A UNIVERSAL OPTIMAL CONSUMPTION RATE FOR AN INSIDER

We consider a cash flow   X ^{( c )} ( t )  modeled by the stochastic equation where B (·) and     are a Brownian motion and a Poissonian random measure, respectively, and   c ( t ) ≥ 0  is the consumption/dividend rate. No assumptions are made on adaptedness of the coefficients  μ, σ, θ  , and c , and the (possibly anticipating) integrals are interpreted in the forward integral sense. We solve the problem to find the consumption rate c (·), which maximizes the expected discounted utility given by Here  δ( t ) ≥ 0  is a given measurable stochastic process representing a discounting exponent and τ is a random time with values in (0, ∞), representing a terminal/default time, while  γ≥ 0  is a known constant.     

Kosten und Streitwert in Verfahren wegen unlauteren Wettbewerbs aus verbraucherpolitischer Sicht

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag berichtet über die Ergebnisse einer rechtstatsächlichen Untersuchung über Streitwert und Kosten in Verfahren wegen unlauteren Wettbewerbs, die vom Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Wettbewerbsrecht, München, durchgeführt wurde. Bei der Bestandsaufnahme von Streitwerten in Verfahren wegen unlauteren Wettbewerbs in über 3000 einschlägigen Fällen bestätigte sich der allgemein vorherrschende Eindruck, daß die Streitwerte in Wettbewerbssachen im Vergleich zu den «normalen» Zivilverfahren außerordentlich hoch sind. Für die gem. 13 Abs. 1 a UWK klagebefugten Verbrauchervereine folgt daraus, daß die Kostenbelastung bei einem Unterliegen im Prozeß schon bei durchschnittlicher Streitwerthöhe zu einem ernsten Problem werden kann. Die Einstellung der Gerichte zur Gewährung der Streitwertbegünstigung gem. § 23 a UWG ist uneinheitlich; von einigen Gerichten wird in dieser Hinsicht eine sehr restriktive Auffassung vertreten. Eine Auswertung der im Verlauf der Untersuchung bekanntgewordenen Fälle, in denen der Verbraucherschutzverein in Berlin von der ihm gewährten Streitwertbegünstigung wegen Unterliegens in der Sache Gebrauch machen mußte, hat ergeben, daß die Belastung der gewerblichen Wirtschaft weder nach ihrem Umfang noch den sachlichen Umständen ihrer Realisierung nach als unbillig oder gar unzumutbar angesehen werden kann.

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The present article deals with the results of a study on litigation value and the costs of unfair competition litigation. In German procedural law, litigation value is the sum representing the value of the plaintiff's interests involved in the case, or — if it is not a personal interest, but, as is the case with claims made by consumer associations, rather a general one — the public interest involved in the claim as expressed in monetary value. This value determines the magnitude of the costs (court costs and lawyer fees) that the losing party has to pay.According to the prevailing opinion, litigation value in unfair competition litigation is usually very high, compared with normal litigation in civil cases. By gathering the data of more than 3000 cases, the study was able to verify this impression. For consumer associations, which, according to § 13 sec. 1 a UWG, have the right to act as a plaintiff in cases of special interest for consumers, this means that the costs of losing a case, even one of average importance, can be ruinous. Courts have, however, the possibility to split up the litigation value, that is, fix a low sum as litigation value regarding the poor party (which in this case would be the consumer association), while the normal value remains valid for the other party. The main effect of the splitting-up is that the poor party, if the case should be lost, only has to pay both court costs and lawyer's fees according to the low value, while the other party, even if he won the case, has to pay the difference. As the study reveals, this regulation meets with varying degrees of approval from the courts' side; some courts seem to be fairly restrictive in handling it. Due to this, consumer associations cannot know beforehand if they will be granted the benefit of value-splitting, and thus have to refrain from any further procedural activities if they do not feel able to take the full risk — this effect, of course, from the consumer's point of view, is a very unfavourable one. On the other hand, it is argued that the obligation to bear part of the costs will place an unfair burden on the innocent winner. However, an enumeration of those cases in which one important consumer association, the Verbraucherschutzverein in Berlin, had to take advantage of the above mentioned litigation value assessment, shows that the effect for the opponent has not been as damaging as could have been expected.

