Dans cet article, nous étudions empiriquement les déterminants des spreads des obligations souveraines des pays de l'UE vis-à-vis de l'Allemagne entre 2003-2010. Nous abordons deux questions principales. Tout d'abord, nous examinons quelle proportion de la variation des spreads s'explique par...

Improving the efficiency of water use is usually presented as an opportunity for large water savings, particularly in the agricultural sector. Warnings that this may not translate into reduced consumption is sometimes associated with the rebound effect or Jevons paradox, an appealing concept...

Abstract: This paper quantifies the direct rebound effects associated with the switch from incandescent lamps (ILs) or halogen bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or light emitting diodes (LEDs) using a large nationally representative survey of German households. The...

Although the building sector is recognized as having major potential for energy conservation and carbon dioxide emissions mitigation, conventional bottom-up and top-down models are limited in their ability to capture the complex economic and technological dynamics of the sector. This paper...

Abstract: This paper quantifies the direct rebound effects associated with the switch from incandescent lamps (ILs) or halogen bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) or light emitting diodes (LEDs) using a large nationally representative survey of German households. The...

Technological and informational spillovers from multinational firms can be particularly beneficial to domestic firms especially in less developed economies. The technological superiority and management experience of foreign multinational firms yield various opportunities for learning. Yet, the...

Large changes in marital trends during the second half of the 20th century raise the question of the reason leading to marriage in Western Europe and in Northern America: declining marriage rates, increase in cohabitation, increasing divorce rates. But the reason to get married can be diverse...

"Constant proportion portfolio insurance" (CPPI) is nowadays one of the most popular techniques for portfolio insurance strategies. It simply consists of reallocating the risky part of a portfolio with respect to market conditions, via a leverage parameter - called the multiple - guaranteeing a...

The philosophy behind the debt market discipline approach to banking regulation presumes that the pricing of bank debt securities, if accurate, conveys reliable signals to supervisors. In this paper, we take a critical look at the feasibility of such an approach by exploring empirically the...

The paper investigates the patterns of persistence of innovation and of the properties of firms' knowledge base (KB) across a sample of Italian firms in the period 1998-2006. The analysis draws upon a theoretical representation of knowledge as a collective good, stemming from the recombination...