TIME-INPUT AND HOUSEHOLD WORK-OUTPUT STUDIES IN JAPAN – PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

Studies of time-use in Japan were reviewed by Tanaka at the Uppsala Conference¹. This paper intends to focus on time-input for household work as it relates to families, with data based on individual, group, and national studies, and with the following objectives to fulfil: first, to comprehend the nature of household work as a non-market production and the need to discover if the scientific measurement of time is useful in assessment of non-market labour; second, to present data on the utilization of time by members of families with focus on the problems of research methods and their comparability as presented by Stajkov² and Aas³.     

Effects of German development aid on the internal economy

The importance of economic cooperation with the Third World for the internal economy is attracting increasing attention in the discussion of development aid topics in the Federal Republic of Germany¹. In this context it is of interest how the German development aid bears on the internal economy of the Federal Republic through feedbacks (in the form of contracts for German firms) from its bilateral and multilateral development aid payments. The following article presents the results of a relevant inquiry for the year 1976².     

Demographic implications of autocentric development

The German politicologist Dieter Senghaas reached in his recently published book¹ the conclusion that the attempt to integrate the developing countries with the international economic system as it exists at present is bound to work out to the detriment of the developing countries — that it can only result in their “structural disablement“². Dissociation from the present system of international division of labour and origination of an “autocentric development“ offered to the developing countries their only chance of arresting the previously analysed deformation process and embarking on genuine development³. This model however comes up against demographic obstacles.     

Capital Allocation Under a Financial Constraint: The Classical Investment Function

In the modern literature on investment, a distinction is normally made between neo-Classical and Keynesian theories of investment. An earlier original approach can, however, be located in the works of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx. In this Classical tradition, investment is subject to a capital constraint, and capitalists allocate their capital according to the relative profitability of the various industries. We show that this behaviour is rational in a model in which capitalists optimize over an infinite horizon and form rational expectations: inter-industry mobility can be expressed as an adjustment behaviour such that investments, ΔKⁱ are proportional to profitability differentials: ΔKⁱ = Aⁱ (r¯ⁱ−r¯)     

Financial attitudes,beliefs and behaviours: differences by age

One of the essential skills that people must acquire to function in our society is the ability to deal with money. This skill and the information necessary to use it are acquired mainly during childhood. There has been little research on when and how children acquire knowledge of money and the economic system in general or the degree to which family influence carries over into consumption activities as adults.¹ Little is known about how family financial decisions are made, what age people get involved with money, what kind of financial activities they partake in, which socialization agents have the most important influence on people's money beliefs, and how much and how families communicate about finances. The question of how these patterns have changed over the years also needs to be addressed. The focus of the marketing research has been on purchasing activity and on the socialization of the child. There has been much less work on socialization at later stages in the life cycle.² Reference to money personalities are frequently made in financial planning materials as useful information to effectively communicate with clients. No studies have explored if people in reality identify with any of the suggested money personalities. Similarly, little is known about buying behaviours and how they have changed over years.     

Selection of a Representative Value Function for Robust Ordinal Regression in Group Decision Making

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a representative value function in a group decision context. We extend recently proposed methods UTA^GMS-GROUP and UTADIS^GMS-GROUP with selection of a compromise and collective preference model which aggregates preferences of several decision makers (DMs) and represents all instances of preference models compatible with preference information elicited from DMs. The representative value function is built on results of robust ordinal regression, so its representativeness can be interpreted in terms of robustness concern. We propose a few procedures designed for multiple criteria ranking, choice, and sorting problems. The use of these procedures is conditioned by both satisfying different degrees of consistency of the preference information provided by all DMs, as well as by some properties of particular decision making situations. The representative value function is intended to help the DMs to understand the robust results, and to provide them with a compromise result in case of conflict between the DMs.     

US foreign aid trends: A reassessment

Two years ago an article of this author appeared in these pages¹, showing that US economic assistance was rapidly declining and outlining rather a bleak future. Foreign aid was being subjected to a great deal of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum², and a foreign assistance bill had actually been defeated in the US Senate by an “unholy alliance of Old Guard conservatives and ‘dovish’ liberals.” But now the author is inclined to believe that together with greater realism and more reliance on multilateral rather than bilateral aid a modest improvement has taken place during the past couple of years.     