     

Electronic Monitoring and Privacy Issues in Business-Marketing: The Ethics of the DoubleClick Experience

The paper examines the ethics of electronic monitoring for advertising purposes and the implications for Internet user privacy using as a backdrop DoubleClick Incs recent controversy over matching previously anonymous user profiles with personally identifiable information. It explores various ethical theories that are applicable to understand privacy issues in electronic monitoring. It is argued that, despite the fact that electronic monitoring always constitutes an invasion of privacy, it can still be ethically justified on both Utilitarian and Kantian grounds. From a Utilitarian perspective the emphasis must be on minimizing potential harms. From a Kantian perspective the emphasis must be on giving users complete information so that they can make informed decisions as to whether they are willing to be monitored. Considering the Internet advertising industrys current actions, computer users and government regulators would be well advised, both practically and ethically, to move to a user control model in electronic monitoring.     

SCHUR CONVEX FUNCTIONALS: FATOU PROPERTY AND REPRESENTATION

The Fatou property for every Schur convex lower semicontinuous (l.s.c.) functional on a general probability space is established. As a result, the existing quantile representations for Schur convex l.s.c. positively homogeneous convex functionals, established on for either p= 1 or p=∞ and with the requirement of the Fatou property, are generalized for , with no requirement of the Fatou property. In particular, the existing quantile representations for law invariant coherent risk measures and law invariant deviation measures on an atomless probability space are extended for a general probability space.     

The Risk Reduction Role of Advertising

This study shows theoretically and empirically that exposure to advertising increases consumers tendency to purchase the promoted product because the informative content of advertising resolves some of the uncertainty that the risk averse consumers face and thus reduces the risk associated with the product. We call this effect the risk-reduction role of advertising. The risk-reduction model implies that advertising effectiveness depends on (a) the risk preference parameter, (b) the precision of the advertising message, (c) the familiarity of the consumer with the product, (d) the consumers sensitivity to products attributes (and thus, her involvement level with the product), and (e) the diversity of products offered by multiproduct firms. These findings suggest that ads spending should be higher (a) for new and relatively unknown products, (b) for high-involvement products, (c) when ads can be quite precise, and (d) when the firm offers a diverse product-line. It also implies that ads should target consumers (a) who are more sensitive to risk, (b) who are more involved, and (c) those who are not familiar with the promoted product.The model allows ads to affect choices also through a direct effect on the utility (i.e., the standard approach to formulate the effect of advertising). In our empirical example (where the products are television shows) the risk-reduction effect is significant and strong and the direct effect is negligible behaviorally. We discuss the welfare implications of these findings, and illustrate the quantitative differences in managerial implications between our model and the traditional one.     

Identity theft: An exploratory study with implications for marketers

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America, and millions of people become victims each year. Furthermore, identity theft costs corporations over $20 billion per year, and consumers are forced to spend over $2 billion and 100 million hours of time to deal with the aftermath. This paper uses a system dynamics model to explore policy options dealing with identity theft and to provide implications for marketers. The results indicate that the current approach to combating identity theft will not work. However, inexpensive security freezes could be effective, because they result in a nonlinear reduction in identity theft that is similar to the “herd immunity” seen in epidemiology. Thus, identity theft can be addressed by protecting just a fraction of the total population.     

