During the last years more and more discussions came up about the contribution of technology-oriented and technology-intensive industries for the economic development and employment. The estimates of the determinants of the regional number of firm formations point out differences between the...

Many studies of producer behavior consider cost and input demand functions de-rived from microeconomic theory and estimate them on the basis of aggregate data. If firms' characteristics differs, the neglect heterogeneity can lead to estimation bias. An alternative is to restrict individual...

A trend towards softer regulation, especially in the form of negotiated environmental agreements, is observable in national and international environmental policies. Such agreements are controversial, because there are fears that government will relinquish its responsibility for environmental...

The manufacturing sector accounts for a substantial share of German GDP, employment and carbon emissions. Therefore, the manufacturing sector's energy use and carbon emissions are of crucial importance for reaching Germany's climate goals. In this paper, we analyse energy use patterns in German...

Voluntary environmental management programs for firms have become an increasingly popular instrument of environmental policy. However, the literature’s conclusion on the effectiveness of such programs is ambiguous, and for the European region there is a lack of evidence based on a large...

Relative prices determine competitiveness of different locations. In this paper, we focus on the role of regulatory differences between Germany and other EU countries which affect the shadow price of carbon emissions. We calibrate a Melitz-type model, extended by firms’ emissions and abatement...