Explaining Employment Effects in Multipolar Value Chains: A Cross‐National Study on Soft Drinks and Dairy Manufacturing in Europe

The article develops an integrated framework that employs a dynamic perspective on interlinked levels of value chain governance in order to explain employment in value chains. It compares two multipolar chains in food and beverage manufacturing, in two different producer and consumer markets, Belgium and Germany. Analysis reveals that varied value capture dynamics in the food and beverage industries underpin distinct employment effects at specific inter‐firm nodes, as well as between labour and product markets. This reveals institutional and product variation explaining firms’ value capture trajectories. However, it also illustrates a concomitant transnational trend of deteriorating working conditions, stemming from overall chain governance.     

International Insurance Society Roundtable on Risk Management After the Crisis

In this roundtable, an adviser to several central banks and founding member of the Group of 30 discusses regulatory reform and corporate risk management strategies with senior executives from three of the world's largest insurance companies. Much of the discussion attempts to explain why insurance and reinsurance companies have proven less vulnerable to the crisis than commercial and investment banks. Part of the explanation has to do with their financial conservatism, which is attributed to a habitual tendency to decision‐making that gives heavy weight to long‐term probabilities and risks. But along with this “actuarial” cast of mind is a growing willingness to accept and make use of risk‐based capital requirements—a decision‐making framework that is, in some respects, in conflict with the accounting and regulatory capital conventions that still prevail in the industry. In particular, “Solvency II”—the risk‐based capital guidelines that are set for adoption in 2012 by insurers in the European Union—is held up as a possible model for global use.     

Expected Idiosyncratic Volatility Measures and Expected Returns

We find that idiosyncratic volatility forecasts using information available to traders at the time of the forecast are not related to expected returns. The positive relation documented in a number of other papers only exists when forward‐looking information is incorporated into the volatility estimate. That positive relation is driven by the realized idiosyncratic volatility component that cannot be forecasted by investors. Our findings are robust to several different empirical tests, volatility forecasting models and time periods.     

Strukturen der Wirkung von Rhetorik

The question of how important different persuasive elements of speeches are for their effectiveness has been discussed among philosophers and scientists for centuries. Additionally, there are modern myths about the effects of speeches, popular especially among communication coaches. An example of such a myth is the “communication pyramid”. It postulates that 55 percent of the effects of a speech are made up by nonverbal cues, 38 percent by the voice of the speaker and only 7 percent by the content of the speech. The present paper addresses the relationship between content, verbal and non-verbal emphasis in the perception of a political speech, using a laboratory experiment and RTR-measurement. Results indicate that nonverbal components can improve some, and impair the perception of other aspects of a speech. Furthermore it is found that content generally determines the perception of the perceived persuasiveness of the speech and the structure of its effects.     

Controlling inflation in Euroland

The experience with the two pillar strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB) suggests that at some point in the future the ECB may have to commit to one of the more traditional policy strategies – a direct inflation target or an intermediate monetary target. This study offers some information on the scale of control and indicator problems associated with both strategies. We estimate the links between monetary policy actions and inflation in dynamic linear models with the Kalman filter. Using European M3 that the ECB has published, it is found that the overall control problems involved in targeting money are larger than for direct inflation targets.     

Currency movements within and outside a currency union: The case of Germany and the euro area

In this paper, we analyse the volume of euro banknotes issued by Germany within the euro area with several seasonal methods. We draw a distinction between movements within Germany, circulation outside Germany but within the euro area and demand from non-euro-area countries. Our approach suggests that only about 20% of euro notes issued by Germany are used for transactions in Germany. The rest is hoarded (10%), circulates in other euro area countries (25%) or is held outside the euro area (45%).     

Strategic Patenting in Biotechnology

Patents can be used by their owners in a variety of strategic ways in the market place that do not necessarily conform with the original idea of patents as a remedy against market failure. More patenting does not lead to more innovation in all cases. This article looks at the relevance of patents and their strategic uses in the biotechnology industry. The article considers the different motives for applying for patents and various strategies. Theoretical considerations are made based on empirical findings from a survey of the Swiss biotechnology industry carried out in 2003. The empirical data confirm that patents for biotechnological inventions are important as an incentive for investment in R&D and that patents are an efficient tool for protecting biotechnological inventions. Strategic patenting is not very common in Switzerland and there are no signs for an abusive level of strategic patenting.     

The Impact of Nobel Prize Winners in Economics: Mainline vs. Mainstream

We assess the impact of two groups of economists: mainline economists, who regard economics primarily as the science of exchange and mainstream economists, who perceive economics primarily as the science of choice. To control for scholarly quality we investigate the citation impact of Nobel Prize winning economists, who we break up into the two groups, mainline and mainstream. We find that over the period from 1970 to 2007 mainline economists had more of an impact than mainstream economists.