Occupational Licensing may reduce the entry of minorities, such as migrants, into a profession if the likelihood of fulfilling the licensing requirements is lower in this group. While policy makers typically justify occupational licensing on the grounds of quality control it, thus, also has the...

The literature has identified a number of determinants of energy efficiency measures (EEMs) in firms, such as investment costs, expected profitability, the level of information and firm size. Instead of contributing a comprehensive analysis of this sort this paper theoretically and empirically...

Based on a trait-oriented approach, Big Five personality traits have been repeatedly shown to affect entrepreneurial action. In the last two decades, a new literature stream on the Big Five has emerged in the field of psychology that has partly moved away from a traitbased perspective towards a...

Sweden has gradually increased its carbon tax within the past 25 years and imposes the world's highest tax on carbon dioxide emissions today. This paper examines the impact of the Swedish carbon tax on residential carbon emissions as well as on consumer behavior. We perform...

We use a field experiment on energy billing in a German region to evaluate the effect of two behavioral nudges (consumption feedback and social comparison) on electricity consumption. Similar experiments have revealed significant treatment effects, yet theindividual variance has proven to be...

Difference-in-difference estimation is a popular tool to gauge the effects of economic policies. In recent years, many papers have applied this tool to the German deregulation of the crafts sector in 2004 to draw lessons regarding the economic effects of occupational licensing. However, a...

The European Commission actively evaluates occupational entry restrictions in all member states. This has attracted a growing interest among scholars of the German crafts sector as it is governed by an idiosyncratic national set of rules. We estimate the effects of the deregulation of the German...

Die deutsche Handwerksordnung regelt die Unternehmensgründung in handwerklichen Berufen durch die Vorgabe verpflichtender Qualifikationsstandards. Im Jahr 2004 wurde der Marktzugang im Handwerk durch eine Novellierung der Handwerksordnung dereguliert, sodass für mehr als die Hälfte aller...

Despite a common EU directive on energy efficiency in residential buildings, levels of energy efficiency differ vastly across European countries. This article analyses these differences and investigates the effectiveness of different energy efficiency policies in place in those countries. We...

Regulatorische Anforderungen sind ein europaweit häufig gebrauchtes Policy-Instrument, um den Energieverbrauch im Wohngebäudebereich zu reduzieren. Wir führen qualitative Fall- Analysen der Länder mit niedrigem oder sinkendem Energieverbrauch durch und zeigen, dass diese Strategie effektiv...