Latest Publications
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Die Markenkombinationsstrategie Co-Branding ist ein spannendes und hochaktuelles Thema des Marketings geworden. Denn durch eine gestiegene Wettbewerbsintensität auf zunehmend gesättigten und homogenen Märkten rückt die Marke zur Differenzierung und Präferenzschaffung gegenüber den Konkurrenten wieder ins Licht der Markenpolitik. Da jedoch das Transferpotential vieler bestehender Marken bereits ausgeschöpft ist, und Neuprodukt- beziehungsweise Neumarkeneinführungen wiederum sehr kostspielig sind, ist es an der Zeit, durch geeignete Alternativen wie dem Co-Branding der Wirtschaftlichkeit und Innovationstätigkeit gerecht zu werden.
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Technologische und politische Veränderungen sowie komplexere Wertschöpfungsketten haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einer verstärkten Unternehmensexpansion mittels Mergers and Acquisitions geführt. Unter dem Sammelbegriff Mergers and Acquisitions werden strategische Entscheidungen eines Unternehmens subsummiert, bei denen eine andere selbstständige Unterehmenseinheit (ein anderes Unternehmen) durch Aktientausch oder Barentschädigung erworben wird oder sich zwei Unternehmen zusammenschliessen. M&A stellen eine häufig genutzte Alternative zu internem Unternehmenswachstum dar.
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It is commonplace in the debate on Germany s labor market problems to argue hat high unemployment and low wage dispersion are related. This paper analyses the relationship between unemployment and residual wage dispersion for individuals with comparable attributes. In the conventional neoclassical point of view, wages are determined by the marginal product of the workers. Accordingly, increases in union minimum wages result in a decline of residual wage dispersion and higher unemployment. A competing view regards wage dispersion as the outcome of search frictions and the associated monopsony power of the firms. Accordingly, an increase in search frictions causes both higher unemployment and higher wage dispersion. The empirical analysis attempts to discriminate between the two hypotheses for West Germany analysing the relationship between wage dispersion and both the level of unemployment as well as the transition rates between different labor market states. The findings are not completely consistent with either theory. However, as predicted by search theory, one robust result is that unemployment by cells is not negatively correlated with the within cell wage dispersion.
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(2005): Data Masking by Noise Addition and the Estimation of Nonparametric Regression Models Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik. 2005, 225(5), pp. 517-528. Available under: doi: 10.1515/jbnst-2005-0503
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dc.contributor.author: Lechner, Sandra
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(2005): Why Employee Stock Options Could Be Worth Much More To The Manager ZEWnews English Edition : Special Stock Option Watch. 2005(3), pp. 3-4
The academic discussion of the value of employee stock options has focused for a long time on the reduced value of the employee stock option to the employee. This low value is typically attributed to market incompleteness, as the employee cannot hedge the option perfectly. However, in a recent working paper, Hodder and Jackwerth (2004) argue that employee stock options are much more valuable once we take into consideration that managers (and possibly some lower level employees, too) can actually influence the risk taking of the firm. What we find is that the manager will optimally take on risks in order to increase the value of his employee stock options.
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(2005): Post-communist trends in education : Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States
The education systems of EE/CIS countries have undergone negative changes during the past 16 years. My paper examines these changes, identifies their causes and proposes solutions for improvement. I find that improved educational quality is the key for raising students enrolment and achievement. A number of strategies are available to improve quality: at the higher education level, rely to a greater extent on student fees to finance educational costs, while reducing the amount of public support and allocating this support on the basis of academic merit, rather than based on the number of students; at the pre-tertiary level, increase public spending on education and create incentives to efficiency by transferring more decision-making responsibilities to local governments, parents and schools. All these strategies, however, should be implemented with care to protect the children at risk.
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A common approach to avoid risk selection in health insurance markets is to define and enforce a community-rated basic benefit package. The market for complementary insurance is usually completely separate from the market for basic health insurance. In Switzerland, however, the basic benefit package and complementary insurance are offered by the same insurer. Risk-based premiums are allowed with respect to complementary insurance. In this paper, the Swiss integration approach is compared to the separation approach. It is shown that under the integration approach insurers cream-skim by selling complementary insurance to low risks at a discount. Nevertheless, the integration approach can be Pareto-superior if the cost savings due to the integration of basic and complementary insurance are sufficiently large.
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This paper presents a simple rational expectations model of intertemporal asset pricing. It shows that heterogeneous risk aversion of investors is likely to generate declining aggregate relative risk aversion. This leads to predictability of asset returns and high and persistent volatility. Stock market crashes may be observed if relative risk aversion differs strongly across investors. Then aggregate relative risk aversion may sharply increase given a small impairment in fundamentals so that asset prices may strongly decline. Changes in aggregate relative risk aversion may also lead to resistance and support levels as used in technical analysis. For numerical illustration we propose an analytical asset price formula.
