Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which...

We use a quantitative electricity market model to analyze the welfare effects of refunding a share of the emission trading proceeds to support renewable energy technologies that are subject to experience effects. We compare effects of supporting renewable energies under both perfect and...

Based on a life-cycle sustainability assessment and the calculation of carbon abatement costs, we quantify the greenhouse-gas emission reductions and costs if green waste in the metropolitan region of Berlin, Germany, is diverted from composting into the production of hydrothermally carbonized...

We analyze the current regulatory regime for electricity transmission in Germany, which combines network planning with both cost-plus and revenue-cap regulations. After reviewing international experiences on transmission investment, we first make a qualitative assessment of the overall German...

The German support for renewable energies in the electricity sector is based on the feed-in tariff for investors that grants guaranteed revenues for their renewable energy supply. Corresponding to differences of granted tariffs and respective market values, a surcharge on consumption covers...

In this paper, we develop the game-theoretic electricity market model ElStorM that includes the possibility of strategic electricity storage. We apply the model to the German electricity market and analyze different realistic and counterfactual cases of strategic and non-strategic pumped hydro...

The aim of this work is to evaluate the impact of domestic and global biofuel policies on Germany's agricultural sector. The central part of our study is divided into four sections. Section 2 presents in detail the issues that make biofuels a debated topic in today's economic policies....

The German decision to finally phase-out nuclear electricity has led to a debate on its effects on electricity prices, emission prices in the European emission trading system, as well as on international electricity trade. We investigate these effects with a Electricity market model for Europe...

This paper applies the concept of damage coefficients introduced in Houba and Kremers (2008) to provide an estimate of the cost of climate change - in particular the cost of changes in mean regional temperature and precipitation - to the fruit vegetation sector. We concentrate on the production...