Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification – this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...

This paper compares technologies across space and time on the basis of factual and counterfactual substitution elasticities and argues that differences in estimated substitution elasticities should be decomposed into two counterfactual components. While the first component is designed to...

Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification – this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...

This article demonstrates that the large feed-in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in Germany constitute a subsidization regime that, if extended to 2020, threatens to reach a level comparable to that of German hard coal production, a notoriously outstanding example of misguided...

Along with the oil price, concerns about the security of energy supply have soared once again in recent years. Yet, more than 30 years after the OPEC oil embargo in 1973, energy security still remains a diffuse concept. This paper conceives a statistical indicator that aims at characterizing the...

Any researcher would certainly agree with Hamermesh’s (1993:34) intuition about separability that the ease of substitution between any two production factors should be unaffected by a third factor that is separable from the others. This paper emphasizes that such a notion of separability needs...

The security of energy supply has again become a similarly hot topic as it was during the oil crises in the 1970s, not least due to the recent historical oil price peaks. In this paper, we analyze the energy security situation of the G7 countries using a statistical risk indicator and empirical...

The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany's experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere,...

Die Benzinpreise in Deutschland sind so hoch wie nie. Während sich Verbraucher und die im Wahlkampf engagierte Politik mit Vorschlägen zu staatlichen Interventionen überschlagen, scheinen diese bei nüchterner Betrachtung jedoch nicht gerechtfertigt. So besitzt die deutsche Politik zum einen...

Der Ausschuss für Wirtschaft und Technologie des Deutschen Bundestages hat am 22. Oktober 2007 eine öffentliche Anhörung durchgeführt zu der Vorlage Gesetzentwurf der Fraktionen der CDU/CSU und SPD: Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Finanzierung der Beendigung des subventionierten...