Research on ethno-linguistic ties has so far mostly focused on domestic measures of ethno-linguistic heterogeneity. Little attention has been given to the possibility that ethno-linguistic relations between countries may affect out- comes, particularly in a spatial econometric context. In this...

Gegenwärtig sind die verschiedenen Energieträger in Deutschland unterschiedlich stark mit Abgaben und Umlagen belastet. Um die energie- und klimapolitischen Ziele der Bundesregierung zu erreichen, müssen fossile Heiz- und Kraftstoffe stärker bepreist werden (Kemfert et al. 2019; Dertinger und...

While previous research found no other variable than corruption to have a negative impact on (the growth rate of) the African countries' elephant populations, we show that one further significant impact is exerted by what one might all neighbourhood effects. Elephants travel long distances,...

In this paper, we consider fiscal competition between jurisdictions. Capital taxes are used to finance a public input and two public goods, one which benefits mobile skilled workers and one which benefits immobile unskilled workers. We derive the jurisdictions? reaction functions for different...

Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies worldwide, many of which target or impact local communities. Although research, international development, and policy implementation (and, thus, success in fighting both threats) require thoughtful consideration and communication of the...

Economic losses caused by tropical cyclones have increased dramatically. It can be assumed that most losses are due to increased prosperity and a greater tendency for people to settle in exposed areas, but also that the growing incidence of severe cyclones is due to climate change. This paper...

Benchmarking methods are widely used in the regulation of firms in network industries working under heterogeneous exogenous environments. In this paper we compare three recently developed estimators, namely conditional DEA (Daraio and Simar, 2005, 2007b), latent class SFA (Orea and Kumbhakar, 2004;...

In this paper, we analyze the technical efficiency of CO2 reduction potentials of German power and heat plants, using a non-parametric sequential Data Envelopment Analysis. We apply a metafrontier framework to evaluate plant-level efficiencies in the transformation of inputs into desirable...

As panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) models can include several countries and variables in one system, they are well suited for global spillover analyses. However, PVARs require restrictions to ensure the feasibility of the estimation. The present paper uses a selection prior for a data-based...

Structural VAR models are frequently identified using sign restrictions on contemporaneous impulse responses. We develop a methodology that can handle a set of prior distributions that is much larger than the one currently allowed for by traditional methods. We then develop an importance sampler...