Increasing the relevance of mathematical approaches to demographic history

In this short paper we comment on recent efforts at formally modelling the interplay between demography and cultural evolution. We draw attention to the fact that, although these efforts are to be applauded, much work has already been done in this area, and that this work is being ignored. We build a case for tighter collaboration between different social science disciplines concerned with human behaviour and long-term demography, and argue that mathematical models must be paired with empirical data.     

The Political Economy of Fiscal Supervision and Budget Deficits: Evidence from Germany

In many federal countries, local governments run large deficits, even when fiscal supervision by state authorities is tight. I investigate the extent to which party alignment of governments and fiscal supervisors influences budget deficits. The data set includes 427 German local governments for the period 2000–2004. I exploit a period after a far‐reaching institutional reform that entirely re‐distributed political powers on both the government level and the fiscal supervisor level. The results do not show that party alignments of governments and supervisors (co‐partisanship) drive short‐term deficits. Instead, I find that the ideology of partisan governments and supervisors matters: left‐wing local governments run higher deficits than their right‐wing counterparts; left‐wing supervisors tolerate higher deficits than right‐wing supervisors. These findings imply that political independence for fiscal supervisors is recommended.     

Can Employees Be Used to Overcome Independent Audit Limitations?

Independent financial statement auditors are appointed by shareholders to provide reasonable assurance on the reliability of financial statements published by management of reporting entities. However, in the last two decades questions have been raised concerning the credibility of external audits due to their apparent failure, especially following the spate of corporate collapses. This paper applies a critical review of literature and a multi‐theoretical governance perspective to examine the inherent limitation of independent external audits and argues that employees can contribute to reducing the limitation gap by strengthening governance through a structure that incorporates a board and employee management representation. It is argued that through this arrangement, auditors can benefit as they will be privy to additional information from employees about issues such as irregular matters that impact upon shareholders and other stakeholders, and control weaknesses across governance levels, allowing auditors to establish a broader understanding of organisational information that may otherwise be less readily available. Thus auditors can base their judgements in terms of audit risks, and develop audit plans based on more reliable information. The theoretical proposition emerging from these findings is that the traditional governance model should be refined to include employees as an additional component of governance.     

Verteilungsaspekte einer Harmonisierung der europäischen Klimaschutzmaßnahmen

The ongoing harmonisation of the European energy sector has led to gains from growth and increasing efficiencies by creating a common European internal market. However, there are new tendencies running against harmonisation in recent years, currently for example in the area of climate protection and the associated expansion of renewable energies. In addition to the role of national targets for climate protection in combination with a European emissions trading system, carrying out the related measures leads to distributional effects, both between countries and between stakeholders (e. g., producers and consumers) in these countries. We first analyse the impact of a non-harmonised national promotion schemes for renewable energies on electricity and CO₂ prices in different countries. Then we illustrate the impact of harmonisation measures on producers and consumers in the participating countries. The analysis shows that these measures are indeed economically beneficial, but that—depending on the actual configuration—they can also lead to disadvantages for individual actors. Analysing and discussing these effects leads to a better assessment of the impact of certain measures and enables a better classification of individual market participants’ responses and opinions.     

Entrepreneurship,Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and the Macroeconomy. Edited by Z. Acs,B. Carlsson and C. Karlsson

Small Business Economics -     

National and international developments in technology

Declining R&;D intensities at the national level coincide with growing international technological links. In this context a number of questions arise: Do companies research in the same field of technology abroad as they do at home? Are the fields of technology in which R&;D is concentrated within a country those in which it has a comparative advantage? What drives the process of the internationalisation of technology? What are the implications for host countries and home countries? What are the implications for policy on a national and an international level?     

Market Orientation: Scale Invariance and Relationship to Generic Strategies Across Two Countries

This article presents a scheme for investigating scale invariance for the market orientation construct across different countries by examining the psychometric properties of the operationalisation of market orientation (Narver and Slater, 1990). We investigate the measurement of market orientation in two countries (Australia and Zimbabwe—one being an example of a developed economy, the other of a developing economy). We then proceed to test the relationship between market orientation and Porter's (1980) generic strategies. The results suggest that the psychometric properties of the market orientation construct differ in important respects across countries. However, tests for convergent, predictive and discriminant validity using the generic strategies are fully supported for Zimbabwe while for Australia they are supported mutatis mutandis.     

What moves the gold market?

In this article, we provide a detailed characterization of the intraday return volatility in gold futures contracts traded on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The approach allows the study of intraday patterns, interday ARCH effects, and announcement effects in a coherent framework. We show that the intraday patterns exert a profound impact on the dynamics of return volatility. Among the 23 U.S. macroeconomic announcements, we identify employment reports, gross domestic product, consumer price index, and personal income as having the greatest impact. Finally, by appropriately filtering out the intraday patterns, we find that the high‐frequency returns reveal long‐memory volatility dependencies in the gold market, which have important implications on the pricing of long‐term gold options and the determination of optimal hedge ratios. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:257–278, 2001     

Sentiment and stock returns: The SAD anomaly revisited

Widely-cited research by Kamstra et al. (2003) argues that changes in mood resulting from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) drive changes in investor risk aversion and cause seasonal patterns in aggregate stock returns around the world. In this paper we reexamine the so-called SAD effect by replicating and extending Kamstra et al. (2003). We study the psychological underpinnings of the SAD hypothesis and show that the time-series predictions of the SAD model do not correspond to the seasonal patterns in depression found in the general population. We also investigate the cross-sectional prediction that SAD has a greater effect on stock markets in countries where SAD is more prevalent and find no relation between the prevalence of SAD and stock returns. Finally, we document that the SAD effect is mechanically driven by an overlapping dummy-variable specification and higher returns around the turn of the year.