Last year the German Parliament exempted biofuels from the gasoline tax. The promotion of biofuels is being justified by allegedly positive effects on climate, energy, and agricultural policy goals. The paper takes a closer look at bio-ethanol as a substitute for gasoline. We analyze the basic...

In June 2002 the German Parliament decided to exempt biofuels from the gasoline tax. The policy to promote biofuels is being justified by allegedly positive effects on the climate, energy, and agricultural policy. The working paper takes a closer look at bio-ethanol as a substitute for gasoline...

We use the new version of the GTAP-W model to analyze the economy-wide impacts of enhanced irrigation efficiency. The new production structure of the model, which introduces a differentiation between rainfed and irrigated crops, allows a better understanding of the use of water resources in...

Agriculture and forestry play an important role in emitting and storing greenhouse gases. For an efficient and cost-effective climate policy it is therefore important to explicitly include land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in economy-climate models. This paper gives an overview...

Based on predicted changes in the magnitude and distribution of global precipitation, temperature and river flow under the IPCC SRES A1B and A2 scenarios, this study assesses the potential impacts of climate change and CO2 fertilization on global agriculture. The analysis uses the new version of...

Water and agriculture are intrinsically linked. Water is essential for crop production and agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater resources. However, this link is commonly ignored by economic models mainly because water use is not reported in the national economic accounts. Few...

Understanding what determines the extent to which economic agents tell the truth to their regulating authority is of major economic importance, from banking to environmental protection. To this end, we examine truth-telling of German commercial fishermen in an artefactual field experiment. Their...

The Environmental Liability Act (Umwelthaftungsgesetz) enacted January 1, 1991 is claimed to have substantially tightened the environmental liability regime in Germany. The economic consequences of the amendment of the German environmental liability legislation initiated by the Sandoz accident...

In providing precautionary incentives and allocating environmental risk, liability for environmental damages faces two difficulties: randomness of damages incurred and nonobservability of precautionary measures. Hence, a major obstacle in enforcing legal claims is the difficulty of proving...

The current WTO jurisdiction on linkages of trade and environment is not free of contradictions and has provided for heated debate due to some inconsistencies in past WTO rulings. The article argues that the WTO jurisdiction is not only unclear but also lacks economic reasoning. It aims to...