When making decisions, agents tend to make use of decisions others have made in similar situations. Ignoring this behavior in empirical models can be interpreted as a problem of omitted variables and may seriously bias parameter estimates and harm inference. We suggest a possibility of...

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the geographical diffusion of photovoltaic installations in Germany quantitatively and to test if preexisting photovoltaic systems stimulate further installations nearby; thus we investigate to which extent knowledge flows depend on geographic...

Ecological Fiscal Transfers (EFT) have recently gained attention as a promising instrument to provide incentives for nature conservation addressing public authorities. In parallel, both the EU and different European countries are exploring new mechanisms to mobilise funding to support...

In many microeconometric models we use distances. For instance, in modelling the individual behavior in labor economics or in health studies, the distance from a relevant point of interest (such as a hospital or a workplace) is often used as a predictor in a regression framework. However, in...

Each year Germany and many other developed economies spend tens of billions of Euros on active measures of employment promotion with the explicit aim of contributing to the reduction of unemployment. Yet, high unemployment has universally been a persistent problem throughout the last two...

Space is an important dimension in agricultural markets because of the relatively high transport costs and the high spatial concentration of food production. However, only a few studies consider space as a factor. This doctoral thesis bridges the gap. First, the analytical results for all...