The Structure of Municipal Water Supply Costs: Application to a Panel of French Local Communities

Network losses and returns are importantissues for water resource management, that are addressed in thispaper by modeling the structure of production for municipal waterutilities with two outputs: water sold to final customers andwater network losses. We propose a measure of economies of scopeto assess the benefit associated with joint production of waterfor final customers and water losses, and several measures ofreturns to evaluate potential gains in exploiting technologicalflexibility of water networks. We estimate the cost structureof water utilities using a GMM procedure with a Translog costfunction and panel data. Estimation results reveal a positivedegree of economies of scope, and short-run returns to productiondensity and returns to customer density that are not significantlydifferent from 1. Significant economies of scale indicate thatlocal communities may benefit from merging into water districts.     

Markorientierte Kernkompetenzen — Integrativer Ansatz nicht empfehlenswert

In der Wirtschaftsrise suchen Unternehme nach neuen strategischen Marketingns?tzen. So macht der Begriff der sogenannten „Marktorientierten Kernkompetenzen“ die Runde, ein Konzept, das die klassische marktbasierte Sicht und die ressourcenbasierte Sicht des Strategischen Managements integrieren will. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, warum ein solche Ansatz für die Wirtschaft wenig zielührend ist.     

The nature and implications of a process conception of rationality based on social learning

Even while acknowledging the autonomy of “laws” specific to economics, theology situates the view of economics as a “means-ends” science of human choices within an unavoidable overarching moral order. After all, economic life is merely part of a much larger personal quest for happiness. Thus, the efficient selection of means for particular ends necessarily takes place within the context of objective standards of economic rights and obligations as part of human nature. The teleological perspectives of theology add much to our understanding of economic life by providing the warrants for these rights and obligations.     

How Does Brand-related User-generated Content Differ across YouTube,Facebook, and Twitter?

This study tests hypotheses regarding differences in brand-related user-generated content (UGC) between Twitter (a microblogging site), Facebook (a social network) and YouTube (a content community). It tests them using data from a content analysis of 600 UGC posts for two retail-apparel brands (Lululemon and American Apparel), which differ in the extent to which they manage social media proactively. Comparisons are drawn across six dimensions of UGC; the dimensions were drawn from a priori reading and an inductive analysis of brand-related UGC. This research provides a general framework for comparing brand-related UGC, and helps us to better understand how particular social media channels and marketing strategies may influence consumer-produced brand communications.     

Professor Dietrich Oppenberg verstorben

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Managing Employee Compensation Risk

Review of Accounting Studies - We analyze a principal-agent model in which the principal (e.g., shareholders) and the agent (e.g., an employee) can personally trade securities tied to the outcome...     

The causes of the economic crisis

The authors are attempting an objective elucidation of the economic crisis in Portugal. They are dealing with the influence of excess investment, with external economic factors such as the energy crisis and the recession in the industrial countries, and with the consequences of the revolutionary process.     

Asset allocation over the life cycle: How much do taxes matter?

We study the welfare effect of tax-optimizing portfolio decisions in a life cycle model with unspanned labor income and realization-based capital gain taxation. For realistic parameterizations of our model, certainty equivalent welfare gains from fully tax-optimized portfolio decisions are less than 2% of present financial wealth and lifetime income compared to a heuristic portfolio policy ignoring the taxation of profits (capital gains, interest and dividend payments). Compared to a heuristic portfolio policy that only ignores the realization-based feature of capital gain taxation and instead assumes mark-to-market taxation, these gains are less than 0.5%. That is, our work provides a justification for ignoring taxes in life cycle portfolio choice problems – a wide-spread assumption in that literature. However, if capital gains are forgiven at death (as in the U.S.), investors with strong bequest motives face substantial welfare costs when not tax-optimizing their portfolio decisions towards the end of the life cycle.     

Returns to Society from Offshore Hard Mineral Resource Development: special Interests Are Seeking to Monopolize Public Land Under the Sea by Doing Away with the 1953 Act

Abstract . A combination of the recently proclaimed extension of the offshore U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone to 200 miles and the growing demand for critical metals has led to increased attention to offshore hard mineral resource development. The U.S. Minerals Management Service began to establish the rules to govern offshore mining under its Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 and its 1978 amendments. However, others—including environmental groups, some mining groups and many coastal states— joined together to generate an alternative law to govern offshore mining. Both approaches seek to promote the public's interest in offshore hard minerals. This article examines the returns to society as a concept and as applied under each of these competing alternatives. It concludes by noting that socially derived criteria point to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act as the socially preferable approach to offshore mining.     

The Power of Networks: Integration and Financial Cooperative Performance

Abstract ** :  The purpose of this paper is to perform a cross‐country survey of the level of integration of systems of financial cooperatives (FC) and its effect on measures of performance. We develop a classification scheme based on a theoretical framework that builds on published work using transaction cost economics (TCE) to explain integration of large numbers of financial cooperatives into networks. We identify three critical levels of increasing integration we call respectively atomized systems, consensual networks and strategic networks. Further, we test some of the propositions that result from the theoretical framework on an international sample of financial cooperative systems. Based on this analysis we can conclude that: (i) Integration is less (more) important in developing (more developed) countries and for very small (large) financial cooperatives as a determinant of efficiency. However, integration tends to reduce volatility of efficiency and performance regardless of development. (ii) Integration appears to help control measure of managers' expense preferences that tend to affect performance of FC. (iii) Despite high costs of running hub‐like organizations in highly integrated system, these systems economize in bounded rationality and operate at lower costs than less integrated systems.