‘I am we’ consciousness and dialog as organizational ethics method

There is a practical five-step method of ethics dialog developed by John Woolman, an 18th c. businessman and ethical activist, that was used by Robert K. Greenleaf, a 20th c. A.T.&T. Corporate Vice-President, that includes: (a) friendly, emotive affect; (b) discussion of mutual commonalities; (c) discussion of issue entanglements; (d) discussion of potential experimental solutions; and, (e) trial and feedback discussion. This method of dialog appears to proceed with a type of consciousness considered by John Woolman and Bernard Lonergan as one where the I is conscious that I and Others are part of a more foundational, larger and prior We. This type of dialog is different than Socratic dialog. The corresponding type of consciousness is different than the more derivative, e.g., two allies being united in their response to a common goal. It is also different than Buber's I and Thou appreciative consciounsess of the interestingness, value, diversity, and uniqueness of others. Woolman dialog as seen in four cases appears to be a concrete method that has some value both as an end in itself and as instrumental means that can: be issue effective, help build ethical organization/community culture, and help facilitate peaceful, evolutionary change and development. Limitations of the method are also considered. The method may also be a several hundred year anticipation of experiment based pragmatist philosophy that is anthropologically sensitive to cultural entanglements.

John Donne (17th c.)

Richard P. Nielsen is a professor in the Department of Organizational Studies, School of Management, Boston College. Related articles of his include: Dialogic Leadership As Organizational Ethics Action (Praxis) Method, Journal of Business Ethics(October 1990); Negotiating As An Ethics Action (Praxis) Strategy, Journal of Business Ethics(May 1989); Changing Unethical Organizational Behavior, Academy of Management Executive(May 1989); Arendt's Action Philosophy and the Manager as Eichmann, Richard III, Faust, or Institution Citizen, California Management Review(Spring 1984); and Cooperative Strategy, Strategic Management Journal(September–October 1988).     

The movement for reforming American business ethics: A twenty-year perspective

This paper presents a succinct review of the movement for moral genesis in business that arose in the 1970s. The moral genesis movement is characterized by: (a) the rejection of the premise that business and ethics are antagonistic; (b) the rise of the Issues Management approach, which stresses the social responsibility of the corporation: (c) disdain of government regulation as a means of business moralization, and (d) a search for control measures aimed at improving organization moral behavior. This movement now begins to give rise to a new organizational model, the Self-Moralizing Corporation, which transcends existing paradigms of corporate rectitude. The tenets of the Self-Moralizing Corporation are that: (a) the moral behavior of members is a requisite to the attainment of organization goals; (b) individual moral behavior is an asset which must be managed and developed by the corporation; (c) individual moral development is a collectively and individually shared responsibility; and, (d) the maintenance of moral values is more important than the preservation of organization structure.Simcha B. Werner has published in Israeli, British and American professional journals in the areas of government ethics, administrative reform and public enterprise.     

ROBUST FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM FOR CONTINUOUS PROCESSES

We study a continuous‐time financial market with continuous price processes under model uncertainty, modeled via a family of possible physical measures. A robust notion of no‐arbitrage of the first kind is introduced; it postulates that a nonnegative, nonvanishing claim cannot be superhedged for free by using simple trading strategies. Our first main result is a version of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing: holds if and only if every admits a martingale measure that is equivalent up to a certain lifetime. The second main result provides the existence of optimal superhedging strategies for general contingent claims and a representation of the superhedging price in terms of martingale measures.     

MULTIVARIATE SUBORDINATION OF MARKOV PROCESSES WITH FINANCIAL APPLICATIONS

This paper develops the procedure of multivariate subordination for a collection of independent Markov processes with killing. Starting from d independent Markov processes with killing and an independent d‐dimensional time change , we construct a new process by time, changing each of the Markov processes with a coordinate . When is a d‐dimensional Lévy subordinator, the time changed process is a time‐homogeneous Markov process with state‐dependent jumps and killing in the product of the state spaces of . The dependence among jumps of its components is governed by the d‐dimensional Lévy measure of the subordinator. When is a d‐dimensional additive subordinator, Y is a time‐inhomogeneous Markov process. When with forming a multivariate Markov process, is a Markov process, where each plays a role of stochastic volatility of . This construction provides a rich modeling architecture for building multivariate models in finance with time‐ and state‐dependent jumps, stochastic volatility, and killing (default). The semigroup theory provides powerful analytical and computational tools for securities pricing in this framework. To illustrate, the paper considers applications to multiname unified credit‐equity models and correlated commodity models.     

