Emissionshandel und Anreizmechanismen: Auswirkungen verschiedener Allokationsverfahren auf Produktionsweise und Investitionsverhalten von Unternehmen

Der Emissionshandel zeigt nur dann die erwünschte Wirkung, wenn das marktgerechte CO2-Preissignal zu Veränderungen beim Angebots- und Nachfrageverhalten in der Volkswirtschaft führt. Die damit verbundenen Preiseffekte sind - obwohl im betriebswirtschaftlichen Einzelfall möglicherweise unerwünscht - systemimmanent und müssen bestehen bleiben. Dadurch können Nachteile insbesondere für die europäische energieintensive Industrie entstehen, die sich nicht nur im europäischen, sondern auch im weltweiten Wettbewerb behaupten muss. Besondere Härten können aber abgemildert werden, indem die Europäische Kommission und ihre Mitgliedstaaten darauf achten, dass die CO2- und Strompreise in einer Größenordnung bleiben, die zwar zu Verhaltensänderungen der Marktakteure führt, dabei aber nicht das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten und die Existenz der europäischen energieintensiven Industrie gefährden. Eine Versteigerung von Emissionsrechten ist nicht geeignet, die für einzelne Betroffene unerwünschten Verteilungseffekte zu beheben. Dagegen bergen Versteigerungen erhebliche Risiken für die Versorgungssicherheit, die langfristigen Strom- und Energieträgerpreise sowie den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland und Europa insgesamt.Emissions trading will only have the desired effect if the CO2 price signal, in line with the market, leads to changes in supply and demand behavior in an economy. The associated price effects are - although possibly undesired in a specific business case - systemic and must continue to apply. This may entail disadvantages, especially for Europe's energy-intensive industries that have to hold their own against not only European, but also worldwide competition. Special hardships can be mitigated, however, if the European Commission and its member states ensure that CO2 and electricity prices remain at a level that induces changes in the behavior of market players, but do not go further and jeopardize the existence of Europe's energy-intensive industry. Auctioning of allowances is not an appropriate means to lessen the for some companies undesired distribution effects. By contrast, auctioning harbors tremendous risks for the security of supply, for long-term electricity and energy-carrier prices, and for Germany and Europe in general as industrial locations

Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency

We study a prototypical model of a Parliament with two Parties or two Political Coalitions and we show how the introduction of a variable percentage of randomly selected independent legislators can increase the global efficiency of a Legislature, in terms of both the number of laws passed and the average social welfare obtained. We also analytically find an "efficiency golden rule" which allows to fix the optimal number of legislators to be selected at random after that regular elections have established the relative proportion of the two Parties or Coalitions. These results are in line with both the ancient Greek democratic system and the recent discovery that the adoption of random strategies can improve the efficiency of hierarchical organizations.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, new improved and longer versio

On fuzzy frontiers and fragmented foundations : some reflections on the original and new institutional economics

This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of Institutional Economics, doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137414000307 This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © 2014 Millennium Economics Ltd, published by Cambridge University Press.These reflections are prompted by the papers by Ménard (2014) and Ménard and Shirley (2014). Their essays centre on the path-breaking contributions to the 'new institutional economics' (NIE) by Ronald Coase, Douglass North and Oliver Williamson. In response, while recognising their substantial achievements, it is pointed out that these three thinkers had contrasting views on key points. Furthermore, Ménard's and Shirley's three 'golden triangle' NIE concepts - transaction costs, property rights and contracts - are themselves disputed. Once all this is acknowledged, differences of view appear within the NIE, raising interesting questions concerning its identity and boundaries, including its differences with the original institutionalism. There are sizeable overlaps between the two traditions. It is argued here that the NIE can learn from the original institutionalism, particularly when elaborating more dynamic analyses, and developing more nuanced, psychologically-grounded and empirically viable theories of human motivation.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Comparing Successful and Less Successful New Innovative Businesses

This contribution offers a conceptual framework for the analysis of innovative business start-ups. This framework mainly draws on transaction cost theory. On basis of a broad empirical study of 52 hightech business start-ups in Germany the fruitfulness of the transaction cost approach with respect to research on innovation is demonstrated. Transaction cost theory gives valuable hints for the interpretation of the personal role of the entrepreneur as well as for the economic evaluation of the entrepreneurial idea. Special importance refers to the results on the organization of market transactions as a decisive determinant of economic success of innovative business start-ups

