Optimierte Integration der Elektromobilität in das Stromversorgungssystem bei hohen Anteilen erneuerbarer Energien

Electric mobility will play a key role for the transformation of the energy supply in Germany [the “Energiewende”]. A successful market development of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles and a full fleet penetration in the long-term are the most efficient and effective measure for integrating large amounts of renewable energy into the transport sector and for reaching the efficiency targets. These new electricity consumers in the supply system will cause additional electricity loads strongly dependent on the mobility needs of the vehicle users. A controlled battery charging is able to avoid new peak demands and to increase the efficiency of the power generation system by using excess power. By scenario analysis, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) and the Institute for High Voltage Technology of the RWTH Aachen investigated a possible successful development path of electric mobility in Germany and its integration into and interaction with the future power supply system. From both perspectives—the one of the total supply system as well as the other of local distribution grids—the results show promising potentials but also limits.     

Rhetorical History as Institutional Work

Rhetorical history has emerged as a useful theoretical construct that bridges the long recognized gap between historical and organizational scholarship. Despite its growing popularity, the precise nature of rhetorical history as a construct, its scope conditions, and its utility in resolving critical issues in historical organizational analysis remains unclear. This paper addresses these issues. We define rhetorical history and contextualize the construct by elaborating its relationship to associated concepts like collective memory, rhetoric, and narrative. We ground the construct by reviewing literature that has applied rhetorical history in both theory and empirical research. Our inductive review identifies four recurring themes in which rhetorical history is used to construct perceptions of; (a) continuity and discontinuity, (b) similarity and difference, (c) winners and losers, and (d) morality and immorality. We conclude with a discussion of how rhetorical history is an essential mechanism of institutional work.     

Socioeconomic Index for Income and Poverty Prediction: A Sufficient Dimension Reduction Approach

The present paper introduces a novel method for the construction of Socioeconomic Status (SES) indices that are specific to a target variable of interest. It is based on the Sufficient Dimension Reduction (SDR) paradigm and uses a factorized model-based approach to simultaneously deal with predictor variables of mixed nature (i.e. quantitative, binary, and ordinal), which are usual in microeconomic data. These SES indices also identify relevant predictor variables using a two-step regularized matrix factorization approach. Using data from household surveys for Argentina (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares-EPH), the proposed method is compared with other existing dimension reduction algorithms such as standard Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and its version for mixed variables, regression on the full set of variables and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression (LASSO).     

The productivity growth of euro area banks

Journal of Productivity Analysis - We study the performance of the banking system in the Eurozone over the period 2006–2017 as measured by total factor productivity growth (TFPG) and its...     

Stakeholder theory and actor-network theory: The stakeholder engagement in energy transitions

The idea of sustainable development highlights the need to address economic, social, and environmental aspects to preserve the rights and needs of future generations. This paper proposes an association between stakeholder theory (ST) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) that can better explain the dynamics of actors in the energy sector, in the context of sociotechnical transitions to sustainability. By selectively examining the way in which different researchers perceive this subject, we intend to address how the engagement of the stakeholders can promote sociotechnical transitions in the energy sector trough the connection between ST and ANT. We aim to characterize the dynamics of stakeholder's engagement in sociotechnical transitions in the context of sustainability in the energy sector, trough the connection of the two theories. A narrative literature review was performed on scientific databases. The results showed that sociotechnical transitions in the energy sector require the involvement of multiple actors with different interests and that ST associated with ANT provides a good basis for research on this theme. The association of both theories highlights the importance of ST to enhance cooperation in the areas of clean energy research and technology, providing a theoretical tool for understanding the dynamics of transitions and its different pathways. For future studies, it is recommended to deepen the relationship between human and non-human actors and their role as stakeholders.     

Test power properties of within-firm estimators of ownership and board-related explanatory variables with low time variation

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - After decades of fast growth, the Chinese housing market has become twice as large as the US housing market. In this paper, we examine the effect of...     

Empirical analysis of the relationship between labour cost stickiness and labour reforms in Spain

This study performs an empirical analysis on the relationship between labour cost stickiness and the decrease in employment protection in the Spanish labour reforms in 2010 and 2012. Following these reforms, the sticky behaviour of labour costs substantially decreased with respect to the pre-reform period. All constituents of total labour costs followed a similar pattern: wages, social security contributions and number of employees. Results are robust to different models, estimation methods, periods of time, and industries, as well as with respect to endogeneity concerns.