Holz weist durch preisliche Nachteile eine deutlich geringere Anwendungshäufigkeit als die konventionellen Baustoffe auf, obwohl Nachhaltigkeitsaspekte und hochleistungsfähige Bauholzprodukte eine vermehrte Nutzung forcieren. Ziel dieser Bachelorarbeit ist es, den Wertschöpfungsprozess des Bauholzes systematisch darzulegen, um ein besseres Verständnis für Kostentreiber innerhalb dieser Kette zu erhalten und darauf ausgehend Optimierungspotentiale dieses Prozesses zu präsentieren. Um die Preisentstehung zu verdeutlichen, wurde, ausgehend von bereits bestehenden Studien und eigens erstellten Preisuntersuchungen, eine in die Akteure der Wertschöpfungskette eingeteilte Gesamtkalkulation entwickelt. Diese ermöglicht durch die Abbildung verschiedener Szenarien und Untersuchungszeiträumen eine breite Marktübersicht.:Abbildungsverzeichnis Tabellenverzeichnis Abkürzungsverzeichnis 1 Einleitung 1.1 Problemstellung 1.2 Ziele und Struktur der Arbeit 2 Wertschöpfungskette Holz 2.1 Rahmenbedingungen der Preisbildung 2.2 Materielle Verarbeitungsschritte - vom Baum zum Bauholz 2.3 Teilhabende Akteure entlang der Wertschöpfungskette 3 Kostenanalyse des Holzpreises anhand teilhabender Akteure 3.1 Forstbetriebe - Waldeigentümer, private Forstunternehmen, Vereinigungen 3.2 Transportbetriebe - Transport vom Wald zum Sägebetrieb 3.3 Sägebetriebe inkl. Bauholzprodukthersteller 3.4 Holzhandel 3.5 Weiterverarbeitungsindustrie - Zimmereibetriebe 3.6 Gesamtdarstellung der Kostenanalyse und Fazit 4 Optimierungspotential mittels ressourceneffizienter Bautechniken 4.1 Heutiger Stand im Holzbaugewerbe 4.2 Zukunftspotentiale digitaler Technologien 5 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick Literaturverzeichnis Anhang Eidesstattliche Erklärung / Due to price disadvantages, wood has a significantly lower frequency of application than conventional building materials, although sustainability aspects and high-performance timber products are forcing an increased use. The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to systematically explain the value creation process of timber in order to obtain a better understanding of the cost drivers within this chain and to present optimization potentials of this process. In order to illustrate the formation of prices, an overall calculation was developed, divided into the actors in the value-added chain, based on existing studies and specially prepared price surveys. This enables a broad market overview by mapping different scenarios and investigation periods. The most important result, that more than 50% of the costs are incurred in the final processing step, the production of the final construction products, is the basis for the need to apply resource-saving construction techniques. Special attention is paid to the importance of digital planning techniques in architecture and construction, which makes the work interesting for both direct actors in the wood value chain and for construction participants and paves the way for the increased use of wood in the construction industry.:Abbildungsverzeichnis Tabellenverzeichnis Abkürzungsverzeichnis 1 Einleitung 1.1 Problemstellung 1.2 Ziele und Struktur der Arbeit 2 Wertschöpfungskette Holz 2.1 Rahmenbedingungen der Preisbildung 2.2 Materielle Verarbeitungsschritte - vom Baum zum Bauholz 2.3 Teilhabende Akteure entlang der Wertschöpfungskette 3 Kostenanalyse des Holzpreises anhand teilhabender Akteure 3.1 Forstbetriebe - Waldeigentümer, private Forstunternehmen, Vereinigungen 3.2 Transportbetriebe - Transport vom Wald zum Sägebetrieb 3.3 Sägebetriebe inkl. Bauholzprodukthersteller 3.4 Holzhandel 3.5 Weiterverarbeitungsindustrie - Zimmereibetriebe 3.6 Gesamtdarstellung der Kostenanalyse und Fazit 4 Optimierungspotential mittels ressourceneffizienter Bautechniken 4.1 Heutiger Stand im Holzbaugewerbe 4.2 Zukunftspotentiale digitaler Technologien 5 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick Literaturverzeichnis Anhang Eidesstattliche Erklärung

In this dissertation, I examine three major aspects of Germany's education system from an empirical public finance perspective. First, I analyse the effects of strong demographic shifts by considering how the East German Länder responded to the rather dramatic decline in the number of students in primary schools (1993-2002). The demographic shock is a consequence of collapsing birth rates after German Reunification. Previous results from the literature, which rely on data from rather stable demographic periods, suggest that public resources are incompletely adjusted to shrinking cohort size such that large reductions in the student population translate into important increases in spending per student and not in significant reductions of public resources allocated to education. Evidence from a panel of 5 East German Länder over the 1993-2006 period suggests, however, that resource adjustments have been considerable, especially in the years when student cohorts were actually decreasing. Adjustments have been less tight in the period when student