While a widespread consensus exists among macroeconomists that the German labour market reforms in 2003-2005 have successfully contributed to the decline of the unemployment rate, critics claim that the reforms led to wage restraint and consequently consumption dampening accompanied by...

We focus on the influence of institutional variables on business cycle synchronisation for 20 OECD countries from 1979 to 2003. More precisely, this paper derives measures for similarity of institutions and structural reforms, and investigates direct and delayed reform effects on synchronisation...

For creditor countries on the periphery of the dollar standard such as China with current account surpluses, foreign mercantile pressure to appreciate their currencies and become more flexible is misplaced. Just the expectation of variable exchange appreciation seriously disrupts the natural...

Trademarking firms are more productive, generate higher profits, and have a better survival rate. Trademarking firms are in one word more successful, which might motivate non-trademarking firms to adopt a trademark strategy. But this seems not to be the case. The proportion of trademarking firms...

There is still considerable dispute about the magnitude of labor supply elasticities. While differences in micro and macro estimates are recently attributed to frictions and adjustment costs, we show that relatively low labor supply elasticities derived from microeconometric models can also be...

In this paper, we study the impact of fuel availability on demand for alternative-fuel vehicles, using data from a survey of some 600 potential car buyers in Germany. The survey was conducted as a computer-assisted personal interview and included a choice experiment involving cars with various...

Motorized individual transport strongly contributes to global CO2 emissions, due to its intensive usage of fossil fuels. Current political efforts addressing this issue (i.e. emission performance standards in the EU) are directed towards car manufacturers. This paper focuses on the demand side....

This paper analyses the determinants of employment reactions induced by environmental innovations. On the basis of the parameter estimates of the Multinomial Logit and of several Multinomial Probit Models, we show that we have to distinguish between the factors that have an impact on employment...

In this paper, we identify key drivers and barriers for the adoption of building energy retrofits in Germany, which is promoted by public policy as an important measure to address the future challenges of climate change and energy security. We analyze data from a 2009 survey of more than 400...

The employment effects of environmental technologies are in the focus of politicians but there are only few studies analyzing these effects for different environmental innovation fields. We use the 2009 wave of the German part of the Community Innovation Panel (CIS) allowing for such an analysis...