Marktchancen durch die Anpassung an den Klimawandel

Zusammenfassung  Im Jahr 2009 werden in Kopenhagen mit dem Kioto-Folgeabkommen die Weichen für die künftige internationale Klimapolitik gestellt. Neben der Verminderung der Emissionen wird die Anpassung an den zum Teil bereits einsetzenden Klimawandel eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Wie k?nnen die Entwicklungsl?nder bei ihren Anpassungsma?nahmen unterstützt werden? Welche Chancen ergeben sich hieraus für Unternehmen im Bereich der Umweltschutztechnologie? Prof. Dr. Michael von Hauff, 61, ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Technischen Universit?t Kaiserslautern; PD Dr. Dirk Rübbelke, 36, ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Center for International Climate and Environmental Research Oslo. Danksagung: Die Arbeit von Herrn PD Dr. Dirk T.G. Rübbelke an diesem Aufsatz wurde im Rahmen des ADAM-Projekts (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies — Supporting European Climate Policy) gef?rdert, welches von der Europ?ischen Kommission finanziert wird.     

Advancing Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Habermasian Perspective

We critically assess integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and show that the concept particularly lacks of moral justification of substantive hypernorms. By drawing on Habermasian philosophy, in particular discourse ethics and its recent application in the theory of deliberative democracy, we further advance ISCT and show that social contracting in business ethics requires a well-justified procedural rather than a substantive focus for managing stakeholder relations. We also replace the monological concept of hypothetical thought experiments in ISCT by a concept of practical discourse to better govern business activities on the macro-level of organizational actors such as firms, governments, and NGOs.     

Unternehmenstheater & ein neues Change Management-Instrument für das Controlling?

Controller sehen sich in ihrer Rolle im Unternehmen einem wachsenden Ver?nderungsdruck ausgesetzt.     

Virtuous Structures

This study treats firm productivity as an accumulation of productive intangibles and posits that stakeholder engagement associated with better corporate social performance helps develop such intangibles. We hypothesize that because shareholders factor improved productive efficiency into stock price, productivity mediates the relationship between corporate social and financial performance. Furthermore, we argue that key stakeholders’ social considerations are more valuable for firms with higher levels of discretionary cash and income stream uncertainty. Therefore, we hypothesize that those two contingencies moderate the mediated process of corporate social performance with financial performance. Our analysis, based on a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of the U.S. manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2009, lends strong support for these hypotheses. In short, this paper uncovers a productivity-based, context-dependent mechanism underlying the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance.     

Growth,mobility and social progress

We evaluate social progress on the basis of panel data on individual incomes by comparing the value of social welfare in the observed panel data to its value in a situation where individuals receive their first period income in each period. We derive necessary conditions for the welfare gain to be positive, and show how it can be decomposed in an effect of economic growth, a mobility effect and a cost due to aversion to time fluctuations given individuals’ ranks in the income distribution. The mobility effect, generated by reranking in the income distribution has two components: a cost due to time fluctuations in incomes and a benefit, due to equalization in time averaged incomes. We illustrate the analysis using CNEF data for Australia, Korea, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and the US. Our results indicate that the largest component of social progress is the equalization of time averaged income, induced by reranking. In countries with high growth (Australia, Korea and Russia), the growth effect is larger than the mobility effect, but in countries with low growth (Germany, Switzerland and the US), the opposite holds true. The poor performance of the US is explained by the large costs of income fluctuations and the way economic growth is distributed.     

COMPARISONS OF PURCHASING POWER, REAL OUTPUT AND LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY IN MANUFACTURING IN JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND THE U.S.A., 1975–85

This study presents binary comparisons of real output and labour productivity in manufacturing in Japan, South Korea and the U.S.A. in 1975, made according to an "industry of origin approach." The 1975 benchmark comparisons have been updated to 1985. Value added per hour worked in Japanese manufacturing increased from 54 percent of the U.S. level in 1975 to 76 percent in 1985. In certain important branches such as electrical machinery, metal products and machinery and transport equipment, productivity leadership shifted to Japan. In South Korea, labour productivity in manufacturing increased rapidly from 1975 to 1985, both in absolute terms and relative to the U.S.A. Nevertheless, in 1985 value added per hour worked was only 14 percent of the U.S. level.     

The classification of countries by cluster and by factor analysis

This paper aims at classifying countries on the basis of a multitude of country characteristics using cluster and factor analysis. The results of the analysis are in particular compared with the categories of least developed countries (LLDCs) and of newly industrialized countries (NICs) used by international agencies. The LLDCs clearly emerge as a seperate group from the analysis; but some countries presently included do not belong to this group, while some countries not included have LLDC characteristics. The NICs do not emerge as a separate homogeneous group. Clearly the criteria presently used for NICs are quite narrow.     

Optimal liquidation under stochastic liquidity

We solve explicitly a two-dimensional singular control problem of finite fuel type for an infinite time horizon. The problem stems from the optimal liquidation of an asset position in a financial market with multiplicative and transient price impact. Liquidity is stochastic in that the volume effect process, which determines the intertemporal resilience of the market in the spirit of Predoiu et al. (SIAM J. Financ. Math. 2:183–212, 2011), is taken to be stochastic, being driven by its own random noise. The optimal control is obtained as the local time of a diffusion process reflected at a non-constant free boundary. To solve the HJB variational inequality and prove optimality, we need a combination of probabilistic arguments and calculus of variations methods, involving Laplace transforms of inverse local times for diffusions reflected at elastic boundaries.     

UK mutual fund performance: Skill or luck?

Using a comprehensive data set on (surviving and non-surviving) UK equity mutual funds, we use a cross-section bootstrap methodology to distinguish between ‘skill’ and ‘luck’ for individual funds. This methodology allows for non-normality in the idiosyncratic risk of the funds — a major issue when considering those funds which appear to be either very good or very bad performers, since these are the funds which investors are primarily interested in identifying. Our study points to the existence of stock picking ability among a relatively small number of top performing UK equity mutual funds (i.e. performance which is not solely due to good luck). At the negative end of the performance scale, our analysis strongly rejects the hypothesis that most poor performing funds are merely unlucky. Most of these funds demonstrate ‘bad skill’. Recursive estimation and Kalman ‘smoothed’ coefficients indicate temporal stability in the ex-post performance alpha's of winner and loser portfolios. We also find performance persistence amongst loser but not amongst winner funds.