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The Conditions in Which Liberalism and Capitalism Appeared. The Conditions in Which Liberalism and Capitalism Appeared -- Political and Legal Conditions -- Economic and Sociological Conditions -- The Evolution of Liberalism and Capitalism. The Evolution of Liberalism and Capitalism -- The Birth of a New Capitalism in a New World: Financial Capitalism -- Towards 21st Century Capitalism.

Cover -- Half-Title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- I.1. The purposes of money -- I.1.1. Money as a tool for transactions -- I.1.2. Money as a standard of values -- I.1.3. Currency as a reserve of value -- I.2. Evolution of the different media of money -- I.2.1. The original materialization of money -- I.2.2. The continuous dematerialization of money and its media -- I.2.3. Consequences of the continued dematerialization of money and its media -- I.3. Currency zones -- I.3.1. The main currency zones throughout history -- I.3.2. Definition of an optimum currency area -- I.4. Outline of this book -- 1. The Monetary Steps that Preceded the Introduction of the Euro -- 1.1. The lack of a sustainable international monetary system -- 1.1.1. From the gold standard to the gold exchange standard system -- 1.1.2. The Bretton Woods international monetary system -- 1.1.3. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), guarantor of the Bretton Woods Agreements -- 1.1.4. The end of convertibility of the dollar and the instability of floating exchange rates -- 1.2. From the Treaty of Rome to the Maastricht Treaty -- 1.2.1. The lack of a monetary target at the beginning of the European Economic Community -- 1.2.2. The Werner Plan and the temporary failure to establish an Economic and Monetary Union -- 1.2.3. The Single European Act and the Delors Report -- 1.2.4. The Maastricht Treaty -- 1.3. Monetary experiences prior to the euro -- 1.3.1. The snake in the tunnel -- 1.3.2. The European Monetary System (EMS) -- 1.3.3. The European Monetary Cooperation Fund (EMCF) -- 1.3.4. The European Monetary Institute (EMI) -- 2. The Monetary Policy Decisions Facing the European Monetary Institute -- 2.1. The central bank, Bank of Banks -- 2.1.1. The original function of the lender of last resort.

The deployment of onshore wind power is an important means to mitigate climate change. However, wind turbines also have negative impacts at the local scale, like disamenities to residents living nearby, changes in landscape quality, or conflicts with nature conservation. Our paper analyses how these impacts affect the optimal siting of wind turbines, as compared to a spatial allocation focused solely on minimizing generation costs. To quantify the spatial trade-offs between these criteria, we propose a novel approach using Pareto frontiers and a Gini-like potential trade-off indicator. Our analysis builds on a spatial optimization model using geographical information system data for Germany. We show that spatial trade-offs between the criteria under consideration are significant. The size of the trade-off varies substantially with the criteria under consideration, depending on the spatial heterogeneity of each criterion as well as on the spatial correlation between the criteria. Spatial trade-offs are particularly pronounced between nature conservation (measured by impacts on wind powersensitive birds) and other criteria.

With the expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) in countries all over the world, policy design to address the negative impacts of RES plants on their local and regional environment gains in importance. We analyse whether policy design should be spatially-differentiated or uniform when negative RES environmental externalities are spatially heterogeneous and display interregional cumulative effects. In a theoretical model of the RES electricity generation sector, we compare the welfare differential between both regulatory designs and analyse how it is affected by cumulative environmental effects. While we confirm that the welfare costs of attaining a RES deployment target are lower under a spatially-differentiated than a spatiallyuniform regulation, we find that the welfare costs are contingent on the presence of cumulative environmental effects. This depends on the heterogeneity of region-specific generation cost parameters and social cost parameters of RES electricity generation. If heterogeneity is more (less) pronounced in regional generation cost parameters than in regional social cost parameters, positive (negative) cumulative effects decrease the welfare costs of a uniform instrument.

1. Vorbemerkungen -- 2. Bodenlysimeter und Taumesser -- 3. Boden, Atmosphäre und Tau -- 4. Grenzschichtmeteorologie der Tau- und Reifbildung -- 5 Einflüsse beim Abtauen -- 6. Vergleiche zwischen Tauschreiberwerten und tatsächlichem Taugenuß einzelner Blattoberflächen -- 7. Blattmodellversuche hinsichtlich Form und Stellung im Raum -- 8. Taubeschlagsstudien im Auflichtmikroskop -- 9. Tauaufsaugvermögen der Blätter verschiedener Pflanzen -- 10. Betrachtungen über die pflanzenphysiologische Wirkung des Taues -- 11. Zusammenstellung der neuen Gesichtspunkte.

AbstractTo decarbonize the power sector, policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, risk of opportunistic policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to substantial uncertainties. Thus, there may also be societal gains from allowing policy-makers the discretion to adjust the policies as new information becomes available. We examine how this trade-off between policy commitment—either unconditional or state-contingent—and discretion affects the optimal intertemporal design of market-based instruments in the power sector. Using a dynamic partial equilibrium model, we show that commitment to a state-contingent level of ambition for the market-based instrument leads to higher welfare than both unconditional commitment and discretion. With benefit uncertainty, the choice between the practically more feasible approaches of unconditional commitment and discretion is analytically ambiguous. A basic numerical illustration suggests that policy discretion may outperform unconditional commitment in terms of welfare. However, this result is reversed when only a limited fraction of benefit uncertainty resolves in reasonable time, when future policy-makers have own agendas, or when investors are risk-averse. With cost uncertainty, policy discretion is welfare-superior if the government can commit to a technology deployment target.