The rebound effect refers to the phenomenon that energy savings from improvements in energy efficiency are lower than expected due to unintended second-order effects. Grasping specific mechanisms related to the rebound effect requires a good understanding of interactions between heterogonous agents on multiple markets. Otherwise, policies aimed at reducing energy use may render counter-expected and unforeseen consequences. In this paper, we propose a formal model, where technological change results from interactions on two markets: between consumers and producers in the market for final goods, and heterogeneous power plants in the electricity market. The analysis provides insights to the role of technological change, supply-demand coevolution, and status-driven consumption in explaining the rebound effect. The model is employed to compare effectiveness of economic policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions associated with production of consumer goods, namely: a tax on electricity and "nuclear obligations" to produce ten percent of electricity from nuclear energy. (author's abstract)

In this paper we explore the process of adoption and enforcement of a number of new information processing technologies, such as the typewriter, calculators, tabulation gears and book-keeping machines, starting from the 1880s in the United States. We show that their innovation and diffusion was inexorably coupled to the economic development in the USA in the late 19th century. It is a complex and contradictory consequence of underlying socio-economic processes that led to the formation of modern organisational structures in large scale manufacturing which required systematic and efficient information processing. The typewriter and all the complementary office automation devices that entered the scene shortly after were part of a socio-technical regime that started being established: the office work regime or as we prefer to call it the first IT regime, as for the first time a technology was set up to process information on large scale. The logic of large scale manufacturing to produce standardised products in large series and to apply labour saving techniques was cast into the organisation of administration. This required a convergence of technical practices. The lock-in to the inferior QWERTY-keyboard is hence the outcome of the diffusion and hardening of the First IT Regime. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers Series "Growth and Employment in Europe: Sustainability and Competitiveness"

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the benefits of increased competition from ownership unbundling of the transmission grid may come at the cost of lost vertical synergies between the formerly integrated stages of electricity supply. The policy debate generally neglects such potential costs of unbundling, yet concentrates on its benefits. Therefore European crosscountry evidence may shed some light on this issue. This study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ novel firm-level panel data of major European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI, which put the policy measure of transmission ownership unbundling into question. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics

The present article provides first microlevel (indirect) empirical evidence on changes in entry barriers, the determinants of firm profitability as well as the nature of competition for a transition economy. We estimate size thresholds required to support different numbers of firms for several retail and professional service industries in a large number of geographic markets in Slovakia. The 3 time periods in the analysis (1995, 2001 and 2010) characterize different stages of the transition process. Specific emphasis is given to spatial spill-over effects between local markets. Estimation results obtained from a spatial ordered probit model suggest that entry barriers have declined considerably (except for restaurants) and that the intensity of competition has increased on average. We further find that demand spill-overs and/or the effects associated with a positive correlation in unobservable explanatory variables seem to outweigh negative spill-over effects caused by competitive forces between neighbouring cities and villages. The importance of these spatial spill-over effects differs across industries.

The present paper provides first empirical evidence on the relationship between market size and the number of firms in the healthcare industry for a transition economy. We estimate market-size thresholds required to support different numbers of suppliers (firms) for three occupations in the healthcare industry in a large number of distinct geographic markets in Slovakia, taking into account the spatial interaction between local markets. The empirical analysis is carried out for three time periods (1995, 2001 and 2010) which characterise different stages of the transition process. Our results suggest that the relationship between market size and the number of firms differs both across industries and across periods. In particular, we find that pharmacies, as the only completely liberalised market in our dataset, experience the largest change in competitive behaviour during the transition process. Furthermore, we find evidence for correlation in entry decisions across administrative borders, suggesting that future market analysis should aim to capture these regional effects.

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At present, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. From a policy perspective, a successful unbundling regime would require that the benefits of increased competition in power generation would at least offset the associated efficiency losses from vertical divestiture. Since evidence on this topic is scarce, this study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ unique firm-level panel data of European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI of 14% for the median sized integrated utility. Moreover, EVI tend to increase with firm size.

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the benefits of increased competition from ownership unbundling of the transmission grid may come at the cost of lost vertical synergies between the formerly integrated stages of electricity supply. The policy debate generally neglects such potential costs of unbundling, yet concentrates on its benefits. Therefore European cross-country evidence may shed some light on this issue. This study helps fill this void by empirically estimating the magnitude of economies of vertical integration (EVI) between electricity generation and transmission based on a quadratic cost function. For this purpose we employ novel firm-level panel data of major European electricity utilities. Our results confirm the presence of substantial EVI, which put the policy measure of transmission ownership unbundling into question. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series