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DIW Economic Outlook

The German economy is on track, and will likely grow by 1.8 percent this year; in the coming year, with a slight increase in dynamics, it will grow by 1.9 percent. With these figures DIW Berlin confirms its forecast from this summer. Employment growth continues; the unemployment rate will decrease this year to 6.4 percent, where it will remain in 2016. Due to the sharp drop in oil prices this year, ...

The Situation in the Euro Area Continues to Present Risks: Eight Questions to Ferdinand Fichtner

Renewable Energy Policy: Risk Hedging Is Taking Center Stage

The costs of renewable energy technologies have fallen sharply. Now the financing costs of new installations are playing an increasing role in the overall cost of Germany’s energy transition. This has put the primary focus of support instruments for renewable energy on creating more affordable financing conditions for investments. This report compares the effects of various policy instruments on risk ...

Designing a Model for the Global Energy System - GENeSYS-MOD: An Application of the Open-Source Energy Modeling System (OSeMOSYS)

This paper develops a path for the global energy system up to 2050, presenting a new application of the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) to the community. It allows quite disaggregate energy and emission analysis: Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) uses a system of linear equations of the energy system to search for lowest-cost solutions for a secure energy supply, given externally ...

Op-ed of Franco-German Economist Group on EMU reforms

The euro area has recently seen some good news. A broad-based economic recovery is under way. Significant institutional reforms have been achieved, particularly in the area of banking union. Significant economic reforms are under way in several countries, including in France. As French and German economists committed to Europe and to the friendship between our countries, we are nonetheless concerned ...

Financing Power: Impacts of Energy Policies in Changing Regulatory Environments

Power systems with increasing shares of wind and solar power generation have higher capital and lower operational costs than traditional technologies. This increases the importance of the cost of finance for total system cost. We quantify how renewable policy design can influence cost of finance by addressing regulatory risk and facilitating hedging. We use interview data on wind power financing costs ...

Composite Likelihood Methods for Large Bayesian VARs with Stochastic Volatility

Bayesian Inference for Structural Vector Autoregressions Identified by Markov-Switching Heteroskedasticity

In order to identify structural shocks that affect economic variables, restrictions need to be imposed on the parameters of structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models. Economic theory is the primary source of such restrictions. However, only over-identifying restrictions can be tested with statistical methods which limits the statistical validation of many just-identified SVAR models. In this study, ...

Patrilocal Residence and Female Labour Supply

Many people around the world live in patrilocal societies. Patrilocality prescribes that women move in with their husbands’ parents, relieve their in-laws from housework, and care for them in old age. This arrangement is likely to have labour market consequences, in particular for the women. We study the effect of co-residence on female labour supply in Kyrgyzstan, a strongly patrilocal setting. We ...

The potential for green public procurement is still largely unexploited in Germany

Public purchases can make a valuable contribution to decarbonizing the economy – Despite an upward trend, only 2.4 percent of public contracts in Germany include green criteria – Policy action is needed in order to fully exploit the potential Green public procurement, by which public authorities choose their suppliers of goods and services not only based on price but also according to ...