This paper analyzes the implications of social identity and self-categorization in the context of optimal redistributive income taxation. A two-type model is supplemented by an assumption that individuals select themselves into social categories, in which norms are formed and education effort...

The ongoing economic criticism of the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) recently started focusing on distributional effects, too. A team of authors at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research is worried about high costs for electricity consumers. They argue since electric power consumption is...

Auf dem Weltklimagipfel in Kopenhagen im Dezember 2009 wird ein globales Klimaabkommen verhandelt. Können dort Strukturen geschaffen werden, die einen effizienten und kostengünstigen Klimaschutz ermöglichen? Entscheidend sei es, nach Meinung von Hubertus Bardt, Institut der deutschen...

A climate protection strategy in order to reduce carbon emissions is the most common reaction to threat of global climate change. Adaptation to global warming as additional option is considered as less important. However, international climate policies have had only little success so far. It is...

Die stark gestiegenen Öl- und Gaspreise lassen die Forderung nach politischen Maßnahmen laut werden. Sollte der Staat intervenieren? Nach Meinung von Hubertus Barth, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft, Köln, sollte der Staat mit der Förderung des Wettbewerbs reagieren und Zusatzbelastungen...

German energy supply faces a fundamental and long-term change. By the middle of the century, greenhouse gas emissions will have been greatly reduced and the global climate will start to change in a visible manner. In order to determine and to quantify the physical impacts of climate change on...