Benachteiligt die Überalterung der Gesellschaft die Jüngeren?

Generationenbilanzen zeigen, dass die Jüngeren durch die demographische Entwicklung erheblich belastet werden. Was versteht man unter „Generationengerechtigkeit“? Sind Renditevergleiche von sozialen Sicherungssystemen zwischen den Generationen aussagekr?ftig? Welche Folgen hat die Alterung der Bev?lkerung für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung? Wie werden die politischen Entscheidungen beeinflusst? Sollte ein Generationenvertrag zur Bildung geschlossen werden? Die Autoren unseres Zeitgespr?chs: Prof. Dr. Bernd Raffelhüschen, 49, ist Direktor des Forschungszentrums Generationenvertr?ge und lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre am Institut für Finanzwissenschaft I an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universit?t Freiburg; J?rg Schoder, 29, Dipl.-Volkswirt, M.A., ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Forschungszentrum Generationenvertr?ge der Albert-Ludwigs-Universit?t Freiburg. Prof. Dr. Winfried Schm?hl, 64, ist Direktor der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Abteilung des Zentrums für Sozialpolitik an der Universit?t Bremen. Er war langj?hriger Vorsitzender des Sozialbeirates der Bundesregierung. Prof. Dr. Birger P. Priddat, 57, ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Politische ?konomie an der Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. Prof. Dr. Frank Nullmeier, 49, lehrt Politikwissenschaft und ist Leiter der Abteilung „Theorie und Verfassung des Wohlfahrtsstaates“ am Zentrum für Sozialpolitik an der Universit?t Bremen.     

Product Market Competition,Managerial Incentives and Firm Valuation

This paper contributes to the very small empirical literature on the effects of competition on managerial incentive schemes. Based on a theoretical model that incorporates both strategic interaction between firms and a principal agent relationship, we analyse the relationship between product market competition, incentive schemes and firm valuation. The model predicts a nonlinear relationship between the intensity of product market competition and the strength of managerial incentives. We test the implications of our model empirically based on a unique and hand‐collected dataset comprising over 600 observations on 200 Swiss firms over the 2002–2005 period. Our results suggest that, consistent with the implications of our model, the relation between product market competition and managerial intensive schemes is convex indicating that above a certain level of intensity in product market competition, the marginal effect of competition on the strength of the incentive schemes increases in the level of competition. Moreover, competition is associated with lower firm values. These results are robust to accounting for a potential endogeneity of managerial incentives and firm value in a simultaneous equations framework.     

Don't Tax Me? Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Progressive Taxation

This contribution empirically analyzes the individual determinants of tax rate preferences. For that purpose, we use representative survey data from the German General Social Survey, which offers information on attitudes toward progressive, proportional and regressive taxation. On the basis of theoretical considerations, we explore the factors which, beyond an individual's financial interest, should drive preferences for progressive taxation. Our empirical results confirm that the narrow redistributive self‐interest does not offer the sole explanation of the heterogeneity in individual attitudes. Rather, we show that the choice of the favored tax rate is also driven by fairness considerations and beliefs on the role of effort for economic success.     

Investigating the formation of service supply chains

Existing research on service supply chains assumes the existence of an established and mature chain. Empirical or conceptual insights into service supply chain formation are therefore limited. The initial formation of a service supply chain, however, is suspected to determine its future performance. It is therefore of significant academic and managerial value to understand how and why service supply chains are formed, and how this process is coordinated. Drawing on an exploratory case study set in the management consulting industry, the inductive theory-building process underlying this study culminates in propositions and a conceptual model that provides a distinct understanding of service supply chain formation and the coordination mechanisms utilized within each stage. This study contributes to the service science, service supply chains, and service sourcing literatures; outlines managerial implications; and proposes future research directions.     

Erstens: ignorieren, zweitens: diffamieren, drittens: umarmen?

Mass media are an essential factor for the success of small parties, for the media can act in a supporting or an inhibiting way towards these parties. This could be observed for the example of the German Green Party: As the Greens were becoming more and more important in the parliaments, the media changed their formerly very critical view of the party to a more factual and positive reporting. Is the party “Die Linke” now experiencing a similar process? The present study analyses the comments of three national German newspapers from 2005 to 2009, using a quantitative content analysis with the aim of bringing to light how the media acted towards “Die Linke”. The results show that commenting has hardly changed since earlier studies were published. Factual issues only play a marginal role, and the party is judged negatively in all newspapers, with the tageszeitung slightly distinct from the other two papers, though.     

Probability and quantile estimation from individually micro-aggregated data

Micro-aggregation is a frequently used strategy to anonymize data before they are released to the scientific public. A sample of a continuous random variable is individually micro-aggregated by first sorting and grouping the data into groups of equal size and then replacing the values of the variable in each group by their group mean. In a similar way, data with more than one variable can be anonymized by individual micro-aggregation. Data thus distorted may still be used for statistical analysis. We show that if probabilities and quantiles are estimated in the usual way by computing relative frequencies and sample quantiles, respectively, these estimates are consistent and asymptotically normal under mild conditions.     

Theory of Public Choice: A Review Article

In this article, we analyze at a conceptual level some of the more relevant effects of the neoliberal takeover on the provision of social costs, including employment, health care, and nutrition. Adopting key perspectives of Karl Polanyi and other thinkers, we develop our examination under the seemingly perpetual conflict between markets and social reproduction. We argue that financialization has both expanded market spaces and changed relationships within those spaces. The ever-greater domination of financial markets means that employment has become increasingly more precarious in the strict spaces of the labor market. At the same time, financialization has steadily eroded the social forms that exist outside of formal markets, greatly weakening the mechanisms through which societies can both defend themselves from predatory markets and reproduce themselves with some degree of purpose and hope for the future.