Telemedizin – Angebote,Chancen und Kosteneffektivität

Digitalisation of the health care system proceeds. Therefore it is to be expected that telemedicine applications will also be introduced into health care. Currently, the number of telemedicine applications in Germany is low and it is also scarce in comparison to foreign countries. This is striking because it is usually supposed that telemedicine applications have got a great potential to improve health care and reduce expenditures. Hence, this publication discusses offers, chances and the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan</Emphasis> by Sebastian Mallaby

I agree that Sebastian Mallaby’s detailed and well-sourced The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, will be essential for every future economic historian studying the Greenspan era. That said, Mallaby does not convey to his readers a sound understanding of monetary policy. I disagree with Mallaby’s claim that Greenspan could and should have done something about the housing and subprime mortgage bubbles. Peter Wallison makes a strong case that the affordable housing quotas did not just “encourage” but forced the GSEs to buy subprime mortgages. Information available in real time on aggregate subprime mortgage issuance was seriously flawed because the GSEs did not report accurately. Greenspan cannot be held responsible for the GSEs hiding the subprime debt on their balance sheets. These mortgages were central to the crisis. It seems improbable that any monetary policy mistake of 2001–05 was large enough to create the crisis. Mallaby could have written a final chapter emphasizing the Maestro resisting the power of a malign and evil pair of GSEs and the power of the President and Congress of the United States pursuing a disastrous housing policy. Despite the Maestro’s best efforts, Leviathan triumphed and brought ruin upon the Nation.     

Soziale Lage — Was sind die drängendsten Probleme?

Democracy seems to be at risk. People elect populists and autocrats, who offer simple solutions to social problems. Often, these problems are not even real ones but are only perceived as such. Economists have measures to determine which problems are fact-based, but they cannot draw a clear distinction between academic analysis and normative demand. If politics pursues a correction of a market outcome, any normative criteria other than efficiency have to be outlined explicitly. Nevertheless, some authors consider inequality one of the central contemporary social and economic challenges. Marcel Fratzscher emphasises that the solution is not found in more redistribution via taxes and transfers, but rather through greater equality of opportunity and social and educational mobility. Bert Rürup thinks that to stabilise the acceptance of the compulsory pension scheme, the dominance of the equivalence principle should be reduced. Further, the existence of different federal subsidy schemes should be replaced by a fixed federal contribution rate in alignment with the pension expenditures. In an international comparison, the fiscal burden for households with small and mid-level earned incomes is exceptionally high in Germany. In order to reduce this burden, Rürup suggests a contribution-free allowance for the social insurance contributions.     

False Discoveries und Fehlinterpretationen wissenschaftlicher Ergebnisse

High-quality science communication to the public depends to a large extent on the way research findings are translated into comprehensible language and common speech. In this communicative process, a reasonable evaluation of the trustworthiness of empirical findings, based on an adequate interpretation of statistical analyses, is absolutely crucial. This paper’s authors argue that the credibility of science is jeopardised by two compromising developments within science itself: on the one hand, an inflation of ostensible empirical evidence related to misuses and misinterpretations of the concept of statistical significance, and, on the other, a sensationalist overvaluation of the results of single studies instead of an adequate representation of the available body of evidence in a given scientific field.     

Schadenfreude: The (not so) Secret Joy of Another’s Misfortune

Despite growing interest in emotions, organizational scholars have largely ignored the moral emotion of schadenfreude, which refers to pleasure felt in response to another’s misfortune. As a socially undesirable emotion, it might be assumed that individuals would be hesitant to share their schadenfreude. In two experimental studies involving emotional responses to unethical behaviors, we find evidence to the contrary. Study 1 revealed that subjects experiencing schadenfreude were willing to share their feelings, especially if the misfortune was perceived to be deserved (i.e., resulting from unethical behaviors). Study 2 extends this work by incorporating schadenfreude targets of different status (CEO versus employee). Consistent with the “tall poppy syndrome,” subjects were more willing to share schadenfreude concerning high status targets than low status targets when the perceived severity of the target’s misconduct was low. This status effect disappeared at higher levels of perceived deservingness, however. Reported willingness to share schadenfreude was strongest at these levels but did not differ significantly between high and low status targets. These findings build on the social functional account of emotions, suggesting that sharing schadenfreude may signal normative cues to others regarding workplace behaviors that are deemed to be unethical.     

