In a model where firms face a continuous choice of how much to invest in environmental innovation, we show that an ever stricter environmental policy does not always lead to ever cleaner production methods and ever lower production of polluting goods. It does so when the abatement technology is...

Environmental managers face substantial uncertainty when deciding on management actions. To reduce this uncertainty prior to decision-making, collecting new data may help arrive at more informed decisions. Whether any resulting improvement in the decision will outweigh the cost of collecting the...

This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging, i.e. declining...

In the last decades, the majority of OECD countries has experienced a continuous increase in public debt. The European debt crisis has prompted a fundamental re-evaluation of public debt sustainability and the looming threat of sovereign debt default. Due to a multitude of large scale events in...

This paper summarizes assumptions made and results obtained in parts of the literature on welfare and sustainability accounting. I consider five different assumptions that can be imposed independently of each other, producing 32 different combinations. This taxonomy is used to organize results...

This paper analyzes the impact of demographic aging on capital accumulation and welfare in economies with unfunded pensions. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with potentially endogenous retirement decisions, it shows that both the type of aging, i.e. declining fertility or...

This paper provides new evidence on the sustainability of public finances in German states (Laender) by exploiting a newly compiled database covering the years 1950 - 2011. Unlike previous studies on Germany, we analyze fiscal sustainability by applying "gsecond generation" panel cointegration...

In this paper we analyze the sustainability of public finances in the states (Laender) of the Federal Republic of Germany using an unprecedentedly comprehensive fiscal dataset for the time period from 1950 to 2011 for West German Laender and 1991 to 2011 for East German Laender, respectively. In...

Fiscal sustainability tests have largely ignored the institutional setting of fiscal policy making. Fiscal equalization schemes in federal states are one such institution. We examine whether German state governments pursue sustainable fiscal policies taking into account fiscal equalization...