The objective of our analysis is to find out whether an increase in working time without pay compensation can be considered an adequate policy to reduce unemployment. From the perspective of economic theory the outcome is in general ambiguous: On the one hand, as the increase in working time...

While there is some hope that the ongoing climate change negotiations will soon come up with concrete, time scheduled and binding emission reduction commitments, the question of how to achieve these targets is still unsolved. The objective of this paper is to analyse alternative settings of an...

Germany has committed itself to reducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in 2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. To achieve this goal, the government has recently launched an environmental tax reform which entails a continuous increase in energy taxes in conjunction with a...

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling has provided a number of important insights about the interplay between environmental tax policy and the pre-existing tax system. In this paper, we emphasize that a labor market policy of recycling tax revenues from an environmental tax to lower...

The objective of this paper is to quantify the economic effects of the introduction of a system of tradable permits in the European Union (EU). For this purpose we use linked applied general equilibrium models (AGE) for eleven EU member countries. This method enables us to measure the change in...

Increasing environmental awareness may affect the pleasure of consuming a good for which an environmental friendly substitute is available. When deciding to buy differentiated products, a compromise is sometimes made between preferred characteristics of the good and its environmental properties....

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a modification of a standard four input production process where energy is used in an inefficient way due to partly unnecessary waste of energy. In this production process, R&D investment is an additional input in order to improve energy efficiency. It...

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between the widespread use of voluntary agreements and research on the rationale of such approaches. A typical example are voluntary agreements of many industries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming. If the industry...

The purpose of the paper is to outline an analytical framework which captures the ample scope of locational competition: cost differences, resulting from differences in factor prices including taxes, human capital, infrastructure services and total factor productivity. If cost differences are...