In October 2003, the European Union introduced a Directive which widens the scope of the EU's minimum taxation system from mineral oils to all energy products including coal, natural gas and electricity. It aims at reducing distortions that currently exist between Member States as well as...

Studies analyzing renewable energy market development usually investigate additional capacity or investment. Characteristics, roles and determinants of cross border trade with renewable energy system components remain blurred. Environmental regulation and renewable energy policies are important...

We investigate in a horizontal product differentiation model with North-South trade the implications of a home bias in consumers' demand for labelled goods. We compare mutual recognition and international harmonisation of ecological labels with respect to firms' profits and welfare. Northern...

In this paper, we use a computable general equilibrium model (WIATEC) to study the potential impact of implementing Europe's 20-20-20 climate policy. The results show that the economic costs of implementing the policy are only moderate and within the range of recent empirical evidence....

The creation of the EU's Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has turned the right to emit CO2 into a positively priced intermediate good for the affected firms. Firms thus face the decision whether to source compliance with the EU ETS within their boundaries or to acquire it through the permit...

Is it possible to combat global climate change through North-to-South technology transfer even without a global climate treaty? Or do carbon leakage and the rebound effect imply that it is possible to take advantage of technological improvements under the umbrella of a global arrangement only?...

This paper derives a new effect of trade liberalisation on the quality of the environment. We show that in the presence of heterogeneous firms the aggregate volume of emissions is influenced not only by the long-established scale effect, but also by a reallocation effect resulting from an...

Germany's water supply industry is characterized by a multitude of utilities and widely diverging prices, possibly resulting from structural differences beyond the control of firms' management, but also from inefficiencies. In this article we use Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier...

Political instability of several countries in the Middle East is overshadowing one of the biggest challenges of the upcoming century: Water - a natural resource that is easily taken for granted, but whose scarcity might lead to serious conflicts. This paper investigates an optimal Water...

The gender wage gap is a persistent labor market phenomenon. Most research focuses on the determinants of these wage differences. We contribute to this literature by exploring a different research question: if wages of women are systematically lower than male wages, what are the distributional...