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Lumpy Investment in Regulated Natural Gas Pipelines: An Application of the Theory of the Second Best

We address investment in regulated natural gas pipelines when investment is lumpy and the demand for gas is stochastic. This is a problem that can be solved in theory as a dynamic program, but a practical solution depends on functions and parameters that are either subjective or cannot be estimated. We then reformulate the problem from the standpoint of consumers that face incomplete markets. It is ...

How Do Tourists React to Political Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Tourism in Egypt

This paper uses a detailed database of political violence in Egypt to study European and US tourists' attitudes towards a conflict region. We study the heterogeneous impacts of different dimensions of political violence and counter-violence on tourist flows to Egypt in the 1990s. Both US and EU tourists respond negatively to attacks on tourists, but are not influenced by casualties arising in confrontations ...

Security as a Public, Private or Club Good: Some Fundamental Considerations

Security is often defined as the absence of threats. However, security has far more aspects, reaching from security of nation states to health security. Baldwin (1997) formulated seven questions to narrow the (broad) concept of security. Along with Baldwin's questions, this paper analyses 'security' in the context of private, public, and club goods and their changing mixture. On the individual level, ...

The Economics of Terrorism from a Policy-Maker's Perspective

This paper introduces a brief framework on the political decision-making process in the context of terrorism. I relate the trade-offs policy-makers are faced with to the economic terrorism literature. Past years have shown a steady increase in theoretical and empirical contributions. However, the major part of the empirical advances is on the economic effects of terrorism, its origins, and drivers. ...

The Economics of Security: A European Perspective ; Introduction

Success Factors and Pitfalls of Regional Rail Franchising in Germany

Since 1996 regional rail passenger services in Germany have been subject to franchising. The franchising framework is characterised by a strong decentralisation of responsibilities, a considerable degree of freedom for the responsible authorities regarding contract design, a sound financial basis for awarding contracts, and the free choice of authorities between tendering procedures and direct awarding ...

Dynamics in Transitory and Permanent Variation of Wages in Germany

We employ covariance structure models to decompose the cross-sectional variance of male wages in Germany into its permanent and transitory parts. We find that the steep growth of cross-sectional inequality during the early 2000s is predominantly driven by transitory factors.

Gone with the Wind? Electricity Market Prices and Incentives to Invest in Thermal Power Plants under Increasing Wind Energy Supply

The increased wind energy supplied to many electricity markets around the world has to be balanced by reliably ramping units or other complementary measures when wind conditions are low. At the same time wind energy impacts both, the utilization of thermal power plants and the market prices. While the market prices tend to decrease, the impact on the utilization of different plant types is at the outset ...

Pitfalls of Post-model-selection Testing: Experimental Quantification

Traditional specification testing does not always improve subsequent inference. We demonstrate by means of computer experiments under which circumstances, and how severely, data-driven model selection can destroy the size properties of subsequent parameter tests, if they are used without adjusting for the model-selection step. The investigated models are representative of macroeconometric and microeconometric ...

Incentive Effects of Fiscal Equalization: Has Russian Style Improved?

The effects of intergovernmental fiscal arrangements on variation in regional economic growth are analyzed for Russia, a country with large cross-regional differences and considerable fiscal redistribution. Moreover, fiscal reforms implemented in the first half of the 2000s, which to some extent followed scientific advice, make analysis of this case particularly interesting. We observe that postreform ...