Gesetzliche Rente: Bedeutet Teilhabeäquivalenz Verteilungsneutralität? — Ein weiterer Irrtum

A basic principle of statutory retirement insurance in Germany is the proportionality between earnings and retirement benefits called “Teilhabeäquivalenz”. Advocates of the system defend this principle, arguing that it ensures distributive neutrality. However, this assertion is wrong because the principle combines two concepts with different time dimensions: lifetime contributions and monthly retirement benefits. If clearly defined population groups differ in their life expectancy, then this very principle achieves income redistribution, in the German case from low earners to high earners. We propose a simple change in the rules which would avoid this undesirable redistribution.     

Does Heterogeneity Help in Overcoming the Public Goods Dilemma in a Sequential Contribution Environment?

This paper compares behavior of heterogeneous groups with homogeneous groups in public goods production. In heterogeneous groups members differ in their opportunity costs of contribution, while in homogeneous groups, members have the same opportunity costs. Members of three-player groups sequentially make all-or-nothing contributions towards the production of a public good where contribution decisions, payoffs, and opportunity costs of preceding players in the group are known to each group member. We find that heterogeneous groups perform better than homogeneous groups controlling for average opportunity costs at the group level. Our results also indicate that subjects develop an endogenous contribution norm to sustain public goods production where subjects in the first positions, and subjects with relatively low opportunity costs contribute most often.     

Group lending and the role of the group leader

This paper investigates strategic monitoring behavior within group lending. We show that monitoring efforts of group members differ in equilibrium due to the asymmetry between members in terms of future profits. In particular, we show that the entrepreneur with the highest future profits also puts in the highest monitoring effort. Moreover, monitoring efforts differ between group members due to free-riding: one member reduces her level of monitoring if the other increases her monitoring effort. This effect is also at play when we introduce a group leader into the model. The individual who becomes the group leader supplies more monitoring effort than in the benchmark case. We empirically test the model using data from a survey of microfinance in Eritrea and show that the group leader attaches more weight to future periods than nonleaders in the group, which may explain why a large part of total monitoring is done by the leader.     

Demutualization and customer protection at self‐regulatory financial exchanges

In the past decade, many of the world's largest financial exchanges have demutualized, i.e., converted from mutual, not‐for‐profit organizations to publicly‐traded, for‐profit firms. In most cases, these exchanges have substantial responsibilities with respect to enforcing various “trade practice” regulations that protect investors from dishonest agents. We examine how the incentives to enforce such rules change as an exchange demutualizes. In contrast to oft‐stated concerns, we find that, in many circumstances, an exchange that maximizes shareholder (rather than member) income has a greater incentive to aggressively enforce these types of regulations. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 31:126–164, 2011     

Revenue sharing in network utility maximization problems

Alliances arise in a wide variety of domains, when a group of countries, political parties, people or other entities agree to work together because of shared interests or aims. They make sense, if the output obtained is somehow better than the outcome of acting individually. Revenue or cost sharing is key when determining if individuals are better off by contributing to an alliance or not. In our alliance each member owns a unique resource –or set of resources–, which is given to the alliance. The alliance sells services, which are supported thanks to one or a set of these resources. We focus on alliances that sell services in such a way that the total revenue of the alliance is maximized. We show that this kind of problems can be modeled through a Network Utility Maximization problem. We subsequently explore the problem of revenue sharing among the members of the alliance. Such a problem is a complex one since the interests of all participants must be ensured and correct incentives must be provided. We formally formulate the members’ interests through a set of properties the revenue sharing method should verify. We then discuss the existing methods for revenue sharing and conclude that none of them verifies the needed properties for the case of a revenue maximizing alliance. We finally propose a revenue sharing method based on projecting the contributions of each member of the alliance into an economic stable set. Through an exhaustive simulative study we conclude that our method provides, in addition to economic stability, fairness among members and the right incentives to them. Through our analysis Network Service Provider alliances, which sell quality-assured data transport services, are considered as an application example.     

货币政策的分配效应研究——基于异质性家庭视角

货币政策不仅是应对突发冲击、在短期内迅速实现经济复苏的政策工具,而且具有调节收入分配的功效。通过将异质性家庭和货币政策引入动态随机一般均衡分析框架,文章考察了扩张性货币政策的分配效应。研究发现,降息不仅能够促进李嘉图和经验规则式家庭的消费和就业,而且有助于降低消费不平等和收入不平等。与不考虑不平等因素的货币政策规则相比,考虑消费不平等和收入不平等的拓展规则引致的社会福利损失显著降低。因此,在制定和执行货币政策规则时,不仅应当考虑家庭的异质性,而且应当考虑可能的消费不平等与收入不平等。     

Ladder Pricing – A New Form of Wholesale Price Discrimination

Wholesale ‘ladder pricing’ involves setting the wholesale price a retailer faces as a non-linear (generally increasing) function of the price chosen by that retailer. The special case where the ladder-pricing contract is linear is shown to be equivalent to a form of revenue sharing. Optimal profit maximizing ladder pricing/revenue sharing is examined, given that retailers are privately informed of their demands and costs, and have control over whether they participate, and if so, what retail price they set. The profit performance of the solution is compared with the alternative of wholesale quantity discounting, as the relative level of retailer demand/cost heterogeneity is varied; ladder pricing/revenue sharing tends to outperform quantity discounting by an increasing amount the greater retailer demand heterogeneity is relative to cost heterogeneity. Ladder pricing has recently been implemented for 08 and related calls in UK telecoms and has been subject to extended legal dispute; the case and issues involved are discussed.     

