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In order to meet the climate targets as set out in the Paris agreement – i.e., to stay "well below 2 °C" of global warming – a transformation of the socio-economic system towards climate neutrality is required. This transformation is connected to radical changes in most aspects of our daily lives, especially with respect to mobility and housing. This poses the questions of how well-being might change due to these changes and ultimately how to quantitatively measure such changes. In the present paper we make a first steps towards answering these fundamental questions. We do so by making use of the concept of energy services, or "functionalities", which take a demand and sufficiency perspective. To quantify effects, we operationalise this concept by using and extending existing macroeconomic models (Input-Output and Computable General Equilibrium). In terms of results we provide standard economic indicators but contrast them with – in our view – more relevant indicators, such as a more comprehensive measure for well-being, as well as distributional effects and co-benefits. Our results clearly show increases in well-being emerging from the climate neutral transformation, whereas conventional indicators such as GDP are declining. We thus demonstrate the importance of looking at the "right" indicators, when assessing socio-economic effects of climate policy and at the same time provide a concrete alternative to state-of-the-art modelling approaches.

In this paper we take up the challenge to integrate new aspects into macroeconomic modelling and to consider economic activities from an outcome-oriented perspective, so called functionalities. The basic idea is, that functionalities lie behind the demand for commodities and services and therefore are the actual reason for economic activities. Functionalities describe (basic) human needs, such as housing, nutrition, or mobility, and are determinants of human well-being. A crucial aspect of functionalities is the interaction between stocks and flows. The paper presents the operationalisation of functionalities within the framework of an Input-Output (IO) model. Three extensions of the IOT are performed: Firstly, an appropriate allocation of energy supply, transformation and demand to sectors is made. This allows linking the monetary structure with physical units of the total energy and useful energy balances. Secondly, greenhouse gas emissions and other material consumption were additionally allocated to sectoral production. Thirdly, groups of goods of private and public consumption as well as exports were allocated to specific functionalities.

In this working paper we place scenarios of Austria's transition to a green economy in a global context of efforts of international community to limit global warming to the levels outlined in the Paris Agreement. To this end we propose a method of deriving robust and physically grounded budgets of Austria's cumulative GHG emissions that are consistent with the 1.5 °C and the 2 °C warming targets of Paris agreement, respectively. These budgets are based on the most recent estimates of carbon budgets for the 1.5 °C and 2 °C warming targets and delineate a "space for manoeuvre" within which Austria's green transformation must take place if it is to make a desired contribution to humanity's climate-change mitigation efforts. We also derive reference pathways for Austria's GHG emissions that are in line with the 1.5 °C and the 2 °C warming targets, and which inform us about the necessary emission reductions in any given year, e.g., in 2050. We also demonstrate how budgets of cumulative national GHG emissions and corresponding reference emission pathways can be downscaled to provide boundary conditions for a novel approach to modelling economic transformations based on the concept of functionalities. First, we establish how much of GHG emissions is currently caused by providing functionalities Access, Shelter and Other Life Support in Austria. Next, with help of existing EU-wide scenarios of green transition that resolve multiple economic sectors, we assess expected cumulative emissions from sectors not covered by these functionalities. Finally, we subtract these cumulative emissions from the budget of Austria's total GHG emissions and distribute the remainder between the considered functionalities.

Die COVID-19-Pandemie, aber auch die zunehmenden geopolitischen Spannungen haben der Frage nach einer Rückverlagerung der Produktion von "kritischen Produkten" neues Gewicht verliehen. Wie die Analyse zeigt, ist die Importabhängigkeit Österreichs sowohl bei COVID-relevanten Produkten als auch bei Schlüsseltechnologien auf einige wenige Bereiche begrenzt – das Gros der kritischen Güter stammt von Handelspartnern innerhalb der EU. Für die verbliebenen Bereiche identifiziert die Studie inwieweit die jeweiligen Güter zur österreichischen Industriestruktur passen (technologische Nähe, Wettbewerbsfähigkeit), was eine mögliche nationale Produktion erleichtern würde. Des Weiteren wird in einer regionalen Analyse untersucht, in welchen Bundesländern günstige Ausgangsvoraussetzungen für eine Produktionsansiedelung der unterschiedlichen kritischen Güter bestehen. Zuletzt wird deutlich, dass der Staat als zentraler Anbieter von Gesundheitsleistungen einen großen Nachfragehebel bei vielen COVID-relevanten Produkten hat, und daher in einigen Bereichen direkten Einfluss auf die Wertschöpfungsketten nehmen könnte.