Consumer preferences for rockmelons in Australia

On the demand side, consumer's decision choice for rockmelon is often compounded by a number of factors including quality, which is often not related to the visual characteristics observed in fruits such as bananas or mangoes. On the supply side, there is a general lack of understanding of consumer response towards rockmelon attributes in Australia and consequently, great fluctuations of demand and hence supply of the fruit. Thus, objectives of this study were to evaluate and compare analytical measures by instruments and sensory assessments by consumers based on sweetness levels (8–13 ^oBrix) of rockmelons. Results indicated that there was a large variation in texture, juiciness and flavour for each ^oBrix level. A significant correlation coefficient (r = 0.829) was obtained between analytical and sensory measures for sweetness. High organoleptic scores for flavour were noted among the higher sweetness levels. It is recommended that due to the change in consumer acceptability, marketing of rockmelons should not be solely based on ^oBrix levels; other attributes such as flavour, texture and juiciness should be utilized.     

Gloomy prospects for social retirement insurance

Recently, important experts have presented two studies concerning the current situation and future prospects of social retirement insurance in the Federal Republic of Germany.¹ Now there is also an Internationally comparative study on the same subject available.² The German co-authors summarize the results of that study and add some proposals for further discussion.     

Consulting business in need of reform

The crisis in the consulting business is worldwide. In December 1972, a German business magazine had this to say on the subject: “The fat years are past Numerous erroneous planning decisions landed the large German and foreign firms into a critical situation. The running is now made by advisers with specialised knowledge and social flair.”¹     

Financial performance patterns of new corporate ventures: an alternative to traditional measures

This paper describes some of the limitations involved in using traditional performance measures to evaluate new ventures and suggests an alternative. We argue that the use of traditional performance measures in the new venture setting can produce misdirected decision making by managers and misleading model development by researchers. The traditional performance measures evaluated are return on investment, cashflow, market share gain, and returns to stockholders. The alternative performance measured presented is based upon an evaluation of patterns of improvement in return on investment across time.These patterns of performance are mapped using regression analysis. Return on investment is regressed against time, and the parameters of the resulting models' parameters are themselves used as performance measures. The beta-coefficient (β) is used to measure the overall rate of change in financial performance from year to year and the coefficient of determination (r²) is used to measure the predictability of change. To combine the information available in each of these parameters into a single variable, we multiply β by r² and call the result “V.” Thus, V is a measure of the velocity of improvement in financial performance across time adjusted for the level of variability in the performance trend.Much work remains to be done that could substantially improve the usefulness of V to managers and researchers. More sophisticated approaches than the one used here might include weighting either β or r² to fit the particular goal orientation of a given management team. Other model parameters might be used in conjunction with, or in place of, β or r² to increase or improve the information captured in V. Measures of financial performance other than return on investment (ROI) could also be used as the basis of calculating V.Even in its current simple form, however, V appears to be a useful performance measure. In 87 of 112 NCVs studied, V provided a useful summary of the pattern of performance's development. In 25 of 112 cases, there were important characteristics of performance that could not be captured by V. The most important managerial implication of V entails the shift to evaluating a new venture on the basis of its progress toward a desirable end rather than on the end itself. This provides a logical means of evaluating the financial performance of a new venture at an earlier time than would be possible otherwise.     

Pricing Via Utility Maximization and Entropy

In a financial market model with constraints on the portfolios, define the price for a claim C as the smallest real number p such that sup_π E[U(X_T^{x+p, π}?C)]≥ sup_π E[U(X_T^{x, π})], where U is the negative exponential utility function and X^{x, π} is the wealth associated with portfolio π and initial value x. We give the relations of this price with minimal entropy or fair price in the flavor of Karatzas and Kou (1996) and superreplication. Using dynamical methods, we characterize the price equation, which is a quadratic Backward SDE, and describe the optimal wealth and portfolio. Further use of Backward SDE techniques allows for easy determination of the pricing function properties.     

Multinationals and structural changes

The effects of the activities of multinational corporations on the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany have hardly ever been examined empirically. The role of the multinational corporations (MNCs) in the process of structural change had not been studied either until an enquiry was recently undertaken for the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs¹. The following article is based on the expert report which deals with this and other aspects for the first time and is to be published shortly.     