A quick justification for business ethics

The article examines the question of whether business ethics courses ought to have an impact. Despite the still common attitude among students and some business professionals that ethical considerations are less pressing in business, I argue that moral obligations are just as important there as elsewhere. The emphasis on profits in business is related to other realms (e.g., hobbies and seeking and education) in which, though private goals are dominant, moral limits remain in force. Business ethics courses can play a crucial role in emphasizing the necessity of ethical analysis in business. Louis G. Lombardi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Lake Forest College and the author of Inherent Worth, Respect, and Rights in Environmental Ethics.     

Inferring Market Structure from Customer Response to Competing and Complementary Products

We consider customer influences on market structure, arguing that market structure should explain the extent to which any given set of market offerings are substitutes or complements. We describe recent additions to the market structure analysis literature and identify promising directions for new research in market structure analysis. Impressive advances in data collection, statistical methodology and information technology provide unique opportunities for researchers to build market structure tools that can assist real-time marketing decision-making.     

双旋Y切石英振子“T”模分析及SC切双模同时振荡的研究

<正> 一、美国对外贸易政策的特征长期以来,美国的对外贸易政策既有浓厚的保护主义色彩,又保持一定程度的对外开放,这是美国的国情所决定的.没有保护主义,美国不能保护国内市场;没有一定程度的对外开放,美国不能获得外国的资源、技术和资金.从保护主义角度来说,美国各种有关贸易的立法规定了多     

INDIFFERENCE PRICING FOR CONTINGENT CLAIMS: LARGE DEVIATIONS EFFECTS

We study utility indifference prices and optimal purchasing quantities for a nontraded contingent claim in an incomplete semimartingale market with vanishing hedging errors. We make connections with the theory of large deviations. We concentrate on sequences of semicomplete markets where in the nth market, the claim admits the decomposition . Here, is replicable by trading in the underlying assets , but is independent of . Under broad conditions, we may assume that vanishes in accordance with a large deviations principle (LDP) as n grows. In this setting, for an exponential investor, we identify the limit of the average indifference price , for units of , as . We show that if , the limiting price typically differs from the price obtained by assuming bounded positions , and the difference is explicitly identifiable using large deviations theory. Furthermore, we show that optimal purchase quantities occur at the large deviations scaling, and hence large positions arise endogenously in this setting.     

Conic martingales from stochastic integrals

In this paper, we introduce the concept of conic martingales. This class refers to stochastic processes that have the martingale property but that evolve within given (possibly time‐dependent) boundaries. We first review some results about the martingale property of solution to driftless stochastic differential equations. We then provide a simple way to construct and handle such processes. Specific attention is paid to martingales in [0, 1]. One of these martingales proves to be analytically tractable. It is shown that up to shifting and rescaling constants, it is the only martingale (with the trivial constant, Brownian motion, and geometric Brownian motion) having a separable diffusion coefficient and that can be obtained via a time‐homogeneous mapping of Gaussian diffusions. The approach is exemplified by modeling stochastic conditional survival probabilities in the univariate and bivariate cases.     

ON THE MARTINGALE PROPERTY IN STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS BASED ON TIME‐HOMOGENEOUS DIFFUSIONS

Lions and Musiela give sufficient conditions to verify when a stochastic exponential of a continuous local martingale is a martingale or a uniformly integrable martingale. Blei and Engelbert and Mijatovi? and Urusov give necessary and sufficient conditions in the case of perfect correlation (). For financial applications, such as checking the martingale property of the stock price process in correlated stochastic volatility models, we extend their work to the arbitrary correlation case (). We give a complete classification of the convergence properties of both perpetual and capped integral functionals of time‐homogeneous diffusions and generalize results in Mijatovi? and Urusov with direct proofs avoiding the use of separating times (concept introduced by Cherny and Urusov and extensively used in the proofs of Mijatovi? and Urusov).     

