France lived through a long period of nationalization until the early 1980s, when nearly all the largest industrials firms as well as all the banks and public services were state-owned. Since then, a series of privatization moves have caused the state sector to shrink. Public services present a...

This paper presents a micro data approach to the identification of credit crunches. Using a survey among German firms which regularly queries the firms’ assessment of the current willingness of banks to extend credit we estimate the probability of a restrictive credit supply policy by time...

To decarbonize the power sector policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, time-inconsistent policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to...

This essay reviews the conceptual and quantitative literature on the efficient system of fossil fuel energy prices in different countries for reflecting supply and environmental costs, as well as the environmental, fiscal, and economic benefits from energy price reform. Drawing on recent...

The rapid growth of ASEAN economies, the People's Republic of China and India (called ACI henceforth) — major drivers of Asia and the world economy — during the last five decades has caused significant strains on their scarce resources, particularly energy and contributed to serious problems...

Based on the 2014 German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy, focusing on a “double-structure-cum-storage strategy”. While buffering wind and solar energy jointly...

The existing economics literature neglects the important role of capacity in the production of renewable energy. To fiill this gap, we construct a model in which renewable energy production is tied to renewable energy capacity, which then becomes a form of capital. This capacity capital can be...

This paper analyses a set of new scenarios for energy markets in Europe to evaluate the consistency of economic incentives and climate objectives. It focuses in particular on the role of natural gas across a range of climate policy scenarios (including the Copenhagen Pledges and the EU Roadmap)...

This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically how upstream markets are affected by deregulation downstream. Deregulation tends to increase the level of uncertainty in the upstream market. Our theoretical analysis predicts that deregulated firms respond to this increase in uncertainty by...

We analyze the long-term effects of firm break-up and ownership change on corporate performance. Our analysis is based on a unique data set for a large number of Czech firms spanning the period 1996–2005. We employ a propensity score matching procedure to deal with endogeneity problems. Our...