This paper investigates empirically the consumer demand of environmentally relevant goods for Germany, as well as their relationship to the demand for leisure. Higher prices for energy goods like gas, electricity or fuel oil due to higher indirect taxation amongst others may have serious welfare...

We study the impact of broadband availability on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) using German firm-level data between 2010 and 2015. We adopt a control function approach to causally identify and separately estimate productivity for 46 two-digit manufacturing and service sectors. Over the...

Recent developments in electricity markets such as the increased deployment of variable renewable generation have prompted renewed interest over the role of energy storage. While storage technologies can in principle provide various benefits for the functioning of an electrical grid, many energy...

The upheaval in global crude oil markets and the boom in oil production from shale plays in North America have brought scrutiny on the export ban for crude oil in the United States. This paper examines the global flows and strategic refinery adjustments in a spatial, game-theoretic...

We discuss the implications of two price zones, i.e. one northern and southern bidding area, on the German electricity market. In the northern zone, continuous capacity additions with low variable costs cause large regional supply surpluses in the market dispatch while conventional capacity...

In this paper we investigate the introduction of an export tax on steam coal levied by an individual country (Australia), or a group of major exporting countries. The policy motivation would be twofold: generating tax revenues against the background of improved terms-of-trade, while CO2...

This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the world's largest environmental tax reform. We compare carbon and air pollutant emissions of the German transport sector and synthetic counterfactuals following the 1999 eco-tax reform, and find average reductions in external damages of around...

The Trump administration has promised to stop the spiraling down of the U.S. coal industry that has been going on for several years. We discuss the origins of the decline of the U.S. coal industry and new policy interventions by the Trump administration. We find that a further decrease of coal...

We present a medium-term market equilibrium model of the North American crude oil sector via which we develop a scenario analysis to investigate strategies to mitigate the environmental and public-safety risks from crude-by-rail transportation across the United States. The model captures crude...

Coal consumption and production have sharply declined in recent years in the U.S., despite political support. Reasons are mostly unfavorable economic conditions for coal, including competition from natural gas and renewables in the power sector, as well as an aging coal- fired power plant fleet....