Based on the Ahumada et al. (2007, Review of Income and Wealth) critique we revise existing estimates of the size of the German underground economy. Among other things, it turns out that most of these estimates are untenable and that the tax pressure induced size of the German underground...

The residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions, which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy-efficiency (EE) improvements in both emerging and developed countries. Yet, there are several persistent barriers...

In this article we show how different promotion schemes for renewables affect economic welfare. Our starting point is that external benefits of renewable electricity supply besides the abatement of greenhouse gases are not related to actual electricity generation but to producing and installing...

Changes in energy consumption behaviour of households are recognised as a main contributor to reduced energy demand in developed countries. We investigate the economy-wide impacts of a more efficient electricity consumption behaviour in the presence of demand rigidities and consumption habits....

We investigate consumer inattention and imperfect information regarding the financial benefits of energy-efficient lighting using a randomized controlled trial with 1,084 observations. Results suggest that subjects generally know about cost savings of LED bulbs - the central lighting technology...

Empirical findings indicate that a large share of households misperceives electricity prices and is not able to make deliberate choices in energy service consumption, which leads to biased consumption decisions and thus to inefficient energy use. To investigate the impact of misperceived...

How much information should governments reveal to consumers if consumption choices have uninternalized consequences to society? How does an alternative tax policy compare to information disclosure? We develop a price theoretic model of information design that allows empiricists to identify the...

We analyze the drivers and barriers that influence investments increasing the energy efficiency of firms' production processes or buildings in the German manufacturing sector based on microdata. In particular, we shed light on the relationship between financial barriers (e. g. credit...

Increasing energy efficiency is one of the main goals in current German energy and climate policies. We study the determinants of energy efficiency in the German manufacturing sector based on official firm-level production census data. By means of a stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the...

In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art and common practice of energy and climate modeling vis-à-vis the rebound literature, in particular regarding how macroeconomic energy and climate models quantify and include energy and greenhouse gas rebound effects. First, we focus on rebound...