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DIW Discussion Papers 1026 / 2010
This paper presents an application of a mechanism that provides incentives to promote transmission network expansion in the area of the US electric system known as PJM. The applied mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to attract investment into transmission grids. It is based on rebalancing a two-part tariff in the framework of a wholesale electricity market with locational pricing. ...
2010| Juan Rosellón, Zdenka Mysliková, Eric Zenón
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DIW Discussion Papers 1025 / 2010
Electricity transmission pricing and transmission grid expansion have received increasing regulatory and analytical attention in recent years. Since electricity transmission is a very special service with unusual characteristics, such as loop flows, the approaches have been largely tailor-made and not simply taken from the general economic literature or from the more specific but still general incentive ...
2010| William Hogan, Juan Rosellón, Ingo Vogelsang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1024 / 2010
We address investment in regulated natural gas pipelines when investment is lumpy and the demand for gas is stochastic. This is a problem that can be solved in theory as a dynamic program, but a practical solution depends on functions and parameters that are either subjective or cannot be estimated. We then reformulate the problem from the standpoint of consumers that face incomplete markets. It is ...
2010| Dagobert L. Brito, Juan Rosellón
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DIW Discussion Papers 1023 / 2010
What determines the direction of spread of currency crises? We examine data on waves of currency crises in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998 to evaluate several hypotheses on the determinants of contagion. We simultaneously consider trade competition, financial links, and institutional similarity to the "ground-zero" country as potential drivers of contagion. To overcome data limitations and account for model ...
2010| Amil Dasgupta, Roberto Leon-Gonzalez, Anja Shortland
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DIW Discussion Papers 1022 / 2010
This paper uses a detailed database of political violence in Egypt to study European and US tourists' attitudes towards travelling to a conflict region. We use time series analysis to study the heterogeneous impacts of different dimensions of political violence and counter-violence on tourist flows to Egypt in the 1990s. We find that both US and EU tourists respond negatively to attacks on tourists, ...
2010| David Fielding, Anja Shortland
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DIW Discussion Papers 1021 / 2010
This paper describes the structure of the World Integrated Assessment model of global Trade, Environmental, and Climate change (WIATEC).The model consists of a multi-regional multi-sectoral core CGE model linked to a climate model. The core CGE is based on an existing global trade and environment model called GTAP-E (Truong, 1999; Burniaux and Truong, 2002). A suite of different and interchangeable ...
2010| Truong P. Truong, Claudia Kemfert
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DIW Discussion Papers 1020 / 2010
Electricity transmission has become the pivotal industry segment for electricity restructuring. Yet, little is known about the shape of transmission cost functions. Reasons for this can be a lack of consensus about the definition of transmission output and the complexitity of the relationship between optimal grid expansion and output expansion. Knowledge of transmission cost functions could help firms ...
2010| Juan Rosellón, Ingo Vogelsang, Hannes Weigt
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DIW Discussion Papers 1019 / 2010
We propose a price-cap mechanism for electricity-transmission expansion based on redefining transmission output in terms of financial transmission rights. Our mechanism applies the incentive-regulation logic of rebalancing a two-part tariff. First, we test this mechanism in a three-node network. We show that the mechanism intertemporally promotes an investment pattern that relieves congestion, increases ...
2010| Juan Rosellón, Hannes Weigt
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DIW Discussion Papers 1018 / 2010
It is argued that the observed return rates on capital at firm-level have an upward bias if firms are producing with unobserved intangible capital. Using EUKLEED, a comprehensive firm level data base for Germany, this theoretical preposition is proved empirically. Furthermore, making unobserved capital observable the dispersion in return rates reduces dramatically. The results clearly support the assumption ...
2010| Bernd Görzig, Martin Gornig
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DIW Discussion Papers 1017 / 2010
This paper examines the long-run relationship between energy consumption and real GDP, including energy prices, for 25 OECD countries from 1981 to 2007. The distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long-run relationship. Indeed, cointegration ...
2010| Ansgar Belke, Christian Dreger, Frauke de Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1016 / 2010
This paper analyses the long-memory properties of high frequency financial time series. It focuses on temporal aggregation and the influence that this might have on the degree of dependence of the series. Fractional integration or I(d) models are estimated with a variety of specifications for the error term. In brief, we find evidence that a lower degree of integration is associated with lower data ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1015 / 2010
Models in which employers learn about the productivity of young workers, such as Altonji and Pierret (2001), have two principal implications: First, the distribution of wages becomes more dispersed as a cohort of workers gains experience; second, the coefficient on a variable that employers initially do not observe, such as the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score, grows with experience. If ...
2010| Hani Mansour
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DIW Discussion Papers 1014 / 2010
Since September 2000, as a result of mobility restrictions, the supply of Palestinian workers competing for local jobs in the West Bank has increased by about fifty percent. This paper takes advantage of this unique natural experiment to study the effects of labor supply shocks on labor market outcomes. Using quarterly information on wages and employment in each city in the West Bank, the paper analyzes ...
2010| Hani Mansour
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DIW Discussion Papers 1013 / 2010
This paper analyzes the distributive impacts of violent conflicts, which is in contrast to previous literature that has focused on the other direction. We use cross-country panel data for the time period 1960-2005 to estimate war-related changes in income inequality. Our results indicate rising levels of inequality during war and especially in the early period of post-war reconstruction. However, we ...
2010| Cagatay Bircan, Tilman Brück, Marc Vothknecht
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DIW Discussion Papers 1012 / 2010
Analyzing a sequential bargaining framework with one retailer and two suppliers of substitutable goods, we show that slotting fees may emerge as a result of a rent-shifting mechanism when consumer shopping costs are taken into account. If consumers economize on their shopping costs by bundling their purchases, their buying decision depends rather on the price for the whole shopping basket than on individual ...
2010| Stéphane Caprice, Vanessa von Schlippenbach
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DIW Discussion Papers 1011 / 2010
This paper investigates the impact of the exchange rate regime on the current account adjustment process. In a first step, the present analysis assesses previous empirical work supporting the predominant view that more flexible exchange rate regimes facilitate current account adjustments. Using a FGLS estimator with fixed effects and panel corrected standard errors, the author draws upon the methodological ...
2010| Marius Tippkötter
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DIW Discussion Papers 1010 / 2010
Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2008, this paper analyses the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work, social participation and healthy lifestyle all have substantial effects on life satisfaction. The results have ...
2010| Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, Gert G. Wagner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1009 / 2010
We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Roman Matousek, Chris Stewart
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DIW Discussion Papers 1008 / 2010
We analyze the bargaining problem of an incumbent firm and a union when the wage contract becomes generally binding. Our main application relates to competition among operators of mail delivery networks. We describe the Deutsche Post case which highlights the raising rivals' costs incentive and its consequences resulting from labor laws that make collective agreements generally binding. We show that ...
2010| Sven Heitzler, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 1007 / 2010
While social relationships play an important role for individuals to cope with missing market institutions, they also limit individuals' range of trading partners. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of trust at various social distances when information asymmetries are present. Among participants from an informal housing area in Cairo we find that the increase in trust following a reduction ...
2010| Christine Binzel, Dietmar Fehr