Suchergebnisse

Abstract
After a year of multiple crises, an initial assessment is made of the crisis management and the risks and challenges that are still to be expected. Evidence of this is provided by the Russian war's effects on gas and electricity. As a benchmark for the necessary structural changes, reference is made to the current perspectives on sustainable transformations in energy and production. Finally, the previous practice of crisis management and its theoretical foundation are examined. Deficits in economic concepts, economic policy instruments and goal-oriented innovations are identified.

By responding to the warning voices about the failure of mainstream economics to provide policy advice to seemingly well-known problems as manifest in the ongoing economic crises, we put forward the proposition that the majority of deficiencies in this discipline results from two self-imposed restrictions. The first restriction refers to the limited scope in the perception of economic activities by focusing mainly on reproducible goods (including services) and a very few resources, as human capital and by production reproducible capital. The second restriction results from the interwoven relationships that describe economic structures and the coordinating mechanisms which operate on these structures by postulating market relationships that quite often turn out to be too simplistic or non-existing. We propose therefore two conceptual extensions. The first extension opens up the scope of economic activity both by introducing the functionalities of well-being and an extended list of stocks and flows of resources. The second extension separates the description of economic structures from the mechanisms that operate on them, which may be market or non-market based. Furthermore we will demonstrate how these extensions can be made operational in the context of analyzing the transition of energy systems.

We start from the assertion that a useful monetary policy design should be founded on more realistic assumptions about what policymakers can know at the time when policy decisions have to be made. Since the Taylor rule - if used as an operational device - implies a forward looking behaviour, we analyze the reliability of the input information. We investigate the forecasting performance of OECD projections for GDP growth rates and inflation. We diagnose a much better forecasting record for inflation rates compared to GDP growth rates, which for most countries are almost uninformative at the time a Taylor rule should sensibly be applied. Using this data set, we find significant differences between Taylor rules estimated over revised data compared to real-time data. There is evidence that monetary policy seems to react more actively in real time than rules estimated over revised data suggest. Given the evidence of systematic errors in OECD forecasts, in a next step we attempt to correct for these forecast biases and check to which extent this can lower the errors in interest rate policy setting. An ex-ante simulation for the years 1991 to 2001 supports the proposal that correcting for forecast errors and biases based on an error model can lower the resulting policy error in interest rate setting for most countries under consideration. In addition we investigate to what extent structural changes in the policy reaction behaviour can be handled with moving instead of expanding samples. Our results point out that the information set available needs a careful examination when applied to instrument rules like those of the Taylor type. Limited forecast quality and significant data revisions recommend a more sophisticated handling of the dated information, for which we present an operational procedure that has the potential of reducing the risk of severe policy errors.

Im Rahmen der Klimarahmenkonvention der UNO treffen die Vertragsstaaten zu ihren Verhandlungen (Conference of Parties, COP 16) von 29. November bis 10. Dezember 2010 in Cancun, Mexiko zusam-men. Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen für die Szenarien des Klimawandels haben sich über die letzten Jahre weiter erhärtet und weisen auf die Notwendigkeit einer umfassenden Reduktion der Treibhausgasemissionen hin - einer Reduktion um ein Vielfaches der im Kyoto-Vertrag vereinbarten Ziele und unter Einbeziehung von wesentlich mehr als der damaligen Vertragsstaaten. Die Vorgänger-Vertragsstaaten-Konferenz in Kopenhagen 2009 markierte eine fundamentale Änderung in der inter-nationalen Klimapolitik-Architektur, statt völkerrechtlich verbindlichen gemeinsamen Zielen dürfte es nun den einzelnen Staaten überlassen bleiben welche Handlungen sie setzen. Einzelstaatliche Klimapolitik läuft ohne gemeinsame Ziele aber Gefahr mit wesentlichen Wettbewerbseffekten im internatio-nalen Handel verbunden zu sein. Für einige Wirtschaftssektoren zeichnen sich technologische Quan-tensprünge für "Low Carbon" Strukturen ab. Für andere Sektoren werden globale sektorale Treibhaus-gas-Abkommen diskutiert. Vorschläge liegen insbesondere aber auch für Border Tax Adjustments vor, um potenziell nachteiligen Wettbewerbseffekten vorzubeugen. Die Interessenlage der Verhandlungs-staaten ist dabei durchaus komplex.

The EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a key instrument in European climate policy. Evidence from the first trading period (2005-2007) and the first year of the Kyoto period 2008 dampened, however, ex-ante enthusiasm: because of substantial over-allocation of emissions allowances in the first trading period the overall emissions cap was not stringent which caused a sharp drop in carbon prices. In 2008 a more stringent cap but still high price volatility was observed. Based on experience from the first years of the EU ETS the design of the EU ETS will be changed for the post-Kyoto period (2013-2020) including an EU-wide cap and the use of auctioning as the main allocation principle. So far, no measures to control price volatility are envisaged. This issue however gains in importance in the political and economic debate as prices are an important signal for investment decisions. More or less stable price signals are essential for the environmental effectiveness of an emissions trading scheme. As evidence shows, this is not necessarily guaranteed by the market process. Based on an analysis of the first trading years the paper provides an argumentation for the implementation of price stabilisation measures in the post-Kyoto period.

Literaturverz. S. 20 - 23

The COVID‑19 pandemic has had a great impact on the economies of the EU, also with regard to the future of EU climate policy. The plan to rebuild and support the EU economy seems to place less emphasis on environmental issues as the main focus has been shifted to a quick economic recovery. One of the issues discussed in this context is the continued operation of the EU ETS. From this perspective, empirical research devoted to a thorough analysis of the impact of the EU ETS is of particular importance. At the same time, the current economic literature lacks any econometric analyzes devoted to the issues in question that would use detailed and reliable databases on EU ETS like the one provided by the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change. The aim of this paper is to make a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of the EU ETS in terms of reducing the actual emissions while preserving the economic growth of EU member states. The extensive empirical analysis is focused on examining the issues in question for different phases of the EU ETS and various groups of EU economies that vary in terms of economic development and the overall air pollutant emission.