The year 2000 started the evolution of the German market for Structured Products with incorporated Hedge Fund exposures. This paper provides an extensive commentary on this fast growing segment. Our analysis suggests that the market for existing products is affected by significant heterogeneity....

Most research on the performance and risk of hedge funds are based on calculations that just use the data from one index provider. Also most product providers and even more and more investors are using hedge fund indices for benchmarking purposes. As some academic articles pointed out, the world...

Mehr als 1600 Verteilnetzbetreiber versorgen deutsche Haushalte mit Strom und Gas. Dabei handelt es sich um »natürliche Monopole«, d.h. es gibt keinen direkten Wettbewerb zwischen den Unternehmen, sondern werden sie durch die Bundesnetzagentur im Anreizregulierungsverfahren reguliert....

Energy supply in Germany has undergone considerable changes during the last decade, of which especially the nuclear phase-out and enormous installations of renewable energy sources pose new challenges for conventional combustion technologies. To analyze potential adaption processes due to this...

While productivity growth in electricity generation is associated with multiple positive effects from an economic and environmental perspective, measuring it is challenging. This paper proposes a framework to estimate and decompose productivity growth for a sector characterized by multiple...

In the 2011 post-Arab Spring migration wave, over 64,000 migrants landed on the southern Italian coast, with many of them potentially working illegally on farms through caporalato, a widespread system of illegal recruitment of underpaid farm labor run by Italian agrimafias. To test this...

Scale characteristics are key properties of production functions that determine optimal firm sizes, and have considerable policy implications for sectors undergoing restructuring. However, estimates of scale characteristics typically vary with the assumptions of the underlying empirical model....

The increase in municipal economic activity in the utilities sector frequently comes under scrutiny. It is presumed that public utilities have less incentive to provide efficient service than private companies. This could result in excessive costs and prices for end users. New microdata on...

In the 1990s, a number of municipalities started privatizing their energy utilities; in recent years, there has been an intensive debate about whether a paradigm shift has taken place since then. Cities and municipalities have considered putting the energy, water, gas and heat supply back into...

Die Ausweitung der kommunalen Wirtschaftstätigkeit in der Energieversorgung wird oftmals kritisch betrachtet. Es wird vermutet, dass öffentliche Unternehmen im Vergleich zu privaten Unternehmen geringeren Anreizen zu effizienter Leistungserstellung unterliegen. Das könnte überhöhte Kosten...