manufacturing products as well as for manufacturing products broken down by three-digit ISIC Rev.2 ...

Dual Class Stock in Russia: Explaining a Pricing Anomaly

This paper studies the determinants of the unusually high and volatile price differential between common (voting) shares and preferred (nonvoting) shares in Russia's emerging stock market. It focuses on three potential explanations for the price spread between these two classes of stock: the control contest model of the voting premium, the inferior liquidity of preferred shares, and the risk of expropriation ...

How Bad Is Divergence in the Euro Zone? Lessons from the United States and Germany

This paper compares relative unit labor cost developments ill the countries of the euro area since the beginning of the European Monetary Union (EMU) both with historical developments and with intraregional developments in the United States and Germany Unit labor cost indices for the U.S. states and census regions from 1977 to 1997 as well as for the German Lander from 1970 to 2004 have been constructed. ...

From Bottom to Top: The Entire Income Distribution in Germany, 1992 - 2003

We analyze the distribution of market income in Germany in the period 1992 to 2003 on the basis of an integrated dataset that encompasses the whole spectrum of the population, from the very poor to the very rich. We find a modest increase of the Gini coefficient, a substantial drop of median income and a remarkable growth of the income share accruing to the economic elite, which we define as the richest ...

Start-ups by the Unemployed: Characteristics, Survival and Direct Employment Effects

Fostering and supporting start-up businesses by unemployed persons has become an increasingly important issue in many European countries. These new ventures are being subsidized by various governmental programs. Empirical evidence on skill-composition, direct job creation and other key variables is rather scarce, largely because of inadequate data availability. We base our analysis on unique survey ...

"Klin"-ing up: Effects of Polish Tax Reforms on Those in and on Those Out

In 2007 and 2008 Polish governments introduced a series of reforms which led to a substantial reduction in the tax "wedge" (in Polish: "klin") on labour. These consisted of reductions in the disability rate of social security contributions (SSCs) and an introduction of an income tax credit for families with children. We show that the SSCs reforms on their own brought much greater reductions in the ...

Impacts of the German Support for Renewable Energy on Electricity Prices, Emissions, and Firms

Most models that are used to analyze support policies for renewable electricity neglect important market features like oligopolistic behavior, emission trading, and restricted cross-border transmission capacities. We use a quantitative electricity market model that accounts for these aspects and decompose the impact of the German Feed-in tariff (FIT) into two frequently counteracting effects: a substitution ...

The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) as Reference Data Set

Living Standards in Retirement: Accepted International Comparisons are Misleading

Satisfaction with Life and Economic Well-Being: Evidence from Germany

SOEP after 25 Years: 8th International Socio-Economic Panel User Conference: Editorial

Inefficient Arbitrage in Inter-regional Electricity Transmission

This paper analyzes the efficiency of an explicit ex ante auction for network access to facilitating trade between two separate, but linked, electricity wholesale markets. It is generally assumed that greater regional interconnection will mitigate the exercise of local market power by dominant generators, but we show analytically that when a dominant player has access to a more competitive neighboring ...

Subsidiary Role and Skilled Labour Effects in Small Developed Countries

This paper considers the proportion of skilled labour employed by subsidiaries in small countries in the context of the strategic role of subsidiaries. Strategic role is connected to autonomy and intra-organisational relationships and the mandates given to the subsidiary. In the paper, we draw on the literature on the strategic development of multinational corporations, and insights from inward foreign ...

Divestitures in the Electricity Sector: Conceptual Issues and Lessons from International Experiences

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