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(2005): Altruists with Green Beards Analyse & Kritik. 2005, 27(1), pp. 73-84. ISSN 0171-5860. eISSN 2365-9858. Available under: doi: 10.1515/auk-2005-0103
If cooperative dispositions are associated with unique phenotypic features (’green beards’), cooperative individuals can be identified. Therefore, cooperative individuals can avoid exploitation by defectors by cooperating exclusively with other cooperative individuals; consequently, cooperators flourish and defectors die out. Experimental evidence suggests that subjects, who are given the opportunity to make promises in face-to-face interactions, are indeed able to predict the partner’s behavior better than chance in a subsequent Prisoners’ Dilemma. This evidence has been interpreted as evidence in favor of green beard approaches to the evolution of human cooperation. Here we argue, however, that the evidence does not support this interpretation. We show, in particular, that the existence of conditional cooperation renders subjects' choices in the Prisoners’ Dilemma predictable. However, although subjects predict behavior better than chance, selfish individuals earn higher incomes than conditional cooperators. Thus, although subjects may predict other players’ choices better than chance evolution favors the selfish subjects, i.e., the experimental evidence does not support the green beard approach towards the evolution of cooperation.
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Since the Russian debt crisis 1998, and particularly after the 2001 default episode in Argentina, questions related to sovereign bankruptcy have been increasingly at the forefront of policy discussions in emerging and transition economies. Much of the debates about international sovereign debt problems in the press as well as among experts have focused on the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From a contract theoretical perspective the extensive liquidity provisions of the IMF during debt crises have been criticized to cause fundamental distortions and to promote negative incentives for the debtor country (debtor moral hazard) and the creditors (investor moral hazard). The purpose of the thesis is to concentrate on a formal analysis of issues on debtor moral hazard.
The volume is divided into two parts. The first part starts with the proper identification of the main market failures between the original contracting parties, the debtor country and the international financial community. The existing contracting externalities and free-rider problems have important implications for the international financial architecture. In particular, we argue that they provide a role for a third player , for example an international organization such as the IMF, that helps to mitigate these frictions. Subsequently various theoretical models are discussed that develop an optimal mission design for the IMF based on the detected distortions. In these models the IMF s role is to substitute for the missing contracts between the sovereign and the individual foreign investor either in a new statutory bankruptcy regime for sovereigns or in implementing explicit seniority rules in privately held sovereign debt. These proposals for redesigning the IMF mean in particular that the Fund does not provide financial support during debt crises any longer. This is important because the present liquidity provision causes the debate about moral hazard.
The second part starts with the argument that the beforehand discussed institutional implications of the market failure cannot be realized in the near or medium future even so these alternative mechanisms would be the optimal answer to the underlying distortions. Therefore the current procedure of IMF financial assistance to troubled economies will remain for the coming years. The question then is whether one can mitigate the moral hazard distortion using methods developed in microeconomics, especially in contract theory. After thoroughly summarizing the potential information asymmetries and negative incentives between all the involved agents during IMF financing, we review in detail the extensive principal-agent literature on debtor moral hazard and discuss critically the implications of the proposals. Much more promising than to develop punishment or disciplining strategies as an instrument of the IMF to prevent opportunistic defaults would be to scrutinize the conventional view on debtor moral hazard. Expected liquidity assistance gives a government not necessarily an incentive to avoid the costs of implementing socially desirable policies and to avoid a default. Recently developed theoretical models show, that it is also plausible to assume that under certain circumstances governments (of highly indebted countries) may be discouraged from implementing efficiency-enhancing but costly policies because the prospects of their success is jeopardized by the possibility of a default due to speculative runs. In such scenarios, IMF liquidity support enables the government to implement good policies by reducing liquidation costs in the event of a default. I.e official support can also act as an incentive for countries to follow good policies rather than reduce such incentives. We discuss formally the narrow limits of models assuming such a strategic complementarity between liquidity provision and good policies. At the same time we also acknowledge that the above argument contributes a lot to a new and interesting starting point in a broader discussion of moral hazard aspects. Since such approaches build on the main insights from the literature of global games, we show how these models contribute to the understanding how catalytic liquidity provision by an official institution can work to prevent a destructive speculative run. -
The main focus of this work is the analysis of price direction processes at transaction level of different stocks traded at the NYSE. Three different models have been applied to the data, namely the autoregressive conditional ultinomial model, a probit model with latent ARMA-process and different specifications of Markov chain models. The models have been assessed by a description of their strengths and weaknesses in modelling probabilities and by the application of non-nested tests. The implications of the decimalisation at the NYSE on price direction processes were examined in a further application.
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(2005): Die Kompatibilität curricularer und methodischer Modellierungen als notwendige Bedingung für Unterrichtsqualität DETLEF SEMBILL, Jürgen Seifri, ed.. Rechnungswesenunterricht am Scheideweg : lehren, lernen und prüfen. Wiesbaden: Dt. Univ.-Verl., 2005, pp. 123-142. ISBN 3-8244-0764-7
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dc.contributor.author: Wolf, Karsten D.; Klüber, Christina; Sembill, Detlef
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In this paper we evaluate the economic research output of Swiss universities with the help of an incentive compatible method. We find that the overall research activity has increased considerably over the last 15 years. Looking at the individual universities however, we observe strikingly different time patterns. In particular we arrive at the result that the universities that were leading at the beginning of the 1990s have in the meantime been surpassed by other universities.
