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Big Changes before Big Birthdays? Panel Data Provide No Evidence of End-of-Decade Crises

Gasoline and Diesel Will Continue to Dominate in the Future of Road Transport

The transport sector - road transport, in particular - accounts for more than half of world oil consumption. In the future, the transport sector’s share of oil consumption will grow even more, primarily due to the increasing use of motor vehicles in developing and emerging countries. Road freight transport will also take on greater significance. And overall, gasoline - and, increasingly, diesel - will ...

Alternative Fuels Have Failed to Meet Expectations: Six Questions to Uwe Kunert

The Role of Paternal Risk Attitudes in Long-Run Education Outcomes and Intergenerational Mobility

This paper studies the role of paternal risk attitudes in sons’ long-run education outcomes and in the intergenerational transmission of incomes and education. Based on 1984–2012 German Socio-Economic Panel Study data of sons and fathers, I show that fathers’ risk aversion is inversely related to sons’ long-run levels of education. A quasi-experimental setting provides no evidence for reverse causality. ...

No trend reversal: Gasoline and diesel continue to dominate road transport

Alternative drive systems like electric and hybrid models, and alternative fuels like LPG and natural gas, continue to play a minor role – policy should focus on efficiency improvements to reduce CO2 emissions from conventional fuels and increase the environmental friendliness of road transport – preferential tax treatment for diesel should be abolished Gasoline and diesel will continue ...

"Alternative Fuels Have Failed to Meet Expectations": Six Questions to Uwe Kunert

Mr. Kunert, what share of global oil consumption is made up of fuel consumption? Currently, over half of the world’s oil is used for transportation purposes, of which roughly four-fifths are used for road transport – which is the focus of our report. Roughly one-tenth (and increasing) is used for air transport; the rest is used for rail transport and maritime traffic. The interview with ...

The Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution in Germany, France, Spain, and Greece

We analyze the top tail of the wealth distribution in Germany, France, Spain, and Greece based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be underrepresented in household surveys we integrate the big fortunes from rich lists, estimate a Pareto distribution, and impute the missing rich. Instead of the Forbes list we mainly rely on national rich lists since ...

The Power of Opinion: More Evidence of a GIPS-Markup in Sovereign Ratings During the Euro Crisis

This paper examines whether the Big Three credit rating agencies actually played as active a role in the Euro Crisis as previously asserted. On the basis of panel data methods for a set of 11 EMU countries, the analysis reveals significant evidence for an arbitrary markup on the GIPS group of countries across agencies. This markup, which ranges from 1.5 notches for Moody’s to 2.2 notches for S&P, suggests ...

RealValue

Realising Value from Electricity Markets with Local Smart Electric Thermal Storage Technology (Real Value) The Project Realizing Value from Electricity Markets with Local Smart Electric Thermal Storage Technology (RealValue) is a European Union funded project that analyzes the impact of the implementation of local small-scale power-to-heat storages predominantly in domestic buildings across...

Marital Sorting, Inequality and the Role of Female Labor Supply: Evidence from East and West Germany

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual of randomly matched spouses. Hypothetical earnings are predicted based on a structural model of household ...