Digitale Perspektiven in der Kommunikations- und Mediengeschichte

In the discussion about the future of communication and media science in digital times, this article focuses on the position and perspective of communication and media history. The challenges, problems and potentials associated with digitization are illustrated using the example of historical press research. Within the media ensemble of classical mass communication, the periodic press in particular benefits from the retrospective digitization of historical media and their digital edition in databases and portals. For historical press research, digitized newspapers and digital newspaper portals represent an originally new, because increasingly digital research situation: Digital newspaper portals as a novel, originally digital world for newspapers not only facilitate the path to newspapers and their contents, they also open them up as digital resources machine-readable and thus open up completely new paths for research—not least supported by digital methods.The main objective of this article is to discuss the epistemological-methodological problems and the practical operationalization of digitally framed or supported research processes in historical press research and to present concrete perspectives of knowledge and research strategies for practice. With this aim in mind, the paper discusses three points:(1.) Methodological and practical consequences of historical press research in digital research environments. With the digitization of newspapers and their digital reproduction in newspaper portals, their source character shifts essentially in three dimensions: They are edited and indexed digitally and their complete content is made accessible through optical character recognition. This makes previously unimportant technical aspects such as data formats, portal interfaces, search algorithms and programming interfaces very relevant for the methodology of historical press research. A primary methodological effect of the digital reorganization of newspapers in data and portals is the reversal of the usual reading practice: from “top down” to “bottom up”. With the help of “keyword searching”, newspapers can now be searched comprehensively and transversely to the order of the newspaper original. Nevertheless, there is a warning against an all too naïve and uncritical usage of digitized newspapers and newspaper portals. In practice, some problems and risks are crucial for the conception of historical newspaper research in digital research environments: Besides a hardly standardized and in large parts “wild”, because often uncoordinated and selective digitization of newspapers, the newspaper portals are different in their conception as well as characterized by different content, technical, legal and entrepreneurial conditions.(2.) Historical newspapers as digital sources in practice. The methodological and technical framework are fundamental and far-reaching for the further practical use of newspapers as digital sources in research. In each research step, it must be considered that digitized newspapers are genuinely new and, depending on the quality and depth of digitization, very complex sources with information gains and losses compared to the originals. Newspapers are not simply digitized, they are digitally constructed and differ in this construction from each other. In this respect, historical press researchers are increasingly becoming “users”. However simple and uncomplicated newspaper portals may be in practice, one must incorporate the implicit functions (hidden in algorithms, data and code) and the limits of these knowledge engines and their “correct” use into the research process. Combining and mediating classical hermeneutic methods with search technologies is an essential moment in the practical handling of digitized newspapers.(3.) Historical press research and digital methods. In the light of the new research situation which is emerging with digitized newspapers and newspaper portals, it is obvious that historical press research should increasingly open up to the possibilities of digital methods. In the digital method discussion of historical press research, one concept in particular forms a central point of reference: Franco Moretti’s concept of “Distant Reading”. Basically, “Distant Reading”—and this is what makes this perspective so interesting for historical press research in dealing with the considerable metadata and full text volumes of digitized newspapers—is about the quantitative-automatic indexing of large text corpora using methods and techniques of “Text Mining”. Digital text methods are thus seriously changing the way we look at texts and the research practice with texts such as newspapers: In parts, they automate and accelerate reading processes, produce “new” text extracts by the computer, generate new interpretation contexts between individual text, corpus and condensate, and thus set new orientation points for “close reading”. Computers and digital text methods thus do not relieve researchers of interpretation. Rather, they constantly challenge them to interpret in a continuous interplay in order to give meaning to the text patterns discovered by machines.In spite of all these advantages, digital methods have so far only been used sporadically in historical press research. For this reason, finally a digital workflow for research processes in historical press research will be presented, which illustrates and summarizes essential challenges, problems, solutions and potentials of digitally framed or supported research in press history.     

Determining the economic gains from regulation at the extensive and intensive margins

Among the second-best approaches for the regulation of pollution,little attention has been paid to the distorting effect of intensivemargin policies on the extensive margin. This article shows,within a dynamic framework, that regulation of the intensivemargin has to be complemented by regulation of the extensivemargin. Depending on the elasticity of the pollution functionwith respect to nitrogen use, the appropriate regulation atthe extensive margin is zero, a tax or a subsidy. We show empiricallythat combining a nitrogen tax with land-use taxes is about 18per cent more cost efficient than a nitrogen tax alone and 58per cent more efficient than off-site abatement in the formof groundwater treatment.     

Wealth inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900†

This article examines the evolution of wealth inequality in Sweden from 1750 to 1900, contributing both to the debate on early modern and modern inequality and to the general debate on the pattern of inequality during industrialization. The pre‐industrial period (1750–1850) is for the first time examined for Sweden at the national level. The study uses a random sample of probate inventories from urban and rural areas across the country, adjusted for age and social class. Estimates are provided for the years 1750, 1800, 1850, and 1900. The results show a gradual growth in inequality as early as the mid‐eighteenth century, with the sharpest rise in the late nineteenth century. Whereas the early growth in inequality was connected to changes in the countryside and in agriculture, the later growth was related to industrialization encompassing both compositional effects and strong wealth accumulation among the richest. The level of inequality in Sweden in 1750 was lower than for other western European countries, but by 1900 Sweden was just as unequal.     

