Through June 25./26. 2001, the ZEW held an international workshop titled „Empirical Modeling of the Economy and the Environment“, celebrating 10 years since the ZEW's foundation and, at the same time, the 60. birthday of Professor Conrad (University of Mannheim), a close associate to the ZEW. The workshop was held in order to demonstrate both the breadth of environmental economic modeling as well as the state of the art of empirical environmental research, and offered itself to the distinguished economists as an open forum for scientific discussions of the field of empirical environmental economics. The workshop was attended by some 40 participants from Germany, Europe and the United States. After an introductory note by the head of the department "Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management" at the ZEW, Professor Böhringer, the ZEW's President Professor Franz addressed much appreciation towards the scientific career of Klaus Conrad, long-standing research professor at the ZEW and involved at the forefront of establishing the ZEW's environmental research department. The subsequently presented scientific papers concerned micro- and macroeconometric aspects of envionmental economics. Besides the reports on the empirical work accomplished - drawing both on econometric analysis as well as applied general equilibrium models - some purely theoretical papers were presented as well.

One focus of the workshop lay in discussing the interaction of environment, growth and international trade. Thomas Osang (Southern Methodist University) investigated environmental economic regulation by applying methods for the measurement of productivity. Building, furthermore, on a theoretical model by Conrad and Morrison he was able to demonstrate on the basis of US-Data that sectors bearing under stricter environmental economic regulation show less productivity growth. Franz Wirl (University of Vienna) as well analysed the effects of environmental policy measures on the productivity growth. The rather small effects known from applied general equilibrium models may then, according to his research, be brought to agreement with the significantly negative effects of environmental policy regulation on productivity growth generally demonstrated in econometric analyses (e.g. Conrad and Wastl). Cees Withagen (University of Tilburg) employed meta-analyses to investigate the influence of ie internationale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit. Die statistische environmental policy measures on international competitiveness. The respective statistical assessment of the available literature enabled the identification of potential causes to diverging results, such as are dependent on the classification of regulatory burdens in terms of their intensity.