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Inclusion of Consumption into Emissions Trading Systems: Legal Design and Practical Administration

A world of unequal carbon prices requires measures aimed at preventing carbon leakage. Climate policy imperatives demand that such measures must be compatible with the goal of sending a carbon price signal down the value chain. For carbon intensive materials, the combination of dynamic free allocation combined with Inclusion of Consumption (IoC) into emissions trading systems such as the European Union ...

Willingness-to-pay for micro-insurance and flexibility: Evidence from an agricultural investment lab-in-the-file in Senegal

Gifts and Inheritances: How do They Shape the Wealth Distribution

Using Data from the Socio-Economic Panel, I estimate the impact of intergenerational transfers on the level and the inequality of wealth. I particularly focus on the propensity of households to save from gifts and inheritances: While many studies on wealth inequality assume that these transfers are fully saved, households typically add only a certain share of them to their previously accumulated...

Private versus public utilities: no overarching trend toward remunicipalization, no differences in efficiency

DIW Berlin conducted two studies on developments in energy supply – private utilities no more efficient than public utilities – consolidation in drinking water sector offers little benefit More and more cities and municipalities in Germany are once again taking the electricity, gas, and heating utilities into their own hands: between 2003 and 2012, the number of public utilities increased ...

A (Re)Municipalization Trend among Energy Utilities: Truth or Myth?

In the 1990s, a number of municipalities started privatizing their energy utilities; in recent years, there has been an intensive debate about whether a paradigm shift has taken place since then. Cities and municipalities have considered putting the energy, water, gas and heat supply back into the hands of public companies; Berlin and Hamburg are two prominent examples. But is there really an overarching ...

No Differences in Efficiency Between Public and Private Utilities

The increase in municipal economic activity in the utilities sector frequently comes under scrutiny. It is presumed that public utilities have less incentive to provide efficient service than private companies. This could result in excessive costs and prices for end users. New microdata on German energy supply companies allow to conduct an empirical analysis for the whole of Germany for the first time. ...

Private Utilities Are No More Efficient Than Public Utilities: Six Questions to Astrid Cullmann

"Private utilities are no more efficient than public utilities": six questions to Astrid Cullmann

Ms. Cullmann, in recent years many communities have been reacquiring previously privatized shares in energy companies. Does this point to a trend toward remunicipalization? We have created a new microdata set of German energy companies in order to analyze this question for the first time in Germany. Our empirical analysis shows that both the number as well as the turnover of public companies in the ...

The Economic Incidence of Social Security Contributions: A Discontinuity Approach with Linked Employer-Employee Data

We estimate economic incidence of social security contributions (SSC) on the basis of cross-sectional earnings distributions. The approach exploits discontinuities in earnings distributions at kinks in the budget set which are informative about tax incidence. Contrary to most research on SSC incidence, it does not rely on policy reforms, panel data, or hours information. When the location of kinks ...

Medium-Sized Foreign-Owned German Enterprises Heavily Involved in R&D

In Germany, the share of private investment in research and development (R&D) by foreign-owned companies from the beginning of the millennium to 2011 remained virtually unchanged at around one-quarter. From 2011 to 2013, this share fell slightly, and for the first time since the mid-1990s also the absolute amount decreased. Growth in domestic firms, however, was so high that there was an increase in ...