Moritz Kuhn and Moritz Schularick, professors at ECONtribute at the University of Bonn, together with Christian Bayer (University of Bonn), have developed a bailout proposal to cushion increasing energy costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The core elements: Incentives to save energy and secure price risks.
The researches embrace the idea of supporting SMEs financially. In essence, SMEs with renewed gas contracts should be credited 50 percent of pre-annual consumption, while older contracts should be raised to current market prices; yet SMEs are to be full-scale compensated for this increase, the researchers propose. “Such a bailout not only sets the right saving incentives, but reduces economic risks as well”, says Moritz Kuhn.
The proposal for a SME bailout is based on the suggestion of a credit model for private households (cp. ECONtribute PB No.34, Wie es zu schaffen ist, August 2022). The overall costs for compensating roughly 50 percent of pre-annual gas costs (for SMEs and households alike), are estimated at approximately 20 billion Euros (about 0.5 per cent of German GDP).