Advertising and Commercial Communications — Towards a coherent and effective EC policy

Both industry and consumer associations are unhappy with the EC piecemeal advertising policy. A fresh impetus is expected from a 1994 European Commission Green Paper on Commercial Communication.Industry wishes maximum recognition of self-regulation. Consumer advocates see an absolute need for better control of cross-border malpractices, for the extension of EC framework legislation to unfair marketing practices, and for EC-wide regulation in highly sensitive areas.The June 1993 Commission document Towards a Strategic Programme for the Internal Market confirms the subsidiarity policy (improve the present framework rather than develop the legislative activity of the Community). Realistically, consumer advocates should, therefore, focus on improving key framework provisions and on developing a constructive transnational partnership with self-regulatory bodies.These are considered to be key legal demands: (a) the burden of proof for factual statements must be placed on the advertiser; (b) factual statements should be contractually enforceable; (c) an EC black list of molesting solicitation techniques has to be erected; (d) home and host countries must have a legal obligation to act jointly against cross-border malpractices.

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Werbung und kommerzielle Kommunikation — auf dem Wege zu einer einheitlichen und wirksamen europäischen Politik

Zusammenfassung Sowohl die Unternehmen wie auch Verbraucher-organisationen sind unzufrieden mit der bruchstückhaften europäischen Werbepolitik. Ein neuer Ansto\ wird von dem europäischen Grünbuch über kommerzielle Kommunikation erwartet, das 1994 erscheinen wird. Die Unternehmen wünschen eine weitestgehende Anerkennung der Selbstkontrolle, Vertreter der Konsumenten sehen einen starken Bedarf nach besserer Kontrolle von grenzüberschreitendem unlauterem Geschäftsverhalten, nach der Ausweitung der europäischen Rahmen-gesetzgebung gegen unfaire Handelspraktiken und nach einer europaweiten Regulierung sensitiver Bereiche. Das Papier der Kommission über ein strategisches Programm für den Gemeinsamen Markt vom Juni 1993 legt sich auf das Subsidiaritätsprinzip fest. Realistischerweise sollten sich Verbrauchervertreter darauf einstellen, bestehende Rahmenbedingungen zu verbessern und eine konstruktive zwischennationale Partnerschaft mit Selbstkontroll-Gremien zu entwickeln. Als rechtliche Schlüsseler-fordernisse formuliert der Beitrag: (a) die Beweislast für werbliche Faktenaussagen mu\ beim werbetreibenden Anbieter liegen; (b) faktische Zusicherungen sollten vertraglich einklagbar sein; (c) eine europäische schwarze Liste belästigender Techniken der Kundenwerbung sollte erstellt werden; (d) Heimund Gastländer müssen eine rechtliche Verpflichtung zum gemeinschaftlichen Einschreiten gegen grenzüberschrei-tende unfaire Praktiken erhalten.

     

OPTIMAL INVESTMENT UNDER RELATIVE PERFORMANCE CONCERNS

We consider the problem of optimal investment when agents take into account their relative performance by comparison to their peers. Given N interacting agents, we consider the following optimization problem for agent i, : where is the utility function of agent i, his portfolio, his wealth, the average wealth of his peers, and is the parameter of relative interest for agent i. Together with some mild technical conditions, we assume that the portfolio of each agent i is restricted in some subset . We show existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium in the following situations:

• ‐ unconstrained agents,
• ‐ constrained agents with exponential utilities and Black–Scholes financial market.

We also investigate the limit when the number of agents N goes to infinity. Finally, when the constraints sets are vector spaces, we study the impact of the s on the risk of the market.     

