Incentives for industry in developing countries

In support of their industrialisation efforts developing countries are offering a number of incentives to investors in order to compensate the latter for shortcomings and handicaps resulting from the countries’ development status. Do these incentives serve their purpose?     

Preiserwartungen und intertemporales Gleichgewicht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Lizenzverleger zwischen Monopol und Wettbewerb

The rebirth of a democratic Germany is characterized, as far as the development of media politics is concerned, by an exceptional situation: Neither possession of capital nor inherited rights of disposal decided who was to be permitted to contribute, as a newspaper producer, to relaunching the media. The decisive features were (1) ideals and moral convictions, (2) courage and the experience of resisting the demands of the »Third Reich«, and (3) qualification as a journalist and/or business manager. In this rare and — when looked at from the point of view of the media — ideal constellation, the so-called licence publishers could secure for themselves great media and economic influence until they had to face the competition of the former and now reinstated publishers after 1949. Whether licenced publishers were able to secure their media ideals and corporate philosophies largely depended on whether they could come to an arrangement with reinstated publishers, and on whether they were able to react appropriately to journalistic and economic challenges. The different solutions chosen in the early years of change still influence the German newspaper system in the 21^st century.     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Book reviews

     

THE EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK ON SELF‐ASSESSMENT

It is a well‐known phenomenon that people have difficulties in assessing their ability correctly. Often they overestimate their (relative) abilities. We conduct an experiment to test whether the self‐assessment of individuals improves when they receive feedback and there are incentives to make a correct self‐assessment. We investigate the subjects' reactions to feedback in several subsequent rounds to see not only if, but also when and how they react. Our main finding is that feedback influences subjects' decisions and can improve their overall self‐assessment. The effects, however, depend on the kind of feedback. Furthermore, we observe differences in the reactions of subjects (e.g., to what extent they follow feedback), the robustness of their belief about their relative ability, and how they process feedback.     

Investments in tracking and tracing systems in the food industry: A PLS analysis

Traceability and related concepts, such as trust and transparency have gained greatly in relevance in food supply chains. This study seeks to answer what exactly determines firms’ investments in traceability systems by developing and testing a theoretical framework using partial least squares methodology and empirical data from 234 companies of the German food industry.The results reveal that high external pressure to implement improves the image of tracking and tracing systems in the sense that their use enhances a firm’s status, increases the intention to use those systems and fosters their perceived usefulness in the eyes of agribusiness executives. The hypothesized negative effect of costs on perceived usefulness and the intention to invest could not be verified.     

Demographic change, human capital and welfare

Projected demographic changes in the U.S. will reduce the share of the working-age population. Analyses based on standard OLG models predict that these changes will increase the capital-labor ratio. Hence, rates of return to capital decrease and wages increase, which has adverse welfare consequences for current cohorts who will be retired when the rate of return is low. This paper argues that adding endogenous human capital accumulation to the standard model dampens these forces. We find that this adjustment channel is quantitatively important. The standard model with exogenous human capital predicts welfare losses up to 12.5% (5.6%) of lifetime consumption, when contribution (replacement) rates to the pension system are kept constant. These numbers reduce to approximately 8.7% (4.4%) when human capital can endogenously adjust.     

Die geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung derösterreichischen Schule in der Volkswirtschaftslehre

Ohne Zusammenfassung