Suchergebnisse

In this paper, we investigate the real demand for climate protection when the purely individual perspective of existing revealed preference studies is relaxed. This is achieved in two treatments; first, we determine the information subjects receive about the demand revealed by other subjects in a similar decision making situation, second, collective action is implemented whereby all subjects are required to purchase the group's median quantity at a given price. Participants in the experiment were offered the opportunity to contribute to climate protection by purchasing European Union Allowances. Allowances purchased were withdrawn from the European Emissions Trading Scheme. In our experiment, information about other subjects' behaviour has no treatment effect on the demand for climate protection. Under collective action however, the probability of purchasing allowances is higher compared to the reference treatment situation, an individual contribution mechanism. Furthermore, we observe a strong correlation between subjects' demand and their expectations about other participants' behaviour. When collective action is not available, subjects' expectations are consistent with free rider behaviour.

The assessment of climate change mitigation policies mainly depends on three not mutually exclusive modeling decisions: First, the chosen discount rate, since costs are incurred today and long-term benefit occur in the future. A low (high) discount rate favors immediate (delayed) action. Second, the uncertainties related to the problem of climate change. This debate was revived by the literature dealing with Martin Weitzman's "dismal theorem", stating that the unknown unknowns could be too large for cost-benefi t analysis of long-term climate policy measures. Third, the treatment of technological change in economic modeling of climate policy

In this paper, we analyze oil price impacts on unemployment for Germany. Firstly, we survey theoretical and empirical literature on the oil-unemployment relationship and relate them to the German case. Secondly, we illustrate this issue within the framework of a vector autoregression (VAR) approach for Germany. For this purpose, we use three different specifications in order to adequately address the uncertainty related to the construction of an adequate oil variable. Using monthly data from 1973 to 2008, we show that oil price increases induce a rise in unemployment in the German labor market. Moreover, for a restricted sample period for post-unification Germany, we oppose claims that the oil to macroeconomy relationship has weakened since the 1980s. However, our results suggest that it has become more important to construct adequate measures of oil price variables.