This paper examines the association between participation in global value chains and financial globalisation measured by international net and capital flows. The results show that financial globalisation and the rise of global value chains are related but not two sides of the same coin. In fact, we find that GVC participation is positively associated with equity capital flows but negatively associated with debt capital flows. We also study the association of GVC participation and capital flows with aggregate economic outcomes. The findings show that both GVC participation and equity flows affect the share of mortgage and business credit. But we uncover also important differences in the impact of capital flows between advanced and emerging countries. Regarding changes in the economic structure our results suggest a positive association of both GVC participation and equity inflows on the manufacturing share, while debt inflows are primarily associated with a growth of the service sector in advanced economies, but not in emerging and developing countries. The finding that there is no strong association between the globalisation indicators and innovation suggests that the fragmentation of value chains leads to functional specialisation in tasks and tends to weaken the link between innovation and production at country level. We find in addition that a higher GVC participation is weakly associated with a higher growth of government revenue, as are debt flows but only in advances countries. This finding suggests also that debt flows were redirected primarily into safe countries in advanced countries.

This paper examines broad patterns of structural change for a large number of countries on a global scale and for a smaller set of advanced industrialised countries over time. The findings show that structural change over the past decades followed the three-sector hypothesis. The past decades were characterised by the rise of the service sector, driven especially by business services and non-market service. At the same time as manufacturing sectors are declining in terms of shares, they remain the sectors with the highest contributions to aggregate productivity growth. An analysis of determinants of structural change confirms that country competencies related to institutional quality, knowledge generation and industrial application of the new knowledge are an important driving force of structural changes towards services, but that they have a heterogeneous impact on manufacturing subsectors. High technology manufacturing share seems not to be characterised by a tendency to decline with the development of country competencies. Broad policy implications are discussed.

In the context of research on long-run transformations, such as the low-carbon energy transformation, research interest is growing on how to define and measure human well-being meaningfully. The working paper provides a thorough discussion of the literature on well-being and human needs in the context of energy consumption and confronts this scientific discourse with the concept of energy services, or functionalities. Based on a thorough literature review and a comprehensive stakeholder consultation process, we show, that energy services represent the crucial link between energy use (and related GHG emissions) and human need satisfaction.

Als Teil der Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bewältigung der COVID-19-Pandemie wurde u. a. die Mehrwertsteuer in der Gastronomie und Hotellerie temporär reduziert. Dieser Bericht untersucht diese Maßnahme auch im Vergleich mit rezenten Änderungen der Mehrwertsteuersätzen auf Hotelübernachtungen in Österreich. Eine europarechtliche Einschätzung der Maßnahmen findet einen Verstoß gegen geltendes EU-Recht, welcher aufgrund der befristeten Natur der Hilfsmaßnahme jedoch keine Konsequenzen mit sich bringen dürfte. Die empirische Untersuchung der rezenten Mehrwertsteueränderung auf Beherbergungsdienstleistungen zeigen eine stärkere Überwälzung der Steuererhöhung, im Vergleich zur nachfolgenden Steuersenkung. Solche Asymmetrien finden sich auch in der rezenten Literatur, wofür es allerdings nur kurzfristige theoretische Begründungen u. a. durch Kapazitätsbeschränkungen gibt. Für die aktuelle Mehrwertsteuersenkung findet sich kaum Evidenz für eine Überwälzung, da die Preissetzung im Tourismus stark durch Pandemie-bedingte Maßnahmen beeinflusst wird.