numbers stagnated such that the 50% decrease in cohort size has translated into a 25% increase in the teacher/student-ratio. Second, I test whether partisan theory can help to explain the practise of ability-tracking in West Germany. The analysis starts from the empirical observation that in the German education system – where tracking is practised very early compared to other OECD countries – the correlation of parent’s education or income with their children’s track choices is very strong. Thus, students whose parents have a high-education background have significantly higher probabilities of attending a high-ability track. Partisan theory states that political parties when in office pursue the interests of their members and electoral constituencies. Political parties representing highly educated households should therefore support the practise of ability-tracking and advocate higher education spending on the tracks for good students. Evidence from a panel of 10 West German Länder over the 1979-2006 period suggests that German political parties support tracking if they represent high-education households and oppose tracking if they represent lower educated households. The results also suggest that political parties tend to allocate public resources towards the track in which party members’ or party electorate’s offspring is overrepresented. Third, research-oriented higher education in Germany is almost exclusively provided by the public sector, which highlights the importance of measuring university cost efficiency, because market exit and entry – which ensure efficient resource use in the private sector – virtually do not exist (see e.g., Hanushek, 2002). Based on a panel of 70 German public universities over the 1998-2003 period I provide evidence about the factors that benefit efficient resource use in the German higher education landscape. I analyse whether relatively liberal university regulation improves the cost efficiency of public universities as suggested in the literature (see Aghion et al., 2008). The results show that liberal university regulation indeed contributes to more efficient use of resources. Moreover, I find that a prosperous private economic environment seems to reduce university costs.

In this dissertation, I examine three major aspects of Germany's education system from an empirical public finance perspective. First, I analyse the effects of strong demographic shifts by considering how the East German Länder responded to the rather dramatic decline in the number of students in primary schools (1993-2002). The demographic shock is a consequence of collapsing birth rates after German Reunification. Previous results from the literature, which rely on data from rather stable demographic periods, suggest that public resources are incompletely adjusted to shrinking cohort size such that large reductions in the student population translate into important increases in spending per student and not in significant reductions of public resources allocated to education. Evidence from a panel of 5 East German Länder over the 1993-2006 period suggests, however, that resource adjustments have been considerable, especially in the years when student cohorts were actually decreasing. Adjustments have been less tight in the period when student numbers stagnated such that the 50% decrease in cohort size has translated into a 25% increase in the teacher/student-ratio. Second, I test whether partisan theory can help to explain the practise of ability-tracking in West Germany. The analysis starts from the empirical observation that in the German education system – where tracking is practised very early compared to other OECD countries – the correlation of parent’s education or income with their children’s track choices is very strong. Thus, students whose parents have a high-education background have significantly higher probabilities of attending a high-ability track. Partisan theory states that political parties when in office pursue the interests of their members and electoral constituencies. Political parties representing highly educated households should therefore support the practise of ability-tracking and advocate higher education spending on the tracks for good students. Evidence from a panel of 10 West German Länder over the 1979-2006 period suggests that German political parties support tracking if they represent high-education households and oppose tracking if they represent lower educated households. The results also suggest that political parties tend to allocate public resources towards the track in which party members’ or party electorate’s offspring is overrepresented. Third, research-oriented higher education in Germany is almost exclusively provided by the public sector, which highlights the importance of measuring university cost efficiency, because market exit and entry – which ensure efficient resource use in the private sector – virtually do not exist (see e.g., Hanushek, 2002). Based on a panel of 70 German public universities over the 1998-2003 period I provide evidence about the factors that benefit efficient resource use in the German higher education landscape. I analyse whether relatively liberal university regulation improves the cost efficiency of public universities as suggested in the literature (see Aghion et al., 2008). The results show that liberal university regulation indeed contributes to more efficient use of resources. Moreover, I find that a prosperous private economic environment seems to reduce university costs.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