Conservation finance and sustainable tourism: the acceptability of conservation fees to support the Tambopata National Reserve,Peru

Protected areas are key to the conservation of global biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, their success is contingent upon adequate funding. One possibility to increase funding for park management is to “sell” a wider suite of ecosystem services “produced” by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration. We conducted 420 tourist surveys to analyze willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem service benefits via a conservation fee in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We also interviewed eight tour operators about their perceptions of the proposed fee. The average stated WTP was 15 USD. Sixty-six percent of tourists stated they would pay 10 USD or more, which, if actually paid, would have resulted in 318,000 USD for park management in 2015. Most respondents stated they would pay an additional fee if it supported biodiversity conservation or local ecosystem services, such as water, but less than 10% of tourists were motivated by carbon sequestration as a reason to pay the fee. Most tour operators supported the additional fee. Our findings suggest that tourists are willing to pay higher fees to support conservation but that interest in paying for additional ecosystem services from parks may not extend to global and intangible benefits such as carbon sequestration.     

The Justice Motive in East Asia’s Territorial Disputes

Many of the most active and most dangerous security challenges in the Asia-Pacific region are generally seen to involve a complex amalgam of material and ideational conflicts. There is surprisingly little consideration, however, of the role of the justice motive. This article explores the role of the justice motive in the context of three specific maritime and territorial disputes: Dokdo/Takeshima, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and the South China Sea. What explains its intensity? How does it affect political salience, tractability, and danger of conflict? What are the available mechanisms and prospects for resolving justice conflicts?     

Is the Ethical Culture of the Organization Associated with Sickness Absence? A Multilevel Analysis in a Public Sector Organization

The main aim of the present study was to examine whether an ethical organizational culture is associated with sickness absence in a Finnish public sector organization at both the individual (within-level) and work unit (between-level) levels. The underlying assumption was that employees working for organizations that are characterized by a strong ethical organizational culture report less sickness absence. The sample consisted of 2192 employees from one public sector city organization that included 246 different work units. Ethical organizational culture was measured with the Corporate Ethical Virtues scale covering eight sub-dimensions. Sickness absence was inquired by asking the participants to report how many days they had been absent from work because of their own sickness over the past year. Multilevel structural equation modelling showed that, at the individual level, perceptions of a strong ethical organizational culture were associated with less sickness absences after controlling for the background factors. This link was not found at the work-unit level. The findings indicate that an ethical organizational culture plays a significant role in enhancing employee well-being measured as sickness absence. It seems that especially supervisor’s ethical role modeling and possibilities to discuss about ethical issues are important factors in preventing sickness absence in the organizations.     

Issues in measuring success in community-based Indigenous tourism: elites,kin groups,social capital,gender dynamics and income flows

Tourism development is a key feature of the neoliberal economic development model. Through a mix of state and private investment, Indigenous communities in Mexico are encouraged to transform local cultural and environmental resources into tourist consumption sites. The process results in a shift toward reliance on tourism, in place of farming, leaving households with few alternative earning strategies amidst fluctuating tourist arrivals and income, confounding the relationship between tourism and sustainability and questioning the utility of tourism as a sustainable tool for development. This article analyses a community-based Indigenous tourism project in a rural Maya village in Mexico's Yucatan, and discusses strategies employed at household level to navigate the arrival of tourism. Funding agencies assessed this project based on a triple bottom line metric that accounts for ecological health, financial sustainability, and its relationship to local social capital; however, these fail to account for differences between local and non-local conceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and success. From a social perspective, the project has exacerbated existing tensions and has arguably widened the gap between the politically and economically powerful and less powerful, marginalized families in the community. Questions about policy, governance systems, and elite domination and kin group control are raised.