External refereed essays

The Price Elasticity of Natural Gas Demand of Small Consumers in Germany during the Energy Crisis 2022

Understanding how consumers respond to turbulent market conditions is crucial for planning security of natural gas supply. This paper estimates the price elasticity of demand of small consumers in Germany in the period with both high price fluctuations and a fear of natural gas shortage in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Using granular data between 2018 and 2023, we estimate an Auto ...

The Long-Term Implications of Destruction During the Second World War on Private Wealth in Germany

By the end of the Second World War, an estimated 20% of the West German housing stock had been destroyed. Building on a theoretical life-cycle model, this paper examines the persistent consequences of the war for individual wealth across generations. As our empirical basis, we link a unique historical dataset on the levels of wartime destruction in 1739 West German cities with micro data on individual ...

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom To Top and Young to Old

There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique survey data that oversamples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement ...

Age Trajectories of Perceptual Speed and Loneliness: Separating Between-Person and Within-Person Associations

Objectives: We aimed at examining between-person and within-person associations across age trajectories of perceptual speed and loneliness in old age. Method: We applied multilevel models to 4 waves of data collected over 6 years from 1,491 participants of the Berlin Aging Study II (60–88 years at baseline, 50% women) to disentangle between-person and within-person associations across age trajectories ...

'Climate Neutral' is a Lie — Abandon It as a Goal: Correspondence

Catalyzing the Transition to a Climate-Neutral Industry with Carbon Contracts for Difference: Commentary

Impacts of Electric Carsharing on a Power Sector with Variable Renewables

Electrifying the car fleet is a major strategy for mitigating emissions in the transport sector. As electrification cannot solve all negative externalities associated with cars, reducing the size of the car fleet would be beneficial. Electric carsharing could reconcile current car usage habits with a smaller fleet, but this may reduce the potential of electric cars to align their grid interactions ...

Power Sector Benefits of Flexible Heat Pumps in 2030 Scenarios

Heat pumps play a major role in decreasing fossil fuel use in heating. They increase electricity demand, but could also foster the system integration of variable renewable energy sources. We analyze three scenarios for expanding decentralized heat pumps in Germany by 2030, focusing on the role of buffer heat storage. Using an open-source power sector model, we assess costs, capacity investments, and ...

The Evolution of "Theories of Harm" in EU Merger Control

We discuss the main theories of harm in EU merger control and their evolution since the 1990s. We present stylized facts and trends using data extracted from EU merger decisions by natural language processing tools. EU merger policy has adapted over time, both in terms of legislation and theories of harm, as well as in terms of the investigative tools and evidence used. The introduction of the new ...

Total Recall: Qualitative Sekundäranalyse zu Recall-Strategien in der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung

Der Beitrag untersucht Recalls im Prozess der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung und der Reintegration in den deutschen Arbeitsmarkt. Recalls sind eine spezifische Form der diskontinuierlichen Beschäftigung, die sich dadurch auszeichnet, dass ehemalige Arbeitskräfte zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt durch ihren früheren Arbeitgeber wiederbeschäftigt werden. Im Mittelpunkt unserer explorativen Analysen stehen ...

From Feeling Depressed to Getting Diagnosed: Determinants of a Diagnosis of Depression after Experiencing Symptoms

Receiving a formal diagnosis for a depressive disorder is a prerequisite for getting treatment, yet the illness inherently complicates care-seeking. Thus, understanding the process from depression symptoms to diagnosis is crucial. Aims: This study aims to disentangle (1) risk factors for depression symptoms from (2) facilitators and barriers to receiving a diagnosis after experiencing depression symptoms. ...

Sufficiency as a “Strategy of the Enough”: Curbing Ecological Crises and Injustices: A Summary of the German Advisory Council on the Environment’s Discussion Paper

A recent discussion paper Sufficiency as a “Strategy of the Enough”: A Necessary Debate by the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) aims to intensify the debate on sufficiency, a central but neglected element of future-oriented policy. It defines sufficiency as the need to limit the consumption and production of ecologically critical goods and services, mainly by the economically rich, ...

Is There a Desired Added Worker Effect? Evidence from Involuntary Job Losses

While the existing evidence on added worker effects is mixed, most studies find no or only small effects. However, studies to date have mostly analyzed individuals’ actual labor supply responses to their partners’ job loss, neglecting to consider a potential mismatch between desired and actual labor supply adjustments. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we study individuals’ changes ...

Effectiveness and Heterogeneous Effects of Purchase Grants for Electric Vehicles

We evaluate German purchase subsidies for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) using data on new vehicle registrations in Germany dur¬ing 2015-2022. We account for confounding time trends and interacting EU-level CO2 standards using neighboring countries as a control group. We find that 40% of BEV and 25% of PHEV registrations were subsidy-induced. The program ...

VAT Pass-through and Competition: Evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes in VAT rates are passed through to consumers in islands with different market structure. We show that pass-through increases with competition, going from 50% in monopoly to around 80% ...

Organizational Models for the Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants: Lessons from the United Kingdom and the United States

With nuclear reactor fleets continuously aging, the decommissioning of closed reactors is gaining increasing attention. In nuclear decommissioning, technical, organizational, and regulatory challenges lead to long project durations and cost escalations. This paper attempts to examine the organizational efficiencies in nuclear decommissioning by applying the framework of the "system good" analysis and ...

Nobody Decides for All — Modeling Incentives and Policies for Closing the Material Loop

A Multi-Commodity Partial Equilibrium Model of Imperfect Competition in Future Global Hydrogen Markets

Techno-economic studies are investigating procurement costs of hydrogen and related derivatives across various international trade routes. However, the strategic behavior of exporters is rarely considered in this context, despite similar behavior frequently observed in the fossil fuel world and market characteristics indicating some potential. This work introduces a novel techno-economic model of oligopolistic ...

Reconsidering Inequalities in COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake in Germany: A Spatiotemporal Analysis Combining Individual Educational Level and Area-Level Socioeconomic Deprivation

Combining the frameworks of fundamental causes theory and diffusion of innovation, scholars had anticipated a delayed COVID-19 vaccination uptake for people in lower socioeconomic position depending on the socioeconomic context. We qualify these propositions and analyze educational differences in COVID-19 vaccination status over the first ten months of Germany’s vaccination campaign in 2021. Data from ...

Moral Bandwidth and Environmental Concerns During a Public Health Crisis: Evidence from Germany

Did the COVID-19 pandemic crowd out environmental concerns, as one might expect if ‘‘pools of worry’’ were finite or ‘‘moral bandwidth’’ was limited? We use Chancellor Angela Merkel’saddress to the German nation on 18 March 2020 as the threshold in a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) to evaluate the effects of an increase in COVID-based economic and health concerns on the climate and environmental ...