Carbon pricing decisions by governments are prone to time-inconsistency, which causes the private sector to underinvest in emission-reducing technologies. We show that incentives for decarbonization can be improved if complementing carbon pricing with carbon contracts for differences, where the...

In this paper we show that carbon pricing is subject to time-inconsistency and we investigate solutions to improve on the problem and restore the incentive for the private sector to invest in low-carbon innovation. We show that a superior price-investment equilibrium can be sustained in the...

The transition towards low-carbon economies requires massive investments into renewable energies, which are commonly supported through regulatory frameworks. Yet, governments can have incentives - and the ability - to deviate from previously-announced support once those investments have been...

We present an ex-post analysis of the effects of GDF’s acquisition of Suez in 2006 created one of the world’s largest energy companies. We perform an econometric analysis, based on Difference-in-Difference techniques on the market for trading on the Zeebrugge gas hub in Belgium. Removing...

This paper presents a novel theory of corruption in public procurement. It considers an agency setting of contract execution where the principal is a politician who can commit to a contract auditing policy. It is found that a benevolent politician, by choosing a sufficiently strict auditing,...

We analyze a client's choice of contract in auctions where Dutch law firms compete for cases. The distinguishing feature is that lawyers may submit bids with any fee arrangement they prefer: an hourly rate, a fixed fee or a \mixed fee," which is a time-capped fixed fee plus an hourly rate for...

We investigate the dimensions through which R&D spillovers are propagated across firms via cooperation through Research Joint Ventures (RJVs). We build on the framework developed by Bloom et al. (2013) which considers the opposing effects of technology spillovers and product market rivalry, and...

Motivated by the EU concept of Pre-Commercial Procurement and the massivepresence of SMEs in the European economy, we study how budget constraints affect R&D effort in sequential elimination tournaments. We show that introducingbudget constraints leads to a non-monotonicity in unconstrained...