The impact of brand authenticity on brand trust and SME growth: A CEO perspective

This article investigates the linkages between brand authenticity, brand trust, and SME growth from a CEO perspective. Brand authenticity is operationalized as consisting of three factors: brand consistency, brand customer orientation, and brand congruency. The hypotheses derived in this paper will be tested with new measures and data from 285 German SMEs using structural equation modeling. The results confirm that brand consistency and congruency foster brand trust, which in turn drives SME growth.     

Investition in die Zukunft? Zur Entwicklung des deutschen Auslandsvermögens

Germany’s substantial current account surpluses are an ongoing subject of debate, both at the domestic and the European/ global level. Advocates of high surpluses emphasise the need to accumulate foreign wealth in order to finance future investment and consumption expenditures of an ageing population. This contribution gauges the profitability of Germany’s foreign wealth. It identifies large valuation losses to the tune of half a trillion euros in recent years as well as a persistently adverse trend in previous decades. This unfavourable development as well as historically low refinancing costs point to the comparatively greater benefits of a domestic investment offensive aiming to equip Germany for central long-term challenges.     

Towards new tourism policies: The importance of environmental and sociocultural factors

Unrestricted tourism growth could lead to the positive economic effects of tourism being outweighed by significant social and environmental disadvantages, which could in turn translate the economic benefits into disadvantages. This process derives not only from tourism effects per se, but also from changes in the social structure. This article calls for not merely economic and technical adjustments in policies, but for a fundamental political transformation in the conception of tourism and recreation.     

Impatience among preschool children and their mothers

Using experimental data of children and their mothers, this paper explores the intergenerational relationship of impatience. The child’s impatience stems from a delay of gratification experiment, the mother’s from a choice task. Findings demonstrate an intergenerational relationship in decision making.     

25 Jahre Maastrichter Verträge — reale Divergenzen und institutionelle Reformen

The paper argues that 18 years after the introduction of the Euro, the European Monetary Union has yet been unable to achieve sufficient real economic convergence among its member economies. As a result, the European Central Bank (ECB) still faces a dilemma in the sense that the common monetary policy is unable to meet current policy requirements in both boom and recession countries. Of course, the extensive asset purchase programmes of the ECB in the aftermath of the Euro crisis provided the necessary time for policy reforms, but deep rooted structural problems in a number of member countries and a divergent understanding of macroeconomic policy have remained and will lead to sustained high tensions in the eurozone in the foreseeable future.