In January 2013 the interurban passenger transport market in Germany was liberalized and several coach carriers emerged offering an alternative to the Deutsche Bahn, a state owned rail monopoly. The coach carriers have attempted to position themselves not just through lower prices but also...

We analyze future scenarios of integrating electric vehicles (EV) into the German power system, drawing on different assumptions on the charging mode. We use a numerical dispatch model with a unit-commitment formulation which minimizes dispatch costs over a full year. While the overall energy...

Results from travel demand research in many countries show that - on average - women are less mobile and have different mobility patterns than men. Recent longitudinal studies of gender specific travel demand reveal converging mobility of males and females. Moreover, in some countries results...

The financing of infrastructures is a major topic in recent energy policy debates. Project finance, as a specialized form of debt finance, thereby has become a well-established financing tool. This paper contributes a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the determinants of the debt ratio in...

We revisit key elements of European power market design with respect to both short term operation and longer-term investment and re-investment choices. For short term markets, the European policy debate focuses on the definition of common interfaces, like for example gate closure time. We argue...

Tax competition for the mobile factor capital has led to a trend in many countries to levy lower taxes on interest income, often introducing differential taxation between interest and business income. In this study, we analyze the effect of such differential taxation on the debt ratio of firms....

In this study we investigate the impact of the thin capitalization rule (TCR), introduced in Germany in 2008, on firms' capital structure, investment and profitability. The identification of the causal effects is based on the escape clauses in the regulation using a difference-in-difference...

The GARCH(1,1) model and its extensions have become a standard econometric tool for modeling volatility dynamics of financial returns and port-folio risk. In this paper, we propose an adjustment of GARCH implied conditional value-at-risk and expected shortfall forecasts that exploits the...

We explore the impact of concentration in the banking markets on the capital structure of publicly quoted non-financial firms in the EU15 over the period 1997- 2005, an era marked by intensive merger activity in the banking sector. Our main finding is a negative and significant relationship...

We investigate whether or not banks play a positive role in the ownership structure of European listed firms. We distinguish between banks and other institutional investors as shareholders and examine empirically the relationship between financial institution ownership and the performance of the...