In many countries, the transition process towards a low-carbon economy has been associated with increasing electricity prices. Microeconometric evaluations of the causal impact of electricity price changes on plant-level outcomes are rare, though. By exploiting local randomization induced by...

In Germany, substantial drops in wholesale power prices have become a regular phenomenon. While such price drops have far-reaching implications for the functioning of the power market, their underlying determinants remain poorly understood. To fill this gap, we propose a Markov regime-switching...

Klimapolitik erhitzt die Gemüter. Neben der derzeit breit diskutierten einheitlichen CO2-Steuer gibt es eine Vielzahl an Maßnahmen, auf die es sich lohnt, einen genaueren Blick zu werfen. Das RWI hat die Wirksamkeit und Effizienz ausgewählter Instrumente der Klimapolitik evaluiert und die...

A growing literature has shown that behavioral biases influence consumer choices. Such socalled internalities are ubiquitous in many settings, including energy efficiency investments and the consumption of sin goods, such as cigarettes and sugar. In this paper, we use a mechanism design approach...

Energy labels have been introduced in many countries to increase consumers’ attention to energy use in purchase decisions of durables. In a discrete-choice experiment among about 5,000 households, we implement randomized information treatments to explore how energy labels influence purchasing...

Many countries have introduced Energy Performance Certificates to mitigate the information asymmetry with respect to the thermal quality of houses. Drawing on a stylized theoretical model that is coupled with comprehensive data on real estate advertisements in the German housing market, this...

As of May 1, 2014, sellers on the German real estate market are obliged to disclose a house's energy consumption per square meter in their advertisements. The effect of this law has been to substantially increase the transparency of the real estate market. At the same time, the introduction of...

Mit der seit dem 1. Mai 2014 gesetzlich vorgeschriebenen Informationspflicht hat sich der Anteil an Immobilienanzeigen, die den Wärmeenergieverbrauch des zum Verkauf stehenden Hauses veröffentlichen, deutlich erhöht. Gleichzeitig sanken die Angebotspreise für Immobilien mit hohem Verbrauch....