Despite political activities to foster a low-carbon energy transition, Germany currently sees a considerable number of new coal power plants being added to its power mix. There are several possible drivers for this "dash for coal", but it is widely accepted that windfall profits gained through free allocation of ETS certificates play an important role. Yet the quantification of allocation-related investment ...
The expansion of renewable generation and closer integration of European power markets requires new tools and procedures for system operation. The US experience with nodal pricing offers options to tackle the emerging challenges, and thus may facilitate further integration of intermittent renewable generation technologies. At a one day roundtable hosted by CPI Berlin, experts from European transmission ...
The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the increase in liquidity has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets in the years preceding the financial crisis. If linkages are strong, the inclusion of asset prices in the monetary policy rule may limit speculative runs ...
For many analysts, the Chinese economy is spurred by a bubble in the housing market, probably driven by the fiscal stimulus package and massive credit expansion, with pos-sible adverse effects to the real economy. To get insights into the size of the bubble, the house price evolution is investigated by panel cointegration techniques. Evidence is based on a dataset for 35 major cities. Cointegration ...
High definition television may now be poised for a breakthrough in Germany. Unfortunately, in the area of private free-TV, broadcasters and network operators are still blocking each other. Market participants hope to leverage encryption and digital rights management as sources of long-term profits. This, however, may come at the expense of television viewers. Despite the start of regular HDTV operations ...
It is increasingly observable that in different industries competitors jointly acquire and share customer data. We propose a modified Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such agreements and their welfare implications. In our model the incentives of firms for data acquisition and sharing depend on the willingness of consumers to switch brands. Firms ...
In this study, we suggest an explanation for the low growth rates of real housing prices in Canada and Germany in comparison to other OECD countries over the period 1975-2005. We show that the long-run development of housing markets is determined by real disposable percapita income, the real long-term interest rate, population growth, and urbanization. The differential development of real housing prices ...