This paper analyzes the nature of democratic development in a nation on the process of introducing nuclear power over the period 1960 - 2017 for an unbalanced panel of 171 countries. Given the involved political process of introducing nuclear power and its political importance, as well as the...

With Germany’s nuclear phase-out, 23 reactors need to be dismantled in the near future. Initiated by the dire financial situation of the affected utilities in 2014, a major discourse on ensuring financial liability led to a redistribution of liabilities and finances, with the utilities...

Survey-based indicators such as the consumer confidence are widely seen as leading indicators for economic activity, especially for the future path of private consumption. Although they receive high attention in the media, their forecasting power appears to be very limited. Therefore, this paper...

This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the...

In this paper we present an international cross-country benchmarking analysis for utility regulation of France and Germany, the two largest electricity distribution countries in Europe. We examine the relative performance of 99 French and 77 German distribution companies operating within two...

The ongoing financial crisis so far cost the German financial sector 38 billion Euros due to losses on its mortgage-related subprime bank exposures. This paper looks for the impact of these losses on the real sector of the economy. First, the financial sector is looked at as part of the overall...

We use futures instead of forward rates to study the complete maturity spectrum of the forward premium puzzle from two days to six months. At short maturities the slope coefficient is positive, but these turn negative as the maturity increases to the monthly level. Futures data allow us to...

In Germany, the tax loss carry-forward of corporations significantly increased over the last decade. At the same time only a small percentage of losses have been effectively offset in the following periods. One potential reason for this puzzle is that stricter loss offset restrictions have been...

We analyze the top tail of the wealth distribution in Germany, France, Spain, and Greece based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be underrepresented in household surveys we integrate the big fortunes from rich lists, estimate a Pareto...