Germany taxes electricity use since 1999. The government granted reduced rates to energy intensive firms in the industrial sector for addressing potentially adverse effects on firms' competitiveness. Firms that use more electricity than certain thresholds established by legislation, pay reduced...

The German response to the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was possibly the most significant change of policy towards nuclear power outside Japan, leading to a sudden and very significant shift in the underlying power generation structure in Germany. This provides a very useful natural...

This paper analyses the macroeconomic costs of environmental regulation in European energy markets on the basis of existing macroeconomic simulation studies. The analysis comprises the European emssion trading scheme, energy taxes, measures in the transport sector, and the promotion of renewable...

This paper examines whether information technology (IT) and decentralized work organization are complementary only for large firms or also for smaller firms. Empirical evidence, which suggests complementarity between IT and decentralization, is mainly based on large firms. Using data from a...

We investigate why governments restrict exports of exotic raw materials taking rare earth elements as a case study. Trade restrictions on exotic materials do not have immediate macroeconomic effects. Relocating rare earth intensive industries is found to be the main reason behind China's export...

The political discussion on energy efficiency is focusing more and more on the building sector due to its susceptibility to potential market failures like the negative external pollution effects of CO2 emission. Using a discrete choice approach, this paper aims at deriving factors which increase...

This paper analyzes the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and energy demand. We construct a comprehensive cross-country cross-industry panel data set covering 13 years, 10 OECD countries, and 27 industries. Using up to 2889 country-industry observations, we find...

We investigate the rebound effect of a 10% energy cefficiency improvement in the provision of private transport services by German households. In the process, we take into account that household behaviour may be influenced by habits, build on a detailed representation of the provision of private...

This paper proposes that the national focus of energy 'rebound' studies should be extended to an international context in the presence of supra-national agreements such as EU 20-20-20. The potential for energy efficiency improvements in one nation to impact energy use in others means that...

We find an asymmetric pass-through of European Emission Allowance (EUA) prices to wholesale electricity prices in Germany and show that this asymmetry has disappeared in response to a report on investigations by the competition authority. The asymmetric pricing pattern, however, was not detected...