Der Flexibilitätsbeitrag in der Arbeitslosenversicherung

The controversy around fixed-term contracts centres around the conflict between the employer’s need for flexibility and the employee’s need for security. The authors propose flexible contributions for employers to the public unemployment insurance system to balance both interests. The employers’ contributions for their temporary staff would increase while the contributions for their permanent staff would in turn decrease slightly. The authors calculate four versions. With regards to the total sum of contributions, the first version holds the contributions received constant while the second version leads to a reduction. They then repeat these two calculations for fixed-term contracts without substantive grounds. The flexibility premium takes into account the higher unemployment risk of employees with fixed-term contracts and establishes monetary incentives for employers to hire employees with permanent contracts.     

The impact of sovereign wealth funds on global financial markets

If sovereign wealth funds act similarly to private investors and thus allocate foreign assets according to market capitalisation rather than liquidity considerations, official portfolios reduce their “bias” towards the major reserve currencies — the US dollar and the euro. As a result, more capital flows “downhill“ from rich to less wealthy economies. In this scenario, the euro area and the United States would be subject to net capital outflows while Japan and the emerging markets would attract net capital inflows. The potential implications of a rebalancing of international capital flows for stock prices, interest rates and exchange rates remain uncertain, however. The authors wish to thank Marcel Fratzscher for excellents comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Central Bank.     

European knowledge societies (plural)

The pursuit of a thriving European “knowledge economy” is hampered by a onedimensional conception of what it is. The authors of the following article conceptualise three types of knowledge society and outline the consequences of this analysis for the leaders of the EU and the Lisbon Agenda. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Gert-Jan Hospers (University of Twente, The Netherlands) for his comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

The management club: A quality circle for managers

Many authorities argue that poor management is at the heart of the United States' productivity problem. Since traditional means of improving management seem to be falling short of their goal, the authors propose the establishment of management clubs whose members would be volunteers and who would find and implement solutions to their company's specific problems.     

Trends in Service Sourcing Practices

This paper identifies 12 current trends in sourcing practices in general and explores whether these trends are relevant for service sourcing in particular. Based on interviews with sourcing managers, it is, for example, concluded that service sourcing is becoming more systematic, formalized, and globalized with greater demands for trained staff, high-tech tools and focus on CSR. The authors have contributed equally to the article and appear in alphabetical order. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the respondents who made the study possible.     

The PACO index

Given the growth and maturity of the field of business and peace, the authors of this article call for the creation of an index that would present a scorecard of company behaviors. The authors call this the PACO index, which is an acronym for Peaceful Attributes of Companies and is the word for peace in Esperanto. The authors provide a set of principles and drivers that would be necessary for the creation of such an index.     

Measuring competition in Portuguese commercial banking during the Golden Age (1960–1973)

The institutional environment of Portuguese banking during the Golden Age of economic growth (1950–1973) has been criticised in many accounts. According to various authors, on the one hand it would have granted excessive protection to existing banks, allowing them to obtain high rents, a disincentive for them to compete; on the other, it would have forced them to concentrate their activity excessively on short-term credit instruments, thereby preventing them from contributing effectively to finance growth. In this article we use a formal statistical approach of the Panzar–Rosse type and conclude that the system did, in fact, have some interesting competitive features.     

A Social and Economic Model for Europe

The problems that social and labour market institutions are facing today are often attributed to globalisation and ageing. This article argues that globalisation merely exposes inherent weaknesses in social institutions while ageing aggravates them, but that neither of the two phenomena is the fundamental cause of the challenges. Moreover, there is no inherent trade-off between social and economic policies, but to reconcile the policies comprehensive modernisation is needed. Each country can face the challenges should they wish to do so and converging to a single social model is neither needed nor wanted. Finally, European (economic) and national (social) policies become increasingly intertwined and this calls for a new role for Europe. * Bureau of European Policy Advisers, European Commission. The authors would like to thank Tassos Belessiotis for his valuable comments. The authors would also like to thank their colleagues Declan Costello, Georg Fischer, Agnes Hubert, Frédéric Lerais, Mattias Levin, Roger Liddle and Jér?me Vignon. In addition valuable comments by Lans Bovenberg, Gosta Esping-Andersen, Ruud de Mooij, Frederick van der Ploeg and Fritz Scharpf were appreciated. The views expressed in this article are the views of the authors and do not bind the European Commission.     

