Klimapolitik ohne Standortnachteile

In the absence of a broad international agreement, national climate policies are less efficient, due to carbon leakage, and more costly, due to causing unemployment and a loss of competitiveness on international markets. As, in many countries, a substantial fraction of emissions results from the production of intermediate goods, such as electricity or transportation services, we investigate whether the above negative side-effects can be addressed by a policy mix that (partially) contains the effects of climate policy to the intermediate goods sector. We use a four-sector general equilibrium model to study a policy mix that consists of taxing emissions and subsidizing the intermediate good. We show that such containment is a second-best approach to combat carbon leakage and to maintain a favorable international market position. Also, it can help to reduce climate-policy-induced unemployment.

Technological Diversity and Cost Uncertainty

In many industries, different technologies are used simultaneously for the production of a homogeneous good. Such diversification is socially beneficial, because it reduces the transmission of factor price volatility, like oil-price shocks, to consumer prices. Therefore, many countries have implemented policies aimed at increasing technological diversification. The question is whether such policies are necessary. We use a two-stage investment model to address this question in the setting of perfect competition and of a monopoly. We show that factor price uncertainty leads to diversification, if capital is not too expensive, and that this diversification is due to each firm investing in a diversified technology portfolio. An important implication of this form of diversification is that technological diversity is socially optimal, even in the case of a monopoly. Thus policy intervention is unnecessary and might even be detrimenta

Environmental Policy à la Carte: Letting Firms Choose their Regulation

Environmental policy often has to be devised under informational constraints, like uncertainty and asymmetric information. We consider an environmental policy that aims at reducing the welfare losses caused by asymmetric information while being sufficiently simple for implementation. In this policy, firms can choose between being regulated with an emission tax or a permit market. This serves as a screening device; the firms reveal private information by choosing an instrument. We show that such a menu of policy options improves upon conventional environmental policy. Furthermore, the optimal policy is simple and thus easily implementable. The approach is also theoretically interesting, because the simultaneous use of price- and quantity-based instruments induces an asymmetry into the pricesversus- quantities decision compared to Weitzman’s criterion. Especially, there can be an optimal pooling equilibrium where all firms choose the tax, but it is never optimal that all firms participate in permit trading.Environmental Policy, Asymmetric Information, Screening, Uncertainty, Prices-versus-Quantities

Adaptation to catastrophic events with two layers uncertainty: Central planner perspective

We study the optimal adaptation to extreme climate events by the central gov- ernment in a setup where events are dynamically uncertain and the government does not know the true probabilities of events. We analyze dierent policy decision rules minimizing expected welfare losses for sites with dierent expected damages from the catastrophic event. We nd out under which conditions it is optimal to wait before implementation of a prevention measures to obtain more information about the underlying probabilistic process. This waiting time crucially depends on the information set of the planner and the implemented learning procedure. We study dierent learning procedures on behalf of the planner ranging from simple perfect learning to two-layers Bayesian updating in the form of Dirichlet mixture processes

Temporary and permanent technology lock-ins in the quality-differentiated Bertrand competition

We consider a setting where strategic behavior of r&d firms can lead to different types of a technology lock-in, permanent or temporary, in an eventually inferior technology. The simple setting with one incumbent and one potential entrant may lead to a wide variety of possible strategic regimes. We study conditions on relative market strength of the incumbent and the entrant which lead to different strategic actions and demonstrate, that such a strategic behavior is not always socially suboptimal, since it may lead to faster development of the existing technology due to persistent threat of the potential entrant. We further elaborate on the selection of support tools which may induce the development of new technology in the second-best world and establish criteria for these tools to be social welfare improving ones

Environmental Policy à la Carte: Letting Firms Choose their Regulation

Environmental policy often has to be devised under informational constraints, like uncertainty and asymmetric information. We consider an environmental policy that aims at reducing the welfare losses caused by asymmetric information while being sufficiently simple for implementation. In this policy, firms can choose between being regulated with an emission tax or a permit market. This serves as a screening device; the firms reveal private information by choosing an instrument. We show that such a menu of policy options improves upon conventional environmental policy. Furthermore, the optimal policy is simple and thus easily implementable. The approach is also theoretically interesting, because the simultaneous use of price- and quantity-based instruments induces an asymmetry into the pricesversus-quantities decision compared to Weitzman’s criterion. Especially, there can be an optimal pooling equilibrium where all firms choose the tax, but it is never optimal that all firms participate in permit trading

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701