Überfordern höhere Rentenniveaus die Jungen und sind sie nicht finanzierbar?

Higher pension payments can be borne because the effects of the demographic development, e.g. a higher share of pensioners, will be compensated by rising real incomes. Furthermore, the government projection of pension payments through 2045 shows that abolishing the Riester system will be cheaper than keeping it. The beneficial side effect will be the prevention of poverty.     

How Corporate Reputation Disclosures Affect Stakeholders’ Behavioral Intentions: Mediating Mechanisms of Perceived Organizational Performance and Corporate Reputation

Journal of Business Ethics - Corporate reputation is decisive for stakeholders’ supporting or repelling behavior and, therefore, one of firms’ most valuable intangible resources....     

Health effects on children’s willingness to compete

The formation of human capital is important for a society’s welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children’s human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from economic experiments with preschoolers and their mothers to investigate whether child health can explain developmental gaps in children’s non-cognitive skills. Our measure for children’s non-cognitive skills is their willingness to compete with others. Our findings suggest that health problems are negatively related to children’s willingness to compete and that the effect of health on competitiveness differs with socio-economic background. Health has a strongly negative effect in our sub-sample with low socio-economic background, whereas there is no effect in our sub-sample with high socio-economic background.     

The impact of firm prestige on executive compensation

We show that chief executive officers (CEOs) of prestigious firms earn less. Total compensation is on average 8% lower for firms listed in Fortune’s ranking of America’s most admired companies. We suggest that CEOs are willing to trade off status and career benefits from working for a publicly admired company against additional monetary compensation. Our identification strategy is based on matched sample analyses, difference-in-differences regressions, and a regression discontinuity design. We perform several robustness checks and exclude many alternative explanations, including that firm prestige just proxies for better corporate governance or for increased exposure of the pay-setting process to media attention.     

Incentives,regulations, and sustainable land use in Costa Rica

Deforestation in Costa Rica has proceeded at a rapid pace. Of the remaining 2,700 km² of virgin forests on privately-owned land, over 300 km² are being deforested each year. Pressure on National Parks, which cover about 27 percent of Costa Rica is likely to increase in the future. Preliminary information indicates that, contrary to our expectations, most of the deforestation at present is not being done by squatters, but driven by profit and asset maximization motives of the timber industry, banana companies, and large cattle ranchers. Setting aside 27 percent of the country's land as parks and reserves was a major policy decision. Aside from the removal of some perverse incentives operating inside park areas, the main issue there is one of sound management, including protection from intruders, strengthening enforcement, and controlled tourism. On the remaining primary and secondary forest areas on privately-owned land outside the parks, a key question is whether public interests connected with external costs of deforestation warrant public intervention. The paper suggests that a differentiated approach to this and other questions is needed, depending on the costs and benefits involved, and it discusses incentives and regulations which influence land use, and makes proposals for reforms.     

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF SOIL CONSERVATION: THE FARMERS' VIEWPOINT

Most countries in Central America and the Caribbean depend heavilyon agriculture; efforts to sustain and improve the sector'sproductivity are therefore crucial to the region's economicdevelopment and to the welfare of its people. Land degradationis thought to pose a severe threat to the sustainability ofagricultural production. Yet despite long-standing concern aboutthis threat and dramatic claims of environmental damage, surprisinglylittle empirical analysis has been done on the causes and severityof land degradation problems in the region and on how best totackle them. Meanwhile, many of the conservation programs designedto address the problems have fallen short of expectations. Oftenfarmers have not adopted the recommended conservation practicesor have abandoned them once the project ended. The research presented in this article attempts to bridge theempirical gap, using cost-benefit analysis to investigate thenature and severity of the soil degradation problem and to assessthe cost-effectiveness of proposed solutions. Because soil degradationproblems tend to be site-specific, the analysis is rooted incase studies, and because conservation programs stand or fallon the participation of farmers, the study's main focus is onthe profitability of the measures and the deterrents to theiradoption from the farmers' point of view.      

Fairness and Incentives in a Multi‐task Principal–Agent Model

This paper reports on a two‐task principal–agent experiment in which only one task is contractible. The principal can either offer a piece‐rate contract or a (voluntary) bonus to the agent. Bonus contracts strongly outperform piece‐rate contracts. Many principals reward high effort on both tasks with substantial bonuses. Agents anticipate this and provide high effort on both tasks. In contrast, almost all agents with a piece‐rate contract focus on the first task and disregard the second. Principals understand this and predominantly offer bonus contracts. This behavior contradicts the self‐interest theory but is consistent with theories of fairness.     

中国与欧盟的贸易关系:突破瓶颈

<正> 一、欧盟与中国已成为 重要的贸易伙伴 在2002年,中国成为位于美国、瑞士之后欧盟的第三大贸易伙伴,欧盟成为位于日本、美国之后中国的第三大贸易伙伴。2002年欧盟-中国贸易量增加8.7％,2003年1-3季度欧盟从中国进口增加15.9％,向中国出口增加31.9％。欧盟与中国的贸易将会持续,并成为对外贸易中最重要的贸易伙伴之一。