Over the last decade Germany has boosted renewable energy in power production by means of massive subsidies. The flip side are very high electricity prices which raises concerns that the transition cost towards a renewable energy system will be mainly borne by poor households. In this paper, we...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence of the distributional effects of subsidies for the purchase of alternative vehicles based on an extended version of Hausman's exact consumer surplus. Consistently with economic theory, we estimate changes in household welfare, inequality and...

This study investigates the within-country heterogeneity of material footprints implied by households' consumption in Germany. Material footprints are defined as the amount of biomass, minerals, and fossil fuels extracted to produce the goods that households consume. Combining input-output data...

We study how European climate and energy policy targets affect different member states and households of different income quintiles within the member states. We find that renewable energy targets in power generation, by reducing EU ETS permit prices, may make net permit exporters worse off and...

The Kyoto Protocol marks a break-through in global warming mitigation policies as it sets legally binding emissions targets for major emitting regions. However, realisation of the Protocol depends on the clarification of several issues one of which is the permissible scope of international...

In this paper we investigate how restrictions for emission trading to the energy-intensive power sector will affect the magnitude and distribution of abatement costs across EU countries vis-à-vis a comprehensive EU emission trading regime. We find that emission trading between European power...

This paper investigates the economic impacts of environmental tax reforms designed to reach given emission reduction targets for the German economy. Our focus is on the efficiency and employment implications of alternative schemes for emission tax differentiation between the production sector...

We analyze the productivity effects of environmental (green) investment as well as of environmental expenditures and energy expenditures. For this purpose, we follow a production function approach where we account for these investment and expenditure categories as inputs. Based on a panel...