We revisit optimal investment in energy-efficiency, presenting a decision framework built around the agent's wealth and wealth dynamic. An investment rule in the form of a trigger is derived such that the agent invests the first time the energy-carrier price crosses this threshold from below....

Knowledge-based capital is a key factor for productivity growth. Over the past 15 years, it has been increasingly recognised that knowledge-based capital comprises much more than technological knowledge and that these other components are essential for understanding productivity developments and...

With the share of renewable energies within the electricity sector rising, improving their market (i.e. inclusion in the allocative processes of the electricity market) and system integration (i.e. enhanced responsibility for grid stability) is of increasing importance. To transform the energy...

This article provides a review of economic studies analyzing the use of multiple policies - a socalled policy mix - to cope with single pollution problems. To guide and structure the review, an analytical framework is developed and applied. The framework integrates transaction costs into the...

With the expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) in countries all over the world, policy design to address the negative impacts of RES plants on their local and regional environment gains in importance. We analyse whether policy design should be spatially-differentiated or uniform when...

The ecological literature suggests that biodiversity reduces the variance of ecosystem services. Thus, conservative biodiversity management has an insurance value to risk-averse users of ecosystem services. We analyze a conceptual ecological-economic model in which such management measures...

Based on a case study on Bombay, we argue that urban infrastructure, like the sewage system and the municipal waste collection, is an important instrument for urban environmental policy. We develop a spatial general equilibrium model of a monocentric city, where infrastructure serves as a public...

Mit der Begründung drohender Altersarmut wird seit einiger Zeit bereits die Eingliederung der bislang nicht gesetzlich versicherten Selbstständigen in die Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung diskutiert. Allerdings ist empirisch sehr wenig über die Altersvorsorge und die Vermögenssituation der...