We provide evidence that motorists respond to short-run fluctuations in fuel prices at the gas pump and not on the road. Employing variants of censored panel regression to control for unobserved heterogeneity and censoring of the dependent variable, we find that the fuel price has a large and...

Sample selection models, variants of which are the Heckman and Heckit models, are increasingly used by political scientists to accommodate data in which censoring of the dependent variable raises concerns of sample selectivity bias. Beyond demonstrating several pitfalls in the calculation of...

Drawing on German household data from 1992 to 2011, this paper analyzes how couples allocate housework against the backdrop of three questions: (1) Does an individual's contribution to household income - both in absolute and relative terms - influence his or her contribution to housework? (2) If...

This article demonstrates that the large feed-in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in Germany constitute a subsidization regime that, if extended to 2020, threatens to reach a level comparable to that of German hard coal production, a notoriously outstanding example of misguided...

The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany's experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere,...

The security of energy supply has again become a similarly hot topic as it was during the oil crises in the 1970s, not least due to the recent historical oil price peaks. In this paper, we analyze the energy security situation of the G7 countries using a statistical risk indicator and empirical...

Rebound effects measure the behaviorally induced off set in the reduction of energy consumption following efficiency improvements. Using both panel estimation and quantile-regression methods on household travel diary data collected in Germany between 1997 and 2009, this study investigates the...

We explore whether non-competitive pricing prevails in Germany's retail gasoline market by examining the influence of the crude oil price on the retail gasoline price, focusing specifically on how this influence varies according to the brand and to the degree of competition in the vicinity of...

This note demonstrates that in applied regression analysis, the variance of a coefficient of interest may decrease from the inclusion of a control variable, contrasting with Clarke's assertion (2005, 2009) that the variance can only increase or stay the same. Practitioners may thus be...

Drawing on household data from Germany, this study econometrically analyzes the determinants of automobile ownership, focusing specifically on the extent to which decreases in family size translate into fewer cars at the national level. Beyond identifying several variables over which policy...