Kohlekraftwerke mit CO<Subscript>2</Subscript>-Abscheidung: Strategien,Rahmenbedingungen und umweltseitige Auswirkungen

A successful implementation of CO₂-capture in power plants is mainly depending on the energy political or economical environment. The future role of lignite and hard coal power production varies widely in presumed energy scenarios. This report considers the actual projections of BDEW. Increasing demand, the replacement of old plants and the compensation of efficiency losses due to CCS-technology cause highly ambitious expansion rates, assuming a retrofit time horizon of 10 years starting in 2020. The corresponding coal demand increases strongly. Therefore, a solely concentration of CO₂-reduction potential is not sufficient. Other environmental impacts triggered through emissions are low compared to the total German impacts. Nevertheless, the compliance with national ceilings for NO_x emissions for example can only be reached by compensation measures in other sectors.     

Risikomanagement und -controlling bei Offshore-Windenergieanlagen

In this paper we provide an overview of the various terms and methods used in risk management and risk controlling. Further, we identify and discuss internal and external risks of offshore wind power plants (WPP) and demonstrate for the concrete example of a fictitious 400 MW offshore wind park in the North Sea the use of the discounted cash flow (DCF) method. The offshore risks involved are considered as part of the different components of the free cash flow, which form the basis for the DCF evaluation, by using a Monte Carlo simulation. The latter contains assumptions for the distribution of each cash flow component, which are based on a detailed consideration of the risk bearings. We use the cash flow at risk (CFaR), with the DCF as the risk-carrying target variable, as a quantitative risk measure for the simulated DCF evaluation. The CFaR enables us to draw a conclusion regarding the risk distribution of the DCF. According to the fictitious offshore wind park studied, the CFaR obtained provides evidence that the investment project investigated is indeed economically viable.     

Spectrum auction design: Simple auctions for complex sales

Following the successful PCS Auction conducted by the US Federal Communications Commission in 1994, auctions have replaced traditional ways of allocating valuable radio spectrum. Spectrum auctions have raised hundreds of billion dollars worldwide and have become a role model for market-based approaches in the public and private sectors. The PCS spectrum was sold via a simultaneous multi-round auction, which forces bidders to compete for licenses individually even though they typically value certain combinations. This exposes bidders to risk when they bid aggressively for a desired combination but end up winning an inferior subset. Foreseeing this possibility, bidders may act cautiously with adverse effects for revenue and efficiency. Combinatorial auctions allow for bids on combinations of licenses and thus hold the promise of improved performance. Recently, a number of countries worldwide have switched to the combinatorial clock auction to sell spectrum. This two-stage auction uses a core-selecting payment rule. The number of possible packages a bidder can submit grows exponentially with the number of licenses, which adds complexity to the auction. For larger auctions with dozens of licenses bidders cannot be expected to reveal all their valuations during such an auction. We analyze the impact of two main design choices on efficiency and revenue: simple “compact” bid languages versus complex “fully expressive” bid languages and simple “pay-as-bid” payment rules versus complex “core-selecting” payment rules. We consider these design choices both for ascending and sealed-bid formats. We find that simplicity of the bid language has a substantial positive impact on the auction?s efficiency and simplicity of the payment rule has as a substantial positive impact on the auction?s revenue. The currently popular combinatorial clock auction, which uses a complex bid language and payment rule, achieves the lowest efficiency and revenue among all treatment combinations.     

A high-low-based omnibus test for symmetry, the Lévy property, and other hypotheses on intraday returns

We consider different models for intraday log-returns: Lévy models, symmetric models, and Lévy processes subjected to independent continuous time-changes. For these models, we show bivariate interchangeability of intraday up- and downside volatility ratios which are built using daily high-low prices. Using conditional inference permutation tests on bivariate interchangeability, we develop an omnibus test for the above-mentioned models. Empirically, we find strong evidence against intraday returns belonging to these model classes, as we reject bivariate interchangeability of the volatility ratios for half of the components of the DJIA, two thirds of the S&P 500 shares and almost all stocks of the German DAX.     