Labour Market Institutions and Household Consumption Insurance within OECD Countries

This paper tests empirically whether the effect of idiosyncratic income shocks on aggregate consumption depends on institutional features of national labour markets. The results show that, in a sample of 15 OECD countries, institutional heterogeneity is a significant determinant of the response of household consumption to country‐specific income shocks. This is consistent with the idea that institutionally provided social insurance may help increase income stability when people differ in their ability to access financial markets and smooth consumption fluctuations.     

Distributing Start‐Up Equity: A Theoretical Foundation for an Emerging Practice

We use agency theory to model equity division in venture capital financing with three complementary value‐creation factors—the entrepreneur's effort, the venture capitalist's advising/monitoring service, and the investment amount. While considering that investors often base their funding decisions on gut feeling, even as they employ rational decision‐making processes, we derive closed‐form expressions for optimal ownership sharing. Our findings provide theoretical explanation to support the recent call for practitioners to allocate ownership equity based on the relative potential contributions of the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist to generate value for the new investment prospect.     

Donor Funding of Multilateral Aid Agencies: Determining Factors and Revealed Burden Sharing

This paper reports an empirical study of the factors affecting burden sharing among OECD's 22 DAC members in ‘bankrolling’ the multilateral aid agencies. Annual data over 1970–2000, pooled across the donor countries, form the basis for the empirical estimation of each donor's share in the ODA aid receipts for each multilateral agency. Our findings suggest the existence of reverse exploitation, i.e., the financial burden of the agencies is disproportionally carried by the smaller donors. The study also finds that factors such as inherent donor generosity, donor concern for domestic egalitarianism, and the extent to which donors are pro‐poor in their bilateral aid policies have an impact on their readiness to support multilateral agencies financially. Size of the donor government and its budgetary balance positively influence burden sharing of contributions to other multilateral agencies. But neither the phase of economic cycle nor the rate of economic growth affects the burden‐sharing responsibility of donors. It was also observed that contributions by EU members to the EC do not appear to crowd‐out their contributions to other multilateral aid agencies and that right‐wing donor governments are generally more parsimonious with regard to financial assistance to multilateral aid agencies. The preferred alternative, particularly among EU member countries, appears to be the EC.     

International Advertising Strategies by NIC Multinationals: The Case of a Korean Firm

Managers of new brands seek to leverage positive WOM and establish a critical mass of consumers who interact with their brands on social network sites (SNSs). Effective selection of ‘seeds’, or influencers, on SNSs, who will recommend the product and leverage the power of their social networks to influence other consumers is key to organic growth. This research examines the role of an influencer’s activity on a social network website (network size, membership duration, share-of-posts), brand message source (marketergenerated versus member-generated), and recipient type (SNS member versus nonmember) on an influencer’s decision to recommend a new brand and the recipient’s decision to make a referral visit. Empirical analyses of clickstream data from SNSs at a commercial website show that marketer- and consumer-generated brand ads differ in their impact on recommending propensity for high share-of-posts and long-term influencers, and for member and non-member recipients, which has implications for referral management.     

Export Performance of Brazilian States to Mercosul and Non-Mercosul Partners

ABSTRACT

We investigate the role of the trade-weighted real exchange rate and foreign income on the export performance of Brazilian states, differentiating between Mercosur and non-Mercosur partners. The results indicate that state exports are price and income inelastic. There are differences in the influence of the different trade factors between the two groups of partners. One crucial difference is the relevance of the real exchange rate effect for non-Mercosur partners. This might be associated with the existence of specific rules for Mercosur that can overcome the usual effect of relative competitiveness associated with movements in the real exchange rate.     

The influence of member heterogeneity on dyad judgment: Are two heads better than one?

An experiment is conducted to test the effect of the degree of heterogeneity in individual member judgments on the accuracy of judgments made by dyads. Predictions are made about how (1) homogeneity versus heterogeneity in judgments and (2) task instruction interact to affect a group's judgmental accuracy in average price-estimation tasks. Results indicate that dyads were not more accurate than the average dyad member or than the better member. However, increases in accuracy (relative to the accuracy of the better member of the dyad) occurred more often in dyads whose members were heterogeneous in their prior individual judgments than they did in dyads whose members were more homogeneous. When provided with instructions, heterogeneous dyads improved in accuracy to a greater degree than did homogeneous dyads.     

