Teacher quality and incentives - Theoretical and empirical effects of standards on teacher quality

Applying the theory of yardstick competition to the schooling system, we show that it is optimal to have central tests of student achievement and to engage in benchmarking because it raises the quality of teaching. This is true even if teachers’ pay (defined in monetary terms) is not performance related. If teachers value reputation, and if teaching output is measured so that it becomes comparable, teachers will increase their effort. The theory is tested using the German PISA-E data. Use is made of the fact that central exams exist in some federal states of Germany but not in all. The empirical evidence suggests that central exams have a positive effect on the quality of teaching.

Digitizing Citizen Energy Communities : A Platform Engineering Approach

Low acceptance and protests against the increasing expansion of renewable generation capacities by local citizens have repeatedly slowed down the ongoing energy transition in western countries. A promising approach to address this issue is the energy community concept, for which the European Union introduced a regulatory framework within the \u27Directive on common rules for the internal market for electricity\u27. It refers to them communities as Citizen Energy Communities. Within these communities, participants can exchange locally generated energy and the community can be represented by a digital platform, which organizes the community\u27s continuous power distribution and financial flows. In the academic literature, these communities are discussed as a tool to actively integrate citizens into the energy system on a local level. They increase the acceptance by benefiting the local value chain and empower the energy sector\u27s decarbonization. However, there is a lack of research on how Citizen Energy Communities can be implemented in practice and how they perform under real-world conditions. This dissertation’s contribution addresses the empirical challenges in the implementation and long-term operating of Citizen Energy Communities. The thesis reports on six studies. In the first study, the necessary IT architecture and digital building blocks are developed based on a literature review and insights from a real-world implementation for Citizen Energy Communities are described. From the resulting experiences, requirements for the individual building blocks and technologies are deducted. Researchers propose that blockchain technology can accelerate the introduction of Citizen Energy Communities. Therefore, a maturity model for blockchain-based Citizen Energy Community projects is established in the subsequent study, which allows assessing the development status of field implementations and identifying necessary next steps. In the third study, a platform-based allocation mechanism is designed, which addresses heterogeneous preferences of participants and thus enables local prices for different local energy sources. Based on an implementation, the mechanism\u27s performance and functionality are evaluated. Besides the technical functionality, user behavior is of central importance for success. Therefore, seven user interface design principles are deducted in the fourth study based on a structured design science research process with the help of expert interviews and a behavioral laboratory experiment. In the fifth study, it is quantified and evaluated if participants are regularly active within the community, willing to pay premium prices for local renewable sources and whether they are responsive to local price signals as often assumed in the literature. The results show that Citizen Energy Communities need to be tested more thoroughly and that the platform\u27s allocation mechanism require a low complexity or additional support systems like automated agents. As a result, the sixth study evaluates the real-world trading performance of automated agents and their impact on the platform market. The results show that a single agent among human traders can minimize the participant\u27s cost. However, this advantage diminishes with the number of additional automated agents in the market. The thesis is concluded with an outlook and pathway for future research