Water quality monitoring (WQM) is crucial for managing and protecting riverine ecosystems. There has been a plethora of methods to select the monitoring sites, water quality parameters (WQPs), and monitoring frequencies; however, no standard method or strategy has been accepted for the river systems. Water managers have faced difficulties in adopting appropriate WQM network design methods to their local boundary conditions, monitoring objectives, monitoring costs, and legal regulations. With the elevated cost and time consumption of monitoring, approaches to evaluate and redesign the monitoring networks based on monitoring goal achievements are crucial for water managers. Hence, the overall aim of this thesis is to develop and employ a reliable yet straightforward approach to optimise and quantify the effectiveness of the WQM network in rivers. The objectives are to (i) identify the commonly used methods and the boundary conditions to apply these methods in assessing and designing of WQM networks in rivers; (ii) optimise river WQM network design based on compliance criteria; (iii) optimise river WQM network design based on the trade-offs between information provided by the monitoring network versus the monitoring expenses. A systematic review of the commonly used design methods and their resulting monitoring setups in Chapter 2 shows that multivariate statistical analysis (MVA) is a promising tool to contract the number of monitoring sites and water quality parameters. Most of the reported studies often overlook small streams and trace pollutants such as heavy metals and organic microcontaminants in the analysis. Data availability and expertise’s judgments seem to affect the selection of design methods rather than river size and the extent of the monitoring networks. The commonly found statistical methods are applied to the case study of the Freiberger Mulde (FM) river basin in eastern Germany to optimise its current monitoring network. Chapter 3 dedicates to redesign the monitoring network for compliance monitoring purposes. In Chapter 3, 82 non-biological parameters are initially screened and analysed for their violations to the environmental quality standards. The subsequent result suggests that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and phosphorus have been the abundant stressors that caused more than 50% of the streams in the FM river basin failing to achieve good status. The proposed approach using hierarchical cluster analysis and weighted violation factor from 22 relevant WQPs allows a reduction of 42 monitoring sites from the current 158 sites. The Mann-Kendall trend test recommends an increase in monitoring frequency of the priority substances by 12 times per annual, and a decrease in the number of sampling events for metals and general physicochemical parameters by quarterly. Overall, the results suggest that the authorities of the Saxony region should develop proper management measures targeting heavy metals and organic micropollutants to be able to achieve good WQ status by 2027 at the latest. In Chapter 4, regularly monitoring parameters with less than 15% of censored data are analysed. A combination of principal component analysis and Pearson’s correlation analysis allows the identification of 14 critical parameters that are responsible for explaining 75.1% of data variability in the FM river basin. Weathering processes, historical mining, wastewater discharges, and seasonality have been the leading causes of water quality variability. Both sampling locations and periods are observed, with the resulting mineral contents vary between locations, and the organic and oxygen content differs depending on the time period that was monitored. The monitoring costs are estimated for one monitoring event and based on laboratory, transportation, and sampling costs. The results show that under the current monitoring-intense conditions, preserving monitoring variables rather than sites seems to be more economical than the opposite practice. The current study provides and employs two statistical approaches to optimise the WQM network for the FM river basin in eastern Germany. The proposed methods can be of interests to other river basins where the historical data are available, and the monitoring costs become a constraint. The presented research also raises some concerns for future research regarding the applications of statistical methods to optimise WQM networks, which are presented in Chapter 5.