Epistemic arguments play a significant role in Hayek’s defense of market liberalism. Hisclaim that market competition is a discovery procedure that serves the common good is acase in point. The hypothesis of the markets’ efficient use of existing knowledge issupplemented by the idea that...

In Germany, solar thermal systems (STS) have only diused to a minor extentyet. This paper analyzes, which demand side factors are decisive for thefurther proliferation of this environmentally benign technology. Making use ofa consumer survey in North-West Germany in 2007, we examine the...

This study investigates the dynamic efficiency of an emissionregulation regime where companies competitively pay for emissionlicences. We embed the emission licence market in a Cournotmodel where the price of emission licences is subject to strategictradeoff between licences and abatement...

We study the optimal R&D trajectory in a setting where new technologiesare never perfect backstops in the sense that there is no perfectlyclean technology that eventually solves the pollution problem once andfor all. New technologies have stings attached, i.e. each emits a specificstock...

In this paper we give an example in which the price of tradeable emission permits increasesdespite firms' adoption of a less polluting technology. This is in contrast with Montero (2002) andParry (1998), among others. If two Counot players switch to a cleaner technology, the price forpermits may...

In this paper, we address the incentives to invest in environmental innovation of enterprisesthat exercise market power in the output market and also buy and sell pollution permits.Differently from the existing literature, using a market approach we explicitly model theinteraction between the...

This paper analyzes the determinants of alternative automobile fuel regulation and developmentsupport with a particular focus on methanol fuel. We find that embedded interests, bureaucraticreforms, and political circumstances in the Chinese national, provincial, and municipalgovernments have all...

The absence or the presence of the resource curse is often explained by the specifics of politicaland institutional factors. The aim of this paper is to study this effect looking separately ateconomic and political institutions and at their interaction. Unlike most empirical papers inthe...

We analyze the long-term impacts of large-scale expansion of biofuels on land-usechange, food supply and prices, and the overall economy in various countries or regions using amulti-country, multi-sector global computable general equilibrium model augmented with an explicitland-use module and...

The EU Directive 2003/87/EC for the introduction of a European emission trading system has leftthe task of allocating the emission allowances mainly to the member states. In Germany the details of theallocation method are laid down in the Allocation Act (ZuG 2007). One central element of the...