Using detailed data originating from several hundred households of the German Residential Energy Survey (GRECS), this paper empirically investigates the returns on investment in home-equipped photovoltaics (PV) installations. We find that these returns were particularly high in the years 2009 to...

Based on the seminal paper of Farrell (1957), researchers have developed several methods for measuring efficiency. Nowadays, the most prominent representatives are nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) and parametric stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), both introduced in the late 1970s....

The overestimation of willingness-to-pay (WTP) in hypothetical responses is a wellknown finding in the literature. Various techniques have been proposed to remove or, at least, reduce this bias. Using responses from a panel of about 6,500 German households on their WTP for a variety of power...

We derive optimal subsidization of renewable energies in electricity markets. The analysis takes into account that capacity investment must be chosen under uncertainty about demand conditions and capacity availability, and that capacity as well as electricity generation may be sources of...

This paper presents evidence that the accumulating cost of Germany’s ambitious plan to transform its system of energy provision – the so-called Energiewende – is butting up against consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for it. Following a descriptive presentation that traces the German...

Exemptions from costly policy measures are frequently applied to alleviate financial burdens to specific market participants. Using a stated-choice experiment with around 6,000 German household heads, we test how exemptions for low-income households and energy-intensive companies influence the...

This paper evaluates an intervention that randomized information letters about energy efficient investments and behaviors among 120,000 customers of two utilities in Germany. We find that conservation effects differ considerably between both utilities, ranging from a precisely estimated zero...

Increasing energy efficiency is a key global policy goal for climate protection. An important step towards an optimal reduction of energy consumption is the identification of energy saving potentials in different sectors and the best strategies for increasing efficiency. This paper analyzes...

Stochastic frontier analysis is a popular tool to assess firm performance. Almost universally it has been applied using maximum likelihood estimation. An alternative approach, pseudolikelihood estimation, decouples estimation of the error component structure and the production frontier, has been...

Energy labels have been introduced in many countries to increase consumers’ attention to energy use in purchase decisions of durables. In a discrete-choice experiment among about 5,000 households, we implement randomized information treatments to explore how energy labels influence purchasing...