Corporate governance and leverage: Evidence from a natural experiment

We argue that the recent corporate governance reform in the Netherlands provides a natural experiment to explore the impact of changes in corporate governance on financing policy. We find that, relative to a control sample of comparable firms outside the Netherlands, Dutch firms significantly reduced their leverage following the passage of the reform. Our findings are consistent with the view that corporate governance improvements reduce the value of debt as a disciplining device.     

Staat versus Markt: Konsumentenpräferenzen und die Förderung erneuerbarer Energien

This paper presents a set of artefacutal field experiments on individual preferences and willingness to pay, respectively, for the consumption of green electricity. Based on an economic model of individual preferences for the provision of public goods, the design of our experiments involved different scenarios: subjects had to decide about their individual spending on green electricity as well as about the level of public subsidies for green electricity. Unlike hypothetical empirical methods, the experiments involved an incentive mechanism, i.e. subjects had to face the monetary consequences of their decisions. Our empirical results are distinct from those of other studies. It seems that the market potential of green electricity is overestimated at present. Hence, the market will not release the public in financing subsidies in this field. The conclusion can be drawn that individuals prefer binding collective contributions rather than individual market-driven activities. However, we contradict the standard explanation of political economy that such a kind of preference for regulatory instruments may be motivated by cost-illusion. Subjects were willing to bear far higher taxes as compared to the price mark-up they were willing to pay for green electricity offered by the market.     

Equity home bias and corporate disclosure

I show that more comprehensive corporate disclosure reduces investors’ uncertainty about domestic companies’ payoffs at no cost, thereby decreasing investors’ equity home bias toward a country. Since investors should base their investment decisions on valid and easily interpretable company information only, more comprehensive disclosure will reduce the home bias only if domestic securities law is sufficiently stratified and domestic companies use international accounting standards. Using panel data for 38 countries from 2003 to 2008 I find that more comprehensive disclosure reduces investors’ home bias, though significantly only for countries that sufficiently enforce their securities law and implement international accounting standards.     

Payment Evasion

This paper shows that a firm can use the purchase price and the fine imposed on detected payment evaders to discriminate between unobservable consumer types. Assuming that consumers self‐select into regular buyers and payment evaders, we show that the firm typically engages in second‐degree price discrimination in which the purchase price exceeds the expected fine. In addition, we find that higher fines do not necessarily reduce payment evasion. We illustrate with data from fare dodging on public transportation.     

Transaction costs, trading volume, and the liquidity premium

In a market with one safe and one risky asset, an investor with a long horizon, constant investment opportunities and constant relative risk aversion trades with small proportional transaction costs. We derive explicit formulas for the optimal investment policy, its implied welfare, liquidity premium, and trading volume. At the first order, the liquidity premium equals the spread, times share turnover, times a universal constant. The results are robust to consumption and finite horizons. We exploit the equivalence of the transaction cost market to another frictionless market, with a shadow risky asset, in which investment opportunities are stochastic. The shadow price is also found explicitly.     

The Effect of Family Involvement on Innovation Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Board Social Capital

Innovation is an essential and yet puzzling part of family firms’ strategic focus. While family firms are generally characterized as conservative regarding their research and development (R&D) activities, researchers have recently argued that family firms can still achieve innovation-based competitive advantages. Seeking to understand the link between family influence and the outcomes of innovation, we suggest that it is necessary not only to observe the depth of family involvement, but also to differentiate between technological inventions and market innovations. We further posit that the board members’ social capital constitutes an important contingency for this link. We, therefore, investigate the relationship between family involvement and two different outcomes: the number of the firm’s inventions and the market relevance of innovations. Our analysis of S&P 500 firms comprises 1.85 million patents and manual evaluations of 1774 product announcements. The results of our estimations suggest that family involvement is negatively related to the number of inventions and positively related to the market relevance of innovations. They further show that internal and external board social capital moderate the relationship between family involvement and the number of inventions. This study adds to the discussion about family firm innovation by using socioemotional wealth to explain heterogeneity in innovation patterns and revealing that relational resources derived from board social capital are crucial boundary conditions for families’ influence on technological inventions. Taken together, it works toward a more holistic view of innovation in family-influenced firms.