Statistical Properties of Business Firms Structure and Growth

We analyze a database comprising quarterly sales of 55624 pharmaceutical products commercialized by 3939 pharmaceutical firms in the period 1992--2001. We study the probability density function (PDF) of growth in firms and product sales and find that the width of the PDF of growth decays with the sales as a power law with exponent $\beta = 0.20 \pm 0.01$. We also find that the average sales of products scales with the firm sales as a power law with exponent $\alpha = 0.57 \pm 0.02$. And that the average number products of a firm scales with the firm sales as a power law with exponent $\gamma = 0.42 \pm 0.02$. We compare these findings with the predictions of models proposed till date on growth of business firms

Welfare and Revenue Guarantees for Competitive Bundling Equilibrium

We study equilibria of markets with $m$ heterogeneous indivisible goods and $n$ consumers with combinatorial preferences. It is well known that a competitive equilibrium is not guaranteed to exist when valuations are not gross substitutes. Given the widespread use of bundling in real-life markets, we study its role as a stabilizing and coordinating device by considering the notion of \emph{competitive bundling equilibrium}: a competitive equilibrium over the market induced by partitioning the goods for sale into fixed bundles. Compared to other equilibrium concepts involving bundles, this notion has the advantage of simulatneous succinctness ($O(m)$ prices) and market clearance. Our first set of results concern welfare guarantees. We show that in markets where consumers care only about the number of goods they receive (known as multi-unit or homogeneous markets), even in the presence of complementarities, there always exists a competitive bundling equilibrium that guarantees a logarithmic fraction of the optimal welfare, and this guarantee is tight. We also establish non-trivial welfare guarantees for general markets, two-consumer markets, and markets where the consumer valuations are additive up to a fixed budget (budget-additive). Our second set of results concern revenue guarantees. Motivated by the fact that the revenue extracted in a standard competitive equilibrium may be zero (even with simple unit-demand consumers), we show that for natural subclasses of gross substitutes valuations, there always exists a competitive bundling equilibrium that extracts a logarithmic fraction of the optimal welfare, and this guarantee is tight. The notion of competitive bundling equilibrium can thus be useful even in markets which possess a standard competitive equilibrium

Towards an economics of well-being

There is growing concern that presently dominant frameworks in economics no longer provide a way of adequately addressing and analysing the problems of today’s globalising and rapidly changing world. This article makes a number of fundamental proposals about how we might reframe economics to move it towards a clearer focus on human well-being. It develops arguments for a change in the basic ontological proposition and for the need to see ‘the economy’ as an instituted process of resource allocation. From this viewpoint, economics is then the study of resource allocation decisions and processes and the forces that guide these: from a human perspective it is about understanding who gets what, under what conditions and why? The paper argues that a pluralist approach to understanding the economy is necessary for political, analytical and technical reasons. Drawing on a range of contributions to heterodox economics, the paper argues that if we are to understand current crises and challenges, then our understanding of resource allocation in society must have a broader scope than is present in mainstream economics; it proposes a rethinking of economic agency and provides a critique of rational behaviour that is founded in shifting the emphasis from a narrow conception of welfare to well-being. Acknowledging human well-being as a multidimensional concept, the relationship between the well-being of the person and the collective is reconsidered and the methodological implications for the issue of aggregation are discussed. The article seeks to serve as a point of departure for formulating new research questions, exploring the relationships between human well-being and economic development and analysing economic behaviour and interactions in such a way as to bring us closer to peoples’ realities on the ground

Prepare your indicators: Economics imperialism on the shores of law and development

This article explores the influence of economics on the demand for, and deployment of, indicators in the context of the World Bank's investment climate campaign. This campaign is characterised by an emphasis on marketisation, mathematisation and quantification, which are respectively the normative, analytical and empirical approaches of choice in mainstream economics. The article concludes that economics generally, and indicators in particular, have brought a certain discipline and energy to the field of law and development. But this ‘progress’ has often been at the expense of non-economic values and interests, and even of our ability to mourn their loss

Towards a killer app for the Semantic Web

Killer apps are highly transformative technologies that create new markets and widespread patterns of behaviour. IT generally, and the Web in particular, has benefited from killer apps to create new networks of users and increase its value. The Semantic Web community on the other hand is still awaiting a killer app that proves the superiority of its technologies. There are certain features that distinguish killer apps from other ordinary applications. This paper examines those features in the context of the Semantic Web, in the hope that a better understanding of the characteristics of killer apps might encourage their consideration when developing Semantic Web applications