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DIW Discussion Papers 1166 / 2011
Integrating large quantities of supply-driven renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns. We model the current methodology for controlling congestion ...
2011| Karsten Neuhoff, Rodney Boyd, Thilo Grau, Julian Barquin, Francisco Echavarren, Janusz Bialek, Chris Dent, Christian von Hirschhausen, Benjamin Hobbs, Friedrich Kunz, Hannes Weigt, Christian Nabe, Georgios Papaefthymiou, Christoph Weber
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DIW Discussion Papers 1165 / 2011
This paper analyses two well-known features of interest rates, namely their time dependence and their cyclical structure. Specifically, it focuses on the monthly Euribor rate, using monthly data from January 1994 to May 2011. Models based on fractional integration at the long run or zero frequency, although adequately describing the persistent behaviour of the series, do not take into account its cyclical ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1164 / 2011
This paper analyses the dynamic effects of fiscal imbalances in a given EMU member state on the borrowing costs of other countries in the euro area. The estimation of a multivariate, multi-country time series model (specifically a Global VAR, or GVAR) using quarterly data for the EMU period suggests that euro-denominated government yields are strongly linked with each other. However, financial markets ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Alessandro Girardi
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DIW Discussion Papers 1163 / 2011
Studies analyzing renewable energy market development usually investigate additional capacity or investment. Characteristics, roles and determinants of cross border trade with renewable energy system components remain blurred. Environmental regulation and renewable energy policies are important in promoting renewable energy use. Yet, the effect of respective policies on determining exports remains ...
2011| Felix Groba
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DIW Discussion Papers 1162 / 2011
EU Member States increase deployment of intermittent renewable energy sources to deliver the 20% renewable target formulated in the European Renewables Directive of 2008. To incorporate these intermittent sources, a power market needs to be flexible enough to accommodate short-term forecasts and quick turn transactions. This flexibility is particularly valuable with respect to wind energy, where wind ...
2011| Frieder Borggrefe, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1161 / 2011
EU Member States are pursuing large scale investment in renewable generation in order to meet a 2020 target to source 20% of total energy sources by renewables. As the location for this new generation differs from the location of existing generation sources, and is often on the extremities of the electricity network, it will create new flow patterns and transmission needs. While congestion exists between ...
2011| Karsten Neuhoff, Benjamin F. Hobbs, David Newbery
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DIW Discussion Papers 1160 / 2011
This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earning biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around .2 for cohorts born in the late 1930s and early 1940s; this amounts to about 2/3 of the value of the Gini ...
2011| Timm Bönke, Giacomo Corneo, Holger Lüthen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1159 / 2011
In this paper, we show, using the consumer's budget constraint, that the residuals of the trend relationship among consumption, aggregate wealth, and labour income should predict both stock returns and housing returns. We use quarterly data for a panel of 31 emerging economies and find that, when agents expect future stock returns to be higher, they will temporarily allow consumption to rise. Regarding ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Ricardo M. Souza
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DIW Discussion Papers 1158 / 2011
In this paper we use a representative consumer model to analyse the equilibrium relation between the transitory deviations from the common trend among consumption, aggregate wealth, and labour income, cay, and focus on the implications for both stock returns and housing returns. The evidence based on data for 15 OECD countries shows that when agents expect future stock returns to be higher, they will ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Ricardo M. Souza
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DIW Discussion Papers 1157 / 2011
This article critically examines the theoretical arguments that underlie the literature linking personality traits to economic outcomes and provides empirical evidence indicating that labour market outcomes influence personality outcomes. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the extent to which gender differences occur in the processes by which highly positive and negative ...
2011| Eileen Trzcinski, Elke Holst
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DIW Discussion Papers 1156 / 2011
Increasing utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) is a priority worldwide. Germany has been a forerunner in the deployment of RES and has ambitious goals for the future. The support and use of renewables affects the economy: It creates business opportunities in sectors producing renewable energy facilities, but also comes along with costs for supporting the deployment of renewables. This paper ...
2011| Jürgen Blazejczak, Frauke G. Braun, Dietmar Edler, Wolf-Peter Schill
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DIW Discussion Papers 1155 / 2011
Naval counter-piracy measures off Somalia have failed to change the incentives for pirates, raising calls for land-based approaches that may involve replacing piracy as a source of income. This paper evaluates the effects of piracy on the Somali economy to establish which (domestic) groups benefit from ransom monies. Given the paucity of economic data on Somalia, we evaluate province-level market data, ...
2011| Anja Shortland
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DIW Discussion Papers 1154 / 2011
Decarbonisation of energy and transport infrastructure requires significant private sector investments. The natural gas industry has demonstrated such large scale private sector infrastructure investment over the last decades, typically using long-term contractual arrangements. Are therefore institutional frameworks necessary that facilitate long-term contracting or provide regulation reassuring about ...
2011| Anne Neumann, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 1153 / 2011
We suggest to use information from the state register of personal cars as an alternative indicator of economic inequality in countries with a large share of shadow economy. We illustrate our approach using the Latvian pool of personal cars. Our main finding is that the extent of household economic inequality in Latvia is much larger than officially assumed. The latest officially available estimate ...
2011| Vyacheslav Dombrovsky, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Boriss Siliverstovs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1152 / 2011
This paper considers the question of whether changes in persistence have occurred during the long-run evolution of U.S. prices of the non-renewable energy resources crude oil, natural gas and bituminous coal. Our main contribution is to allow for a structural break when testing for a break in persistence, thus disentangling the effect of a deterministic break from that of a stochastic break and advancing ...
2011| Aleksandar Zaklan, Jan Abrell, Anne Neumann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1151 / 2011
The integration of China into the global economy is one of the most spectacular events in economic history. This paper investigates to what extent this process affects output growth and inflation in the advanced countries. A GVAR model is specified to explore interdependencies between business cycles in China and industrial countries, including the US, the euro area and Japan. For robustness, the results ...
2011| Christian Dreger, Yanqun Zhang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1150 / 2011
Using data for 14 OECD countries and 13 sectors for the period 1985-2004, this paper analyzes the significance of the linkage between channels of international knowledge spillovers and total factor productivity. We distinguish between domestic and international intra- and inter-sectoral spillover sources. Patent applications are exploited to estimate the contribution of technology transfer to industrial ...
2011| Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 1149 / 2011
This paper challenges the common view that exports generally contribute more to GDP growth than a pure change in export volume, as the export-led growth hypothesis predicts. Applying panel cointegration techniques to a production function with non-export GDP as the dependent variable, we find for a sample of 45 developing countries that: (i) exports have a positive short-run effect on non-export GDP ...
2011| Christian Dreger, Dierk Herzer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1148 / 2011
This paper assesses the validity of the perception-based governance indicators used by the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) for aid allocation decisions. By conducting Explanatory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of data from 1996 to 2009, we find that although the MCA purports to measure seven distinct dimensions of governance, only two discrete underlying dimensions, the perceived 'participatory ...
2011| Martin Knoll, Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 1147 / 2011
This paper provides empirical evidence on the party incumbency advantage in mayoral elections in Germany. Using a regression discontinuity design on a data set of about 25,000 elections, I estimate a causal incumbency effect of 38-40 percentage points in the probability of winning the next mayor election. The electoral advantage is larger for fulltime mayors, increasing in municipality size, independent ...
2011| Ronny Freier