The medical expense deduction and income levels: Progressive or regressive?

The medical expense deduction (MED) allows taxpayers to deduct from taxable income a proportion of their out-of-pocket medical insurance and health care expenses. Because the rate of subsidy is equal to the marginal tax rate previous studies have found MED to be a regressive tax mechanism biased toward benefiting higher-income taxpayers. The authors demonstrate, using GINI coefficients, that MED makes the tax structure more progressive than it would otherwise be and increases equality of after-tax incomes.     

The combined effects of dependence and relationalism on the use of influence in marketing distribution systems

This study uses data from the automotive replacement tire industry to test the proposition that dependence and relationship structure interact to determine frequency of influence-strategy use in distribution systems. The findings support the expectation that dependence is positively associated with recommendations, information exchanges, promises, requests, legal pleas, and threats. However, increases in dealer dependence increase the use of requests, legal pleas, and threats only in systems characterized by trivial levels of relationalism.The authors would like to express their gratitude to John Burnett, Robert Dwyer, Jule Gassenheimer, and Allen Wilhite for their helpful comments on this project.     

失地农民中特殊群体非正规就业问题实证研究——以成都市郊两镇为例

通过对成都市郊弥牟镇和大弯镇的特殊群体——大龄、文化程度低失地农民非正规就业选择问题的实证案例及其理论分析,揭示了非正规就业是大龄、文化程度低失地农民人力资本合理的再配置形式;城市政府现行相关政策导向和制度安排导致非正规就业制度成本上升,无助于这一群体生计的可持续性。城市政府应积极看待非正规就业的正面功能,以新的制度安排促进非正规就业市场的健康发展,从而为社会弱势群体创造实现可持续生计的公平机会。     

Commercial Insurance of Financial Disclosure: Auditors’ Independence, and Investors’ Protection

In this paper the authors propose, for preliminary consideration and discussion, a system of commercial insurance of financial disclosures (CIFD), under which users of financial information (owners and potential owners of business enterprises) and providers of financial information (managers of business enterprises) would be able to purchase insurance policies from private insurers (commercial insurance companies). These insurance policies would be designed to protect users of financial statements from specific, well-defined losses directly attributable to their use of financial disclosures that failed to conform to contractually defined standards. To reduce their own risks insurance companies will likely purchase from assurance experts (certified public accountants, financial analysts, and management consultants) services assuring adherence to standards. The paper discusses the dynamics of the decisions and negotiations within and among groups of investors, managers, insurers, assurors, and government regulators. The advantages of CIFD over current US regulation of financial disclosure are analyzed. Those advantages, which include increases in the independence of external auditors, improvements in the quality of their audits, and better protection for investors, are assessed. It is argued that CIFD may be capable of evolving into a very flexible system that would accommodate alternative regulatory structures.     

Revenue windfalls and expenditure slippages: Disappointing implementation of the reformed stability and growth pact

With the 2005 reform of the Stability and Growth Pact, a commitment was made to actively consolidate public finances in good times and to use unexpected extra revenues for deficit and debt reduction and not for additional expenditure. Against this background this study provides evidence of a lax implementation of expenditure plans in recent years when revenues were buoyant. Moreover, the influence of revenue windfalls on expenditure overruns is found to be more pronounced in countries that also have not met their medium-term objectives. Thus, first experiences in implementing the provisions of the preventive arm of the Stability and Growth Pact after its reform are not encouraging. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Deutsche Bundesbank. The authors would like to thank especially Bernhard Manzke and Karsten Wendorff, as well as Lukas Reiss and other members of the ESCB Working Group on Public Finances for many helpful comments.     

