The Dawn of the AI Robots: Towards a New Framework of AI Robot Accountability

Journal of Business Ethics - Business, management, and business ethics literature pay little attention to the topic of AI robots. The broad spectrum of potential ethical issues pertains to using...     

The geometry of optimal taxation: a primal approach

We characterize zero tax results geometrically as a condition on indifference curves and the implementability constraint. The condition can also be expressed as a generalized homotheticity condition on the utility function and also extends older results on uniform taxation that use the duality approach. Many zero taxation results in dynamic macroeconomics can be derived from our characterization; thus it provides a unified framework for a systematic study of these phenomena. Our geometric method also allows to study the sign of deviations from zero tax results in more complicated frameworks such as taxation without commitment.      

Incentives in merchant empires: Portuguese and Dutch compensation schemes

The Portuguese and Dutch merchant empires had a similar geographic distribution with outposts all around the Indian Ocean, which they controlled and manned. Both empires faced the same problem of monitoring their agents in remote corners of the world. Each, however, arrived at a different solution to the monitoring problem. I use a principal–agent model to link different monitoring options to the different organizational structures of the two empires. I further investigate the implications of the model with archival data on labor compensation for Portuguese and Dutch workers overseas.     

An institutional perspective of public policy and network effects in the renewable energy industry: enablers or disablers of entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation?

This study extends theory on the effects of public policies stimulating technology demand and of industry network ties on firm-level entrepreneurial behaviour. We take an institutional perspective to develop a theoretical model examining the mechanisms through which public policies, regulatory uncertainty, and industry network ties affect firm-level entrepreneurial decision-making processes and the ability to introduce highly innovative products and to sustain superior performance. We focus on firm-level effects, which enables the study of the tension between institutional pressures of homogeneity and competitive pressures of heterogeneity for entrepreneurial decision-making processes in environments characterized by policy-induced market demands. To test our hypotheses, we draw on data from a large-scale survey among German renewable energy firms. Our results show that public policies can constrain firm innovativeness and risk-taking behaviour because they steer firms towards a more conservative attitude and discourage the pursuit of high-risk innovation projects. However, firms can counteract these influences and enhance their innovativeness by maintaining close network ties with research associations as we find that innovativeness and a highly innovative product portfolio are key success factors. In summary, these findings provide important implications for the study of public policy effects, industry network ties and entrepreneurial behaviour.     

Werte und Normen als Sollensvorstellungen in der KommunikationswissenschaftValues and norms as ought-statements in communication studies

Values and norms as research topics are central theoretical and empirical constructs in communication studies and are also used to substantiate research questions or to interpret results. Despite the relevance of values and norms, a respective debate within the discipline has been neglected so far. It is a challenge to discuss the values and norms of our discipline and to initiate an exchange of the societal relevance of one’s own research. The network “Values and norms as research objects and guiding principles in communication research”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), makes a contribution to this by systematically analyzing values and norms in communication studies and by critically reflecting them. Therefore, the paper proposes to operationalize values and norms as “ought-statements”. Ought-statements either describe a situational state that is explicitly evaluated or address a desirable state. Three elements of an ought-statement are identified, which are coded in a multistage content analysis. The operationalization of norms and values as ought-statements allows not only to examine already known values and norms, but also to assess all possible values and norms, to assess the change of values and norms more validly in long-term studies, and to assess those constructs that are labeled as norms or values by the researchers themselves.