Parents' perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards child safety: a study in 14 European countries

Injury is the leading cause of death for children 0- 19 years of age in Europe, accounting for 3.1 deaths per 10 000 children per year. The youngest children of the ages 0-4 years require the most protection in this age group, with 2.5 injury-related deaths per 10 000 children in Europe annually. As parents are the primary caregivers of children, it is necessary to learn more about parents' perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards child safety. This study presents the findings of a 14-country study in Europe on this theme. A quantitative survey of parents of children aged 5 years or under was performed in 14 EU member states in order to enable better targeting of prevention efforts aimed at educating parents. The total sample size was 2088. The results show that 95% of parents reported that they personally take measures to avoid accidental injury to their children. Their top concern with regard to safety of their children was children being hit by a car. The most common response, when asked why some parents find it difficult to protect their children from accidental injury, was not being able to watch their children constantly. Lack of awareness or knowledge about the causes of accidents was the second response. Two-thirds of parents would like to see more help from the government to prevent childhood injuries. Three-quarters of parents agreed that child injuries can be avoided. It was concluded that parents want to be better informed about the causes of child accidents and about actions they and society can take to reduce injury-related risks to children.     

From consumer problems to consumer anomie

At the beginning of this century consumer problems in Europe were concentrated on the economic and functional aspects of consumption. These were concrete realities which were felt so strongly that efforts were made to solve them independently, e.g., by consumer co-operation.With steadfast extension of the market, consumer problems have become more diffuse. This is due to several circumstances: (a) the functional aspects of commodities have become more complex and their origin more difficult to identify; (b) the functional and symbolic aspects have become more entangled; (c) the traditional cultural distinction between good and bad in consumption has collapsed at the same time as new, branded products have made it more difficult to build up a new cultural code.As a result there is a problem of how to combine — in consumer choice — the symbolic and the functional dimensions of a commodity. One may say that it is typical for modern consumption that there are no rigid choice criteria and that uncertainty is inherent in consumer choice. If this holds true one can use the Durkheimian concept of anomie in describing the main problem in modern European consumption.

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Von Verbraucherproblemen zur Verbraucheranomie

Zusammenfassung Verbraucherprobleme waren zu Beginn dieses Jahrhunderts in Europa vorwiegend auf die wirtschaftlichen und funktionalen Aspekte des Konsums beschränkt. Diese Aspekte waren handfeste Wirklichkeit und wurden so stark empfunden, daß man alle Anstrengungen unternahm, sie unabhängig zu lösen, beispielsweise durch Verbraucher-Kooperation.Mit dem stetigen Wachstum der Konsumgütermärkte wurden Verbraucherprobleme in steigendem Maße diffus. Mehrere Ursachen kommen dafür in Betracht: (a) die funktionellen Aspekte der Güter wurden immer komplexer und in ihrer Herkunft schwieriger zu identifizieren; (b) die funktionalen und symbolischen Aspekte wurden immer stärker miteinander verknüpft; (c) traditionelle kulturelle Unterscheidungen zwischen gut und schlecht im Konsum lösten sich zu der Zeit auf, als die neu entstehenden Markenprodukte sich schwer damit taten, eine neue kulturelle Bedeutung zu vermitteln.Somit ergibt sich als Hauptproblem, wie in den Konsumentscheidungen die symbolische und die funktionale Dimension der Güter miteinander verbunden werden soll. Man könnte sagen, daß es für den modernen Konsum typisch ist, daß es keine festen Auswahlkriterien gibt und Kaufentscheidungen immer ein Element von Unsicherheit anhaftet. Wenn diese Beschreibung zutrifft, läßt sich das Hauptproblem des modernen europäischen Konsums mit dem Durkheim'schen Konzept der Anomie beschreiben.

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Kaj Ilmonen is a researcher at the Central Union of Consumer Co-operation in Finland and a Docent of Sociology at the University of Tampere. His address is: Kulutusosuuskuntien Keskusliitto (KK) r.y., Hämeentie 19, SF-00101 Helsinki 10, Finland.This paper was first presented at the symposium New Challenges for European Consumer Policy, held at Heiligkreuztal, FRG, on March 17–20, 1986 under the sponsorship of the European Cultural Foundation, the Commission of the European Communities, and IBM Deutschland.