?Wie und nach welcher Richtung entwickelte sich das Lesebedürfnis der Arbeiterschaft?“

Media use in the early twentieth century has to be seen before a background of an epoch in media history that Jürgen Wilke describes as the age of the unleashing of mass communication. In this sense, the aim of my historical-empirical case study is to generate consolidated findings about the amount and the extent of media use, particularly of the mass press, at the beginning of an emerging modern media system during the time of the German Empire. The basic source of this paper is a survey of early German empirical social research: Adolf Levenstein??s empirical studyDie Arbeiterfrage (1912). Like other studies from the corpus of sources of early social research, this one provides an exciting historical basis for writing a history of media use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All in all, Levenstein??s study offers various important findings on the consumption of books, magazines, newspapers and pulp fiction, that is to say; primarily on the pre-communicative phase in the (mass) communication process including individual costs (monetary, mental, time budget) and motives (needs, expectations, functions, interests, routines) for the use of modern mass media, which cannot be taken for granted.     

The Impact of the Corporate Mind‐set on New Product Launch Strategy and Market Performance

In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in the link between new product launch strategy and market performance. So far, new product launch research has focused on this performance relationship without giving much attention to background factors that can facilitate or inhibit successful launch strategies. However, investigating such antecedents that set the framework in which different strategic launch decisions enable or prevent the market performance of new products is useful for enhancing the current state of knowledge. Drawing on the concept of a firm's orientation, the present study discusses the influence of the corporate mind‐set on new product launch strategy and market performance. It is hypothesized that the capability to successfully launch new products is based on the interplay between a firm's mind‐set (i.e., an analytical, risk‐taking, and aggressive posture) and its strategic launch decisions on setting launch objectives, selecting target markets, and positioning the new product. A research model with mediating effects is proposed, where the corporate mind‐set determines the launch strategy decisions, which in turn impact market performance. The model is tested with data on 113 industrial new products launched in business‐to‐business markets in Germany using a multiple informant approach. The results support the mediated model as the dimensions of the corporate mind‐set have a significant impact on most strategic launch decisions, which in turn significantly contribute to market performance. It is found that while an analytical posture relates to all three strategic launch decisions, risk taking and an aggressive posture have a significant impact on two, respectively one, launch strategy elements. These findings confirm the importance of investigating antecedents for a successful new product launch, as the corporate mind‐set serves as a background resource that sets the framework for successful new product launch decisions. In the final section implications for research and managerial practice as well as limitations of this research are provided.     

OECD unbundled local loop pricing

This study examines OECD fully unbundled and line sharing monthly wholesale prices for 2002–2008. The results are informative with economic analysis appearing to inform regulator decision making. However, with the cost proxy (viz., copper-wage relative price, population density, urbanisation and business line penetration), regulator costing methods (long run incremental and fully allocated cost), and time trend arguments only explaining approximately 40% of the price variation there remains ample unexplained variation, and political and institutional variables may help reduce this. Finally, both price series are subject to increasingly rapid value declines, although the patterns are somewhat distinct. This suggests that initial prices are truly transitory.     

乡村旅游与小城镇发展

引言在全世界,旅游业是发展最快的经济产业.本文探讨"乡村旅游"的本质及其对小城镇发展的作用.一、乡村旅游的本质1844年,汉斯·克里斯蒂安·安徒生写了《旅行即生活》.他从哥本哈根城出发,遍游欧洲,脱离城市生活的疲惫与乏味.如今,人员流动性的增加、不菲的收入及信息社会的更多信息等因素都促使人们摆脱城市生活,强健体能,净化灵魂,与家人同乐,与朋友同欢.在清新山川,体验自然世界风貌,吸引着人们远离尘埃喧嚣的工业城市,旅游、娱乐和休闲互相联系,融为一体.乡村游本质上是怀旧和回归到本初.     

Kfz-Steuer-Reform und Klimaschutz

Wie in vielen anderen europ?ischen L?ndern wurde 2009 nach jahrelanger Diskussion auch die deutsche Kraftfahrzeug-Steuer teilweise am CO₂-Aussto? ausgerichtet und damit klimapolitisch aufgewertet. Zugleich erhielt der Bund die Ertragskompetenz für diese frühere L?nder-Steuer. Der Beitrag untersucht das klimapolitische Lenkungspotenzial der neuen Kfz-Steuer vor dem Hintergrund der nationalen und europ?ischen Klimapolitik im Verkehrssektor. Inwieweit tr?gt die neue Kfz-Steuer neben der Energiesteuer zum Klimaschutz bei?     

