The purpose of this study is to analyze the cost efficiency of electricity distribution systems in order to enable regulatory authorities to establish price- or revenue cap regulation regimes. The increasing use of efficiency analysis in the last decades has raised serious concerns among...

This paper examines the cost efficiency in the nursing home industry, an issue of concern to Swiss policy makers because of the explosive growth of national expenditure on elderly care and the aging of the population. A stochastic cost frontier model has been applied to a panel of 1780...

We analyze the technical efficiency of German and Swiss urban public transport companies by means of SFA. In transport networks we might face different network structures or complexities, not observed, but influencing the production process. The unobserved factors are typically modeled as...

Health care provision is undergoing major reforms in Europe as a reaction to rapidly increasing expenditure and lowered political acceptance to commit public finance to cover the deficits. The Dutch government will decide in 2007 if the current budget system will be replaced by a more...

Auch jenseits der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung werden seit der Vereinigung große Summen von West nach Ost transferiert. Denn sehr vieles wurde nicht offen aus Steuern oder über zusätzliche Staatsschulden finanziert, sondern über die "stillen" Kassen der Sozialversicherungen. Dafür mussten die...

Weithin unbemerkt sorgen die Transferleistungen der BA für einen beachtlichen Beitrag zum Finanzausgleich zwischen reichen und armen Regionen. Zusammen mit den Lohnersatzleistungen erhöhen die Maßnahmen der aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik die lokale Nachfrage und können bei effizientem Einsatz...

Improvements in cars' fuel efficiency may induce people to travel more, taking back some of the potential fuel savings. This behavior, known as the (direct) rebound effect, has received much attention in the literature. However, no consensus has been reached regarding its size or the methodology...

This paper investigates how households respond to efficiency improvement of their heating system. Micro-level rebound effects are estimated using a survey with an innovative choice experiment based on the stated preference approach. The experiment design allows to identify the direct and...

This article explores the interactions between direct and embodied energy requirements of households in Switzerland in order to assess the net impacts of standard energy policies focusing exclusively on direct energy use. For this purpose, we estimate direct and embodied energy demand of Swiss...

The Swiss Household Energy Demand Survey (SHEDS) has been developed as part of the research agenda of the Competence Center for Research in Energy, Society, and Transition (SCCER CREST). It is designed to collect a comprehensive description of the Swiss households' energy-related behaviors,...