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Technologische und politische Veränderungen sowie komplexere Wertschöpfungsketten haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einer verstärkten Unternehmensexpansion mittels Mergers and Acquisitions geführt. Unter dem Sammelbegriff "Mergers and Acquisitions" werden strategische Entscheidungen eines Unternehmens subsumiert, ein anderes Unternehmen oder einen Geschäftsbereich eines anderen Unternehmens durch Aktientausch oder Barentschädigung zu erwerben oder sich mit einem anderen Unternehmen zusammenzuschließen. M&A stellen eine häufig genutzte Alternative zu internem Unternehmenswachstum dar.
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(2005): Determinants of Long-term Growth : new Results Applying Robust Estimation and Extreme Bounds
Two important problems exist in cross-country growth studies: outliers and model uncertainty. Employing Sala-i-Martin’s (1997a,b) data set, we first use robust estimation and analyze to what extent outliers influence OLS regressions. We then use both OLS and robust estimation techniques in applying the Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) to deal with the problem of model uncertainty. We find that the use of robust estimation affects the list of variables that are significant determinants of economic growth. Also the magnitude of the impact of these variables differs sometimes under the various approaches.
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(2005): Mortality risk and the value of a statistical life : the dead-anyway effect revis(it)ed The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review. 2005, 30(1), pp. 41-55. ISSN 1554-964X. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s10836-005-1107-2
In the expected-utility theory of the monetary value of a statistical life, a well-known result found by Pratt and Zeckhauser [1996] asserts that an individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a marginal reduction in mortality risk increases with the initial level of risk. Their reasoning is based on the so-called “dead-anyway effect” which states that marginal utility of a dollar in the state of death is smaller than in the state of survival. However, this explanation is based on the absence of markets for contingent claims, i.e. annuities and life insurance. This paper reexamines the relationship between WTP and the level of risk under more general circumstances and establishes two main results: first, when insurance markets are perfect, for a risk-averse individual without a bequest motive, marginal WTP for survival does increase with the level of risk but this occurs for a different reason, namely an income effect. Secondly, when the individual has a bequest motive and is endowed with a sufficient amount of wealth from human capital, the effect of initial risk on WTP for survival is reversed: the higher initial risk the lower the value of a statistical life. In the imperfect-markets case we interpret this result as a “constrained-bequest effect”. Copyright The Geneva Association 2005
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Die Arbeit untersucht die Anwendbarkeit des Harris Todaro Modells für Land-Stadt-Migrations-Prozesse in Entwicklungsländern. Dabei geht es nicht nur um das Basismodel, sondern auch um die Modell-Erweiterungen, die internationalen Handel, einen städtischen informellen Sektor und die Aspekte der Agglomeration behandeln. Die Folgerungen aus der Theorie werden sodann mit den empirisch belegten Erfahrungen einiger Entwicklungsländer verglichen. Das Ergebnis beweist, dass die dem Modell zugrunde liegenden Annahmen die Entwicklungen in vielen weniger entwickelten Ländern wiederspiegeln. Die Konzentration auf die chinesische Wirtschaft ermöglicht eine tiefergehende Analyse der Anwendbarkeit des Harris Todaro Modells. Bereits vorliegende empirische Ergebnisse und die hier durchgeführte Regressionsanalyse zeigen, dass das Modell auf China angewendet werden kann. Es werden daher anschließend die politischen Implikationen erörtert. Zusammenfassend kann gesagt werden, dass das Harris Todaro Modell trotz einiger Unzulänglichkeiten in der Lage ist, die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in China zu erklären und Leitlinien für die Implementierung politischer Optionen aufzuzeigen.
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(2005): Schülerfragen - ein brachliegendes didaktisches Feld Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik. 2005, 101(2), pp. 229-245
To get more information about the potential and the function of learner questioning we analysed learners' activities in a self-organized learning environment (n = 18) and combined the results with those of a pilot questionnaire on student questioning. These empirical studies indicate that learners' questions have positive effects on learning outcomes (cognitive, motivational and emotional criteria). Although student questioning seems to be important in creating new knowledge and solving problems it is still not being used sufficiently. This, however, should be highly recommended because questioning is going hand in hand with positive emotional, motivational, and cognitive processes especially in decentralized teaching-learning arrangements.
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The analysis compares two institutional settings in which individuals with complementary task abilities match to found new firms: corporate spin-offs of initially randomly matched production teams and the rational matching of such teams in an incubator organization. The alternative always consists of seeking employment in industrial firms which pay a certain wage. This wage reflects the expected team quality given that all professionals who do not found firms are randomly matched in production teams. Each institutional setting gives rise to a unique efficient competitive equilibrium such that both industrial and entrepreneurial firms coexist. The efficient incubator equilibrium always induces a larger entrepreneurial sector in the industry. However, the additional entrepreneurial firms founded are rather small. Neither of the two regimes unambiguously induces higher industry-wide investments. Ex-ante welfare comparisons then assume that individuals do not yet know their specific ability combinations. Simulations show that higher degrees of risk-aversion (interest-rates) render the efficient spin-off (incubator) equilibrium dominant.
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dc.contributor.author: Gassebner, Martin