In this thesis it is analyzed if promoting product market competition can help to to fight unemployment in Europe. We have used a general equilibrium model in order to study how reducing mark-ups and increasing productivity in one sector affect aggregate unemployment for an exogenously given...

We consider misconceptions about the functioning of the economy as one possible explanation for the emergence of crises in democracies. Furthermore, we study a political process which may lead to successful reform. First of all, we show that voters can make inefficient decisions concerning...

General financial models have become workhorse models in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. These models have been developed and extensively studied by general equilibrium theorists. What makes them so applicable for macroeconomics and finance is the well accepted fact that models with a...

We quantify the effect of financial leverage on stock return volatility in a dynamic general equilibrium economy with debt and equity claims. The effect of financial leverage is studied both at a market and a firm level where the firm is exposed to both idiosyncratic and market risk. In a...

This paper examines the impact of imposing different separability assumptions in the specifications of the standard hierarchical KLEM production function in a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The appropriate means of introducing energy to sectoral production functions in CGE models...

We consider a pure exchange economy, where for each good several trading institutions are available, only one of which is market-clearing. The other feasible trading institutions lead to rationing. To learn on which trading institutions to coordinate, traders follow behavioral rules of thumb...

Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden umweltpolitische Entscheidungen unter Unsicherheit analysiert. Nach einem Aufriss des Problems der globalen Erwärmung und der damit verbundenen Unsicherheiten und Handlungsoptionen wird die unreflektierte Verwendung der Konzepte der Vermeidungskosten sowie des...

The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) are considered politically unacceptable because of distributional consequences. This paper explores policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal, numerical general equilibrium model...