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...

The production of electricity on the basis of renewable energy technologies is a classic example of an impure public good. It is often discriminatively financed by industrial and household consumers, such as in Germany, where the energy-intensive sector benefits from a far-reaching exemption...

Based on hypothetical responses originating from a large-scale survey among about 6,000 German households, this study investigates the discrepancy in willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for green electricity across single-binary-choice and open-ended valuation formats. Recognizing that...

While there is a growing debate among researchers and practitioners on the possible role of central banks and financial regulators in supporting a smooth transition to a low-carbon economy, the information on which macroprudential instruments could be used for reaching the "green structural...

Rental housing where tenants are responsible for their own energy bills but landlords are responsible for energy retrofits may pose a particular challenge in achieving optimal rates of investments in energy efficiency. In this paper, we investigate the severity of this split-incentive problem in...

Using longitudinal data from two household surveys in 2017 and 2019, we analyze the determinants of climate skepticism in Germany. We find that nearly 20% of respondents state that they do not believe in climate change and more than 30% are doubtful that climate change is mainly caused by human...

Identifying the incidence of free-ridership is significant to a range of issues relevant to program evaluation, including the calculation of net program benefits and more general assessments of political acceptability. Estimates of free-ridership in the area of energy policy frequently rely on...

Overindebted private households have created economic and political concern. Using measures of relative (over-) indebtedness which relate household income and debt services to different concepts of subsistence levels, this paper investigates whether severe household indebtedness is driven by...

Past empirical studies on the strategic bequest motive have found evidence for the existence of a positive causation of wealth on receiving attention from on's children. This paper illustrates that these results from the past should be interpreted with some care as the relationship between...

This paper analyzes differences in self-assessed debt burdens of German households confronted with an objective debt burden. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, my econometric analysis shows that a household's subjective debt burden is not only influenced by the current...