Debt reduction: the basis and shape of a new strategy

The burden of past restructuring of the external debt of developing countries has been distributed asymmetrically among creditors owing to the lack of incentives for voluntary debt reduction. “New creditors” have been deterred from lending voluntarily because their claims would inevitably be added to a mountain of bad debt. Therefore new ways of reducing debt and debt servicing must be found. Our authors suggest a process of concerted debt reduction designed to ensure that all the creditor banks involved play an equal part.     

Corporate governance, takeovers and the role of the non-executive director

The takeover mechanism may have some effect on disciplining managers - but it also allows them to spend shareholders money on self promotion. The authors of this paper argue that if we had a better system of corporate governance with a revitalised role for independent directors fewer takeovers would occur, and calls for reform of the acquisition market would diminish.     

Expanding the Boundaries of Liability for Quality Defects

This paper proposes a system of liability for quality defects which is based on five key principles: fairness, giving effect to consumers' legitimate expectations, ensuring the quick and efficient provision of redress, rationality, and avoidance of circuity. The system of exclusive seller liability is examined and rejected. Instead, the authors propose that a manufacturer should be directly liable to a consumer. Furthermore, where a manufacturer utilises a distribution network, the members of such networks should also be directly liable to the consumer, but have a right of indemnity against the producer. The authors consider the conceptual justifications and deal with likely difficulties of such a system of liability. Their conclusions are that the system of liability they propose would entail a change of attitude to the way liability for quality defect is allocated, but would accord with the five key principles this discussion is based on.     

Abschaffung der Abgeltungsteuer — gerechter und steuersystematisch einheitlicher?

There is a rising political discussion in Germany around abolishing the final withholding tax on capital income. The German tax reforms that introduced this tax lowered tax rates, in particular on interest income. According to some authors, the growing inequality of income and property is a strong argument for the higher taxation of capital income. However, other authors argue that the neutrality aspects concerning private investment are inadequate. An abolishment of the final withholding tax would not solve these problems and, moreover, would turn back the achieved improvements. Therefore, the German Council of Economic Experts suggests complementing the previous reforms by introducing an allowance for corporate equity.     

Training evaluation in Italian corporate universities: a stakeholder‐based analysis

Corporate universities have emerged as a mechanism for providing companies with a wide variety of training and development activities. They are a recent but under‐researched phenomenon, and given their substantial budgets, it might be expected that they would wish to evaluate what they do. The authors explore the evaluation practices of six Italian corporate universities, paying particular attention to the means by which these practices are tailored to the needs of the various stakeholders. Stakeholder‐based evaluation provides the theoretical framework for the study. The literature suggests that much evaluation of training focuses on a single stakeholder, the shareholder, and that practice draws heavily on Kirkpatrick's hierarchical model. In the context of the corporate university, however, the authors find that multi‐stakeholder evaluation is used in practice. Moreover, various aspects of corporate university performance were evaluated, and data were supplied to stakeholders depending on the nature of their involvement. Stakeholder‐based evaluation is argued to be a useful framework where there are a number of stakeholders, but training evaluation models other than the hierarchical one are needed if all relevant training factors are to be evaluated. The implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Defending the Beachhead: Telstra versus Optus

Much less has been written about market defence strategy than about market attack. This article focuses on one aspect of defensive strategy, defending against a new market entrant – though much of the thinking would also apply to other competitive assaults, like a major new product launch. The article outlines a model of the response of the Australian telecoms incumbent, Telstra, after deregulation. The authors conclude that market leaders should avoid price wars, understand the points in the consumer decision process that are defendable and use inertial strategies. Consumers' views of the incumbent can dramatically change their perceptions of the new entrant too.