THE CANONICAL MODEL SPACE FOR LAW‐INVARIANT CONVEX RISK MEASURES IS L1

In this paper, we establish a one‐to‐one correspondence between law‐invariant convex risk measures on L^∞ and L¹. This proves that the canonical model space for the predominant class of law‐invariant convex risk measures is L¹.     

A Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing for Large Financial Markets

We formulate the notion of “asymptotic free lunch” which is closely related to the condition “free lunch” of Kreps (1981) and allows us to state and prove a fairly general version of the fundamental theorem of asset pricing in the context of a large financial market as introduced by Kabanov and Kramkov (1994). In a large financial market one considers a sequence (Sⁿ)_n=1^∞ of stochastic stock price processes based on a sequence (Ωⁿ, Fⁿ, (F_tⁿ)_t∈In, Pⁿ)_n=1^∞ of filtered probability spaces. Under the assumption that for all n∈ N there exists an equivalent sigma‐martingale measure for Sⁿ, we prove that there exists a bicontiguous sequence of equivalent sigma‐martingale measures if and only if there is no asymptotic free lunch (Theorem 1.1). Moreover we present an example showing that it is not possible to improve Theorem 1.1 by replacing “no asymptotic free lunch” by some weaker condition such as “no asymptotic free lunch with bounded” or “vanishing risk.”     

EU accession: Negotiating “environmental dumping”?

“Environmental dumping” is a concern frequently raised in discussions on the potential risks involved in the eastern enlargement of the European Union¹ (EU).² There is a general concern that the Central and Eastern European accession countries may be neither willing nor able to fully apply the EU’s environmental acquis communautaire, the body of Community environmental legislation, once they have joined the EU. As a result, these countries would benefit from a competitive advantage when selling their goods on the Internal Market. This article asks whether, and in which specific cases, such concerns may be justified.     

HOUSEHOLD USES OF TIME — TRANSITIONS FROM 1960 TO 1980

Studies of time-use in Japan were reviewed by Tanaka at the Uppsala Conference,¹ followed by a review of time-input for household work given by Matsushima at the Bulgaria Conference.² This paper will study the changes of household work with data based on past national 5-year interval surveys, the NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) Japan Broadcasting Corporation surveys of 1960, 1965, 1970, (1973 interim), 1975 and 1980. The latest 1980 survey has been summarized by Nakanishi.³     

Motives of multis in Germany

This article which — like the subsequent one — is essentially based on a recently concluded expertise¹, is concerned with the different motivational structures of German and foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). Whereas German direct investments abroad reveal an offensive character, the policy of foreign MNCs in the Federal Republic of Germany is much more defensive. There are also significant differences between German and foreign MNCs as regards the internal division of labour.     

Routine contraction in good times: An example of a typical prototype development routine

The general wisdom in the routine literature is that routine contraction happens as a response to adverse situation. This study examines routine contraction even during non-adverse situations. Here, routine contraction is operationalized as the shrinkage of resources. The data is hand collected from the public website of the National SCRABBLE^® Championship, 2010. Here, each SCRABBLE^® routine is an analogy of a prototype development routine. The higher order relationships between SCRABBLE^® routines and prototype development routines in a second generation Stage Gate^® product development process are mapped following structure mapping theory. The results of panel regressions indicate that the performance of a routine at a particular time (t₀) positively affects contraction of the same routine at an immediately later time (t₁). Efficiency moderates this relationship. Routine contraction may happen even in good times. The paper closes with theoretical contribution and managerial implications of these results.     

Key success factors for mobile app platform activation

This study explores the key activation factors of the mobile application development platform through a comparative analysis of Apple App Store and Samsung Apps platforms based on the information and communications technologies intensive service innovations (IISIⁿ) model from the developer’s perspective. We conducted intensive interviews of 14 mobile app developers who had development experiences with both Apple App Store and Samsung Apps. The study results indicate that the most important app development platform activation factors from the developer’s perspective are: (1) core components of the platform and technical support; (2) policy assistance for developer work activities; and (3) assurance of adequate financial returns to developers. This study is based on grounded theory and uses the IISIⁿ model to determine the success factor of mobile app platform activation. The results of this study make contributions to both theoretical and practical aspects regarding strategies and operations of mobile app development platforms.