Abstract The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany’s experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated...

As part of its efforts to reach the targets of the Kyoto Protocol, in April 2009 the European Commission enacted new legislation to reduce the per-kilometer CO2 emissions of newly registered automobiles. This paper critically assesses this legislation with respect to its economic and...

The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public financing of renewable energies. Germany's experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere,...

Under the EU-wide Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), CO2 allowances have thus far been allocated largely free of charge. This paper presents a didactic synthesis on the impact of the ETS and argues that such a cost-free allocation will lead to an increase in electricity prices even when strong...

This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany's Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany's support scheme subsidizes renewable energy...

Summary Interaction effects capture the impact of one explanatory variable on the marginal effect of another explanatory variable. To explore interaction effects, so-called interaction terms are typically included in estimation specifications. While in linear models the effect of a marginal...

The recent revision of the European Commission's Energy Tax Directive intends to tax fuels based on both energy content and related carbon dioxide emissions. To explore the implications of such a tax regime for automobile travel, this paper undertakes a comparative econometric analysis of price...