Earnings,dividend policy,and present value relations: Building blocks of dividend policy invariant cash flows

In a Modigliani-Miller world, dividend policy is irrelevant for asset pricing. This article searches for cash flows with two characteristics: like dividends, asset prices can be calculated from their present values and, unlike dividends, they are invariant with respect to changes in dividend policy. Segmented and aggregate residual income measures with these features are identified under two assumptions: dividend policy does not alter risk premiums and income earned from investments associated with dividend policy includes unrealized capital gains and losses. The results hold for otherwise arbitrary risk premiums in the general no-arbitrage approach to the valuation of uncertain income streams.     

How Do Investors' Expectations Drive Asset Prices?

Based on an extension of the process of investors' expectations to stochastic volatility we derive asset price processes in a general continuous time pricing kernel framework. Our analysis suggests that stochastic volatility of asset price processes results from the fact that investors do not know the risk of an asset and therefore the volatility of the process of their expectations is stochastic, too. Furthermore, our model is consistent with empirical studies reporting negative correlation between asset prices and their volatility as well as significant variations in the Sharpe ratio.     

Externalities of R&D Expenditures

Innovation is generally recognized as a major source of economic growth. R&D investments explicitly aim at generating innovations and creating knowledge. Since knowledge has certain public good properties, positive externalities are likely to exist. In this paper, we extend well-known concepts from the input-output literature (backward multipliers) to indicate at which commodities stimuli should be targeted to enhance R&D and its positive externalities in the economy as a whole. Next, we argue that there may also be negative externalities of R&D, due to increased prices. This issue can be studied by means of forward multipliers. Both concepts are applied to the United States, 1977-90.     

Service innovation as a political process

Service innovation processes are driven by stakeholders in interaction and are understood and sketched as a value negotiation process that consists of an iterative process of securing potential value in service. While previous research has focused on service innovation as a harmonious closed system, our study explores service innovation as a political process in which stakeholders negotiate to create and secure future value. Data are collected through interviews and participant observations in four different case studies. Our study contributes to the field by illuminating service innovation as a political process and explaining how this is operationalized. The findings also contribute to an understanding of how stakeholder resources impact a chosen strategy; the resulting strategy’s impact on the service concept vis-à-vis its potential value; and how several involved stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and secure future potential value, which are the activities that drive a service innovation process.     

Ist der Fahrplan der Energiewende noch einzuhalten?

The German energy transition represents a policy-driven, sustainability-oriented restructuring of both supply- and demand-side components of the entire energy system by 2050. Whereas the development of renewable energies in the electricity sector is right on track, due to the feed-in tariffs of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act, many other crucial requirements for a successful transition are not, amongst others the improvement of energy effi ciency and the decarbonisation of the transport sector. Contrary to the public discussion, the primary future challenges do not consist in limiting electricity prices or abandoning feed-in support schemes, but rather in coordinating the variety of actors as well as appropriately matching the different system elements (grids, technologies, energy sectors, demand and supply side, etc.). Much remains to be done. By highlighting some examples like the need to take into account future implications of climate change for the energy sector, the consequences of the current crisis in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme and the need for a cautious adjustment of the EEG, the paper argues that the major challenges regarding the German energy transition mainly go beyond the current policy-driven and short-term discussion of energy prices. Germany’s pioneering attempt to integrate steadily increasing share of non-dispatchable electricity from renewable sources is challenging the stability of the system. Several characteristics in the current selfregulating system are identifi ed and analysed, which reveal themselves as potential weaknesses or shortcomings in the upcoming system.     

Dividend Stickiness,Debt Covenants,and Earnings Management

Consistent with the notion that dividends are very sticky, Daniel, Denis, and Naveen ( 2008 ) report evidence that firms manage earnings upward when pre‐managed earnings are expected to fall short of dividend payments. However, we find that this evidence is not robust when controlling for firms' tendency to manage earnings upward to avoid reporting earnings declines; only firms with high leverage exhibit a statistically weak tendency to manage earnings to close deficits of pre‐managed earnings relative to dividends. We further report that the decision to cut dividends depends on whether reported earnings fall short of past dividends, but not on earnings management that eliminates a shortfall in pre‐managed earnings relative to dividend payments. Overall, our evidence suggests that firms that face dividend constraints are more likely to cut dividends than to manage earnings to avoid dividend cuts.     

Did the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act Alter Farm Enterprise Diversification?

We estimate how much United States farms changed enterprise diversification in response to a marked increase in crop insurance coverage brought about by the 1994 Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act, which substantially increased insurance subsidies. The analysis exploits farm‐level panel census data to compare farm‐specific changes in enterprise diversification over time. By examining diversification decisions of the same farms over time, we control for time‐invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity. We then use pooled cross‐sectional data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Resource Management Survey to estimate the relationship between farm diversification and average returns. We find that the insurance subsidies caused a modest increase in enterprise specialisation and production efficiency. Estimated efficiency gains are far less than the subsidies.