Bidders’ gains and family control of private target firms

This paper examines the announcement returns of bidders acquiring private firms owned by families versus the returns of bidders acquiring non-family controlled private firms. The sample consists of 391 acquisitions of private targets in seven continental European countries for the period 1997–2008. We find evidence that bidder's cumulative announcement returns (CARs) are lower when they acquire family controlled targets compared to non-family controlled targets. We show that this result holds regardless of whether the deal is paid with shares or cash and whether or not the bidding firm is also privately owned. Moreover, the result is independent of the size of the acquisition relative to the size of the acquiring firm. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the bidder has to pay a higher price in order to convince the family owners to sell in return for giving up private benefits.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Antecedents and Outcomes of NPD Portfolio Success

Managing new product development (NPD) portfolios is difficult and little is known about how successful NPD portfolio management can improve overall firm performance. Despite regular calls in the literature for more research on NPD portfolio management, what successful NPD portfolio management means and how firms can achieve it remains unclear. For this reason, this paper combines theory and previous empirical findings to build a model of the antecedents and outcomes of NPD portfolio success. We generate and test 12 hypotheses with empirical data from 189 paired dyads in Dutch firms. Our results show that all three dimensions of NPD portfolio decision‐making effectiveness (i.e., portfolio mindset, focus, and agility) are associated with achieving the three dimensions of NPD portfolio success (i.e., strategic alignment, maximal NPD portfolio value, and portfolio balance), which in turn influences market performance. While a portfolio mindset and agility are related to all three dimensions of NPD portfolio success, focus is related only to strategic alignment and maximal value. No one dimension of NPD portfolio decision‐making effectiveness or portfolio success is sufficient to achieve overall market performance. We also found several unexpected findings with important implications. For example, portfolio balance, one recommended measure of portfolio success, has no direct link to market performance, but operates through the other two dimensions of NPD portfolio success, i.e., strategic alignment and maximal portfolio value. We conclude our paper with implications for further theory development and testing on successful NPD portfolio decision‐making, and with implications for managerial practice.     

Alternative Defaultable Term Structure Models

The objective of this paper is to consider defaultable term structure models in a general setting beyond standard risk-neutral models. Using as numeraire the growth optimal portfolio, defaultable interest rate derivatives are priced under the real-world probability measure. Therefore, the existence of an equivalent risk-neutral probability measure is not required. In particular, the real-world dynamics of the instantaneous defaultable forward rates under a jump-diffusion extension of a HJM type framework are derived. Thus, by establishing a modelling framework fully under the real-world probability measure, the challenge of reconciling real-world and risk-neutral probabilities of default is deliberately avoided, which provides significant extra modelling freedom. In addition, for certain volatility specifications, finite dimensional Markovian defaultable term structure models are derived. The paper also demonstrates an alternative defaultable term structure model. It provides tractable expressions for the prices of defaultable derivatives under the assumption of independence between the discounted growth optimal portfolio and the default-adjusted short rate. These expressions are then used in a more general model as control variates for Monte Carlo simulations of credit derivatives. Nicola Bruti-Liberati: In memory of our beloved friend and colleague.     

Functional separation in Swedish broadband market: Next step of improving competition

Technological development together with liberalization policy has led to competition in the telecommunications market. Broadband has been recognized as a driving force in the social and economic development of nations, and many countries have introduced policies and/or regulatory frameworks to improve competition in broadband markets. An evolution can be seen from the 1980s until the present day through open access to local loop unbundling to several degrees of separation including functional separation. There are several countries implementing functional separation such as the UK, Italy, Sweden and, recently the EU. It has been suggested that functional separation can be an effective policy for increasing competition in broadband markets under certain circumstances. Sweden has implemented functional separation by amending the Swedish Telecommunications Act in 2008 to include mandatory functional separation as one of the powers of the PTS, the Swedish telecommunications regulator. Although TeliaSonera, the incumbent fixed line operator decided to voluntarily separate part of their business, the amendments to the law were debated with arguments similar to the debates in the EU following the new regulatory framework implemented in 2009. Against this background, this paper provides an overview of the development of functional separation in the EU and European countries such as Sweden and the UK. The paper also provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the implementation of functional separation. The evolution of functional separation in Sweden is explained and ends with a discussion of the implementation of functional separation in the Swedish broadband market.