Trade policy of a free trade agreement in the presence of foreign lobbying

This paper studies the effect of foreign lobbies on trade policy of a country which is a member of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It uses a monopolistically competitive political economy model in which the government determines external tariffs endogenously. The effect of foreign lobbying under the FTA is examined empirically using Canadian industry-level trade data that allow differentiating of lobby groups by the country of origin. The analysis suggests that the presence of foreign lobbying has a significant effect on the domestic trade policy. The heterogeneity of foreign lobbies is also important: the presence of an organized lobbying group in an FTA partner country tends to raise trade barriers while an organized lobbying group of exporters from outside of the FTA is associated with less protection.     

Talking Your Way into Entrepreneurial Support: An Analysis of Satisfaction Drivers in Entrepreneur Mutual Aid Groups

The role of organized peer networks in entrepreneurial support systems has been surprisingly neglected in the literature, despite their undisputed effectiveness in numerous areas outside the entrepreneurship realm. This study explores the efficacy of mutual aid groups for entrepreneurial support, as theoretically distinct from other group‐based mechanisms (such as peer group mentoring and many to one group mentoring). Drawing from respondent data of small, local mutual aid groups within the global entrepreneurship support organization (2,869 responses from members of 540 groups worldwide), we investigate the factors determining the entrepreneurs' satisfaction with the entrepreneur mutual aid groups. Understanding the antecedents of members' subjective satisfaction with the group serves an essential first step toward developing the models explaining the objective effectiveness of these organizations (e.g., performance, survival, and growth), in that the former is an essential, necessary condition for continuing participation in the voluntary mutual aid groups. Our analysis reveals that group climate and leadership are important drivers of group satisfaction.     

Liberalisation of the internal market: Efficiency advantages and requirements

The expected welfare effects of the completion of the internal European market by 1992 will differ markedly from one member country to another. What requirements must be met for liberalisation of the internal market? How could the disparities in the distribution of welfare effects be lessened?     

Consumption patterns among ethnic groups in Canada

Canadian ethnic differences in consumption patterns were examined using the Canadian 1990 Survey of Family Expenditures. Tobit analysis was used to estimate the income elasticities of 14 expenditure categories. The results indicate that spending patterns differ significantly among the different groups in Canada.     

Exploring Different Types of Sharing: A Proposed Segmentation of the Market for “Sharing” Businesses

Sharing instead of buying is regaining traction among today's consumers. This study aims at identifying segments of sharing consumers to unearth potentially viable clusters of a consumer behavior that is a market of growing economic relevance. By means of a qualitative study and a survey with a roughly representative sample of 1121 Swiss‐German and German consumers, a set of trait‐related, motivational, and perceived socioeconomic variables is identified that can be used to group individuals into segments that differ with regard to their approach to sharing. A cluster analysis based on these variables suggests four potential clusters of sharing consumers—sharing idealists, sharing opponents, sharing pragmatists, and sharing normatives. Two sets of testable propositions are derived that can guide further research in this domain and pave the way to a more targeted approach to the growing market of “sharing” businesses.     

《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》的经济效应及产业产出分析

为进一步推进《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》进程,东盟及中国、日本、韩国、澳大利亚、新西兰、印度等亚太地区的各个经济体通过“抱团”的方式增强亚太地区的经济实力,提高国际贸易的话语权。本文分析《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》成员在亚太地区的经济规模以及各个成员经济体的产业竞争优势,运用GTAP9.0数据库和一般均衡模型,以逐步降低《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》内部成员之间关税水平的方式,探讨《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》成员的宏观经济及产业产出情况。随着《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》成员内部关税水平的逐步降低直至零关税水平,成员经济体的进出口贸易、福利水平等方面都有不同程度的增加,中国、日本、韩国、澳大利亚、新西兰等国的国内经济产出增加、贸易条件得到改善,而印度和东盟的国内经济出现一定程度的负效应、贸易条件出现小幅恶化现象;同时,各个成员方的产业互补优势更加明显。     

不确定性条件下董事会监督管理层行为研究

董事会是代替股东监督管理层的主要机构,根据管理层的能力、努力程度和业绩作出监督决策。但在实际监督中,一方面信息不对称导致道德风险和逆向选择,另一方面不确定性因素也会影响监督决策强度,进而影响业绩。文章由不确定性理论研究出发,通过对2011年上市公司截面数据分析,用直接监督行为（董事会次数）和监督结果（高管薪酬、盈余管理）以及ROA作为被解释变量,从内部不确定性和外部不确定性两方面考察不确定性条件下董事会监督管理层的行为以及对业绩的影响。实证结果显示团队异质性与高管薪酬显著负相关,与业绩负相关;业务复杂性和规模与高管薪酬和业绩负相关;独立董事构成对监督和业绩影响不显著。而董事会会议和盈余管理与这些变量没有表现出相关关系。此外,财务危机导致的不确定性对监督强度和业绩都有显著负相关关系。总体说来,不确定性弱化了监督强度,与业绩负相关。