The general conditions for local authorities in Germany have changed fundamentally during the last decades. Not only do municipalities compete with each other for employment, prestige and competitive advantages, they also face increasingly higher demands by their citizens, for instance in the...

In the context of yardstick regulation with long-lived assets, the influence of investment cycles and thereof resulting heterogeneous capital structures on the ability to recover capital is quite important. Investment decisions are based on whole investment cycles of the infrastructure. It is...