Die Stadtstaatenwertung—ein Hindernis für Länderfusionen?

Die Bestrebungen für eine Fusion von Berlin und Brandenburg haben gezeigt, dass L?nderfusionen politisch nur umsetzbar sind, wenn Klarheit über die Finanzperspektiven der beteiligten L?nder besteht. Dabei kommt den rechtlichen Folgen eines Zusammenschlusses für die so genannte Stadtstaatenwertung im L?nderfinanzausgleich zentrale Bedeutung zu. Bislang wurde stets davon ausgegangen, dass L?nderfusionen den Wegfall der Stadtstaatenwertung und damit Kompensationsregelungen erfordern. Verlangt das geltende Recht auf der Grundlage der Finanzverfassung tats?chlich den Wegfall der Stadtstaatenwertung? Der Aufsatz gibt die pers?nliche Meinung der Verfasser wieder.     

Risikomanagement in Schaden-/Unfall-Versicherungsunternehmen

Seit Inkrafttreten des KonTraG im Mai 1998 sind Versicherungsunternehmen gesetzlich zur Einführung eines Risikofrüherkennungssystems verpflichtet. Es existieren bisher keine genauen gesetzlichen Vorgaben für die inhaltliche Ausgestaltung dieses Systems. Ziel dieses Artikels ist es zum einen, einen überblick über die verschiedenen Ausgestaltungsvarianten von Risikofrüherkennungssystemen in der Versicherungspraxis zu geben. Grundlage hierfür bildet eine Umfrage unter 229 deutschen Schaden-/Unfall-Versicherungsunternehmen im Herbst 2000. Zum anderen werden theoretische Ansatzpunkte für eine Integration von Risikomanagementsystemen in die Unternehmensführung anhand der betrieblichen Teilsysteme Planung, Organisation, Personalführung, Informationssystem, Kontrolle und Controlling aufgezeigt.     

Gendiagnostikgesetz und Versicherung: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

With the new German Gene Diagnostic Act (Gendiagnostikgesetz) the legislator aims at improving the protection of insurance applicants by prohibiting private insurers from collecting and using genetic information. However, the analysis of the new provisions shows that the provisions pertaining to insurance neither provide a comprehensive protection against genetic discrimination of insurance applicants and insured nor do they protect their right of gene-informational self-determination. Cuts of insurance benefits of the insured in private health insurance as well as incoherent disclosure obligations for insurance applicants unconstitutionally limit the rights of affected people as compared to the time before the Gene Diagnostic Act came into force. In summary, the new Gene Diagnostic Act does not only fail to meet its claims and thus falls short of the expectations, but also, due to numerous unclear provisions, poses a series of grave problems for insurance applicants, privately insured and private insurers.     

Merger policy and tax competition: the role of foreign firm ownership

In many situations, governments have sector-specific tax and regulation policies at their disposal to influence the market outcome after a national or an international merger has taken place. In this paper we study the implications for merger policy when countries non-cooperatively deploy production-based taxes and firms may be partly owned by foreigners. We find that when foreign firm ownership is low in the pre-merger situation, non-cooperative tax policies are more efficient after a national merger, and smaller synergy effects are needed for this type of merger to be proposed and cleared. In contrast, cross-border mergers dominate when the degree of foreign firm ownership is high initially. These results suggest a link between increasing international portfolio diversification and the rising share of cross-border mergers.     

Steady-state growth and the elasticity of substitution

In a neoclassical economy with endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change the steady-state growth rate of output per worker is shown to increase in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This confirms the assessment of Klump and de La Grandville (2000) that a greater elasticity of substitution allows for faster of economic growth. However, unlike their findings my result applies to the steady-state growth rate. Moreover, it does not hinge on particular assumptions on how aggregate savings come about. It holds for any household sector allowing savings to grow at the same rate as aggregate output.     

Comparing face-to-face meetings, nominal groups, Delphi and prediction markets on an estimation task

We conducted laboratory experiments for analyzing the accuracy of three structured approaches (nominal groups, Delphi, and prediction markets) relative to traditional face-to-face meetings (FTF). We recruited 227 participants (11 groups per method) who were required to solve a quantitative judgment task that did not involve distributed knowledge. This task consisted of ten factual questions, which required percentage estimates. While we did not find statistically significant differences in accuracy between the four methods overall, the results differed somewhat at the individual question level. Delphi was as accurate as FTF for eight questions and outperformed FTF for two questions. By comparison, prediction markets did not outperform FTF for any of the questions and were inferior for three questions. The relative performances of nominal groups and FTF were mixed and the differences were small. We also compared the results from the three structured approaches to prior individual estimates and staticized groups. The three structured approaches were more accurate than participants’ prior individual estimates. Delphi was also more accurate than staticized groups. Nominal groups and prediction markets provided little additional value relative to a simple average of the forecasts. In addition, we examined participants’ perceptions of the group and the group process. The participants rated personal communications more favorably than computer-mediated interactions. The group interactions in FTF and nominal groups were perceived as being highly cooperative and effective. Prediction markets were rated least favourably: prediction market participants were least satisfied with the group process and perceived their method as the most difficult.     

The development of critical capabilities in foreign subsidiaries: disentangling the role of the subsidiary’s business network

Within business literature in general, capabilities have advanced to the prime determinant of the corporation’s economic rents. Within international business literature, it is further assumed that multinational corporations can enhance their pool of capabilities through foreign subsidiaries. Foreign subsidiaries are seen as means to assimilate new capabilities from their local, external network and integrate these capabilities into the multinational corporation. Data from more than 2000 foreign subsidiaries shows that some foreign units actually are endowed with superior capabilities which are useful for other corporate entities. It is argued that the development of critical capabilities within these subsidiaries is driven not only by internal corporate actors, but also by external actors. The analysis provides evidence that the role of different internal and external network partners for capability development varies according to the functional activity under consideration. Thus, subsidiaries benefit from various internal and external network actors in very different ways. The contribution ends with some conclusions and some avenues for future research.     

Bargaining, binding contracts, and competitive wages

In a model where many workers bargain with one firm and sign binding contracts, we show existence of a stationary subgame perfect equilibrium. If the production function satisfies decreasing returns, each worker receives a share of his marginal product (treating all other workers as employed) in equilibrium. Thus, wages are competitive. This is in contrast to Stole and Zweibel (1996, Rev. Econ. Stud. 63, 375–410), who assume that contracts are non-binding and find that the payoff of a worker is a weighted average of the inframarginal contributions. Hence, binding contracts imply lower wages than non-binding contracts.     

Assessing the contribution of public capital to private production: Evidence from the German manufacturing sector

Using time-series cross-section data from the manufacturing sector of the 11 West German 'Bundesländer' (Federal States) from 1970 to 1996, I examine the impact of public capital on private production. My econometric analysis explicitly takes into account four of the most frequent specification issues in the context of time-series crosssection data analysis: serial correlation, groupwise heteroscedasticity, cross-sectional correlation and non-stationarity of data. For all approaches and tested specifications, I find that public capital is a significant input for production in the manufacturing sector. Moreover, I find that differences in public capital endowment can explain long-term differences in productivity across the Bundesländer. One tentative conclusion that can be drawn from this finding is that differences in public capital endowment might also explain a part of the still-existing productivity gap between manufacturing in East and West Germany. However, I emphasise that the existence of positive effects of public capital on private production is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for concluding that public investments should be boosted in the future.