Schwaches Produktivitätswachstum — zyklisches oder strukturelles Phänomen?

Labour productivity growth in Germany and in the OECD countries has decelerated significantly in recent years. This observation is astonishing, given the fact that modern digital services can now be found throughout the economy. It may be a statistical artefact, but if it is a realistic observation, it should be investigated. The authors describe many reasons for this development. For example, the services sector, with its traditionally low productivity, makes up an increasingly large part of the economy. Moreover, the cost intensity of innovations is growing, and there are not enough innovative investments. What should be done? Reforms are suggested which aim at exploiting unused potential and create suitable conditions for facilitating sustainable productivity increases. Important policy areas include digitisation, energy transition and demographic change. But reforms must also be thought of as investments into the capacity of employees to work productively.     

Trade Sanctions and the Incidence of Child Labor

The purpose of this paper is to develop an imperfect competition model of a small open developing country to analyze the effects of trade sanctions on the incidence of child labor. We show that a uniform tariff levied by the developed countries on imports produced with the help of child labor is a failure in terms of reducing child labor. A more effective course of action would be a firm‐specific tariff where the tariff rate varies with the amount of child labor incorporated in a single good. While such an instrument reduces child labor, however, it worsens the children’s well‐being due to lower income and consumption. Contrary to expectations, the entrepreneurs in the developing countries, supposedly the main beneficiaries of child labor, are better off under trade sanctions as they realize higher profits.     

Consumer cheating on service guarantees

Fear of opportunistic customers is an important reason why firms are reluctant to implement service guarantees. This article empirically tests potential drivers of cheating. Potential material gain and repeat purchase intent were tested across three studies, whereas satisfaction, ease of invoking the guarantee, morality, shame, self-monitoring, and Machiavellianism were each tested in a subset of the three studies. The results for potential material gain and repeat purchase intent were consistent across all three studies: potential material gain had no effect on consumer cheating, but repeat purchase intent reduced that tendency. Other findings suggest that high levels of satisfaction, morality, and self-monitoring reduce cheating, whereas high levels of Machiavellianism increase cheating. Furthermore, two three-way interaction effects were encountered. Specifically, Machiavellianism interacted with gain and ease of invocation, and with gain and repeat purchase intent. In both cases, individuals with high Machiavellianism took advantage of certain situational constellations. Jochen Wirtz (bizwirtz@nus.edu.sg) (Ph.D., London Business School) is an associate professor of marketing and academic director of the Asia-Pacific Executive MBA (APEX-MBA) Program, and academics co-director of the UCLA-NUS Executive MBA Program at the NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on service managementrelated issues including service guarantees, customer satisfaction, customer feedback systems, and revenue management. His recent work has been published in theCornell HRA Quarterly, theJournal of Business Research, theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, theJournal of Consumer Psychology, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Services Marketing, andPsychology and Marketing. He is also a coauthor of the fifth edition ofServices Marketing (with Christopher Lovelock, Prentice Hall) andServices Marketing in Asia—Managing People, Technology and Strategy (with Christopher Lovelock and Hean Tat Keh, Prentice Hall). In recognition of his excel-lence in instruction, he has received several teaching awards, including the university-level Outstanding Educator Award 2003, the business school-level Outstanding Educator Award 2002, and the Award for Excellence in Instruction from the MBA Alumni. Outside academia, he has been an active management consultant working with a number of consulting firms in Asia and Europe, including Accenture, Arthur D.Little, and KPMG. Doreen Kum (doreenk@nus.edu.sg) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Marketing, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on consumer behavior issues such as categorization and branding strategies, as well as service guarantees. Her research has been published in theGeneral Management Review andJournal of Services Marketing.     

Uncertainty, Conventional Behavior, and Economic Sociology

A bstract    This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes's writings on uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market, and the analysis consists of a comparison of the social ontologies of the French Intersubjectivist School and the Economics as Social Theory Project in the light of these observations. The theoretical argument is illustrated with concrete examples from a prominent study of the stock market boom of the 1990s.     

Emissions trading in Europe: Effective tool or flight of fancy?

Conclusion  The NAPs must be compatible with the climate goals and emissions reduction targets. Within the first period there will be no concrete sanction mechanism if countries fail to achieve their target, as is planned for later periods. A stringent allocation of allowances would prevent too high a burden on private households and the transport sector. In addition, it would also increase the incentive for other flexible mechanisms such as Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and (later on) Joint Implementation (Jl). Conversely, some important aspects of the trading system, such as the treatment of newcomers or how to react to the dynamics of the market, are not regulated at the European level. This provides a large scope for strategic action and creates uncertainties. In Germany as well as in many other countries, negotiations between politicians and industrial lobbyists has led to a less effective emissions trading system. It is questionable whether there will be significant emission trading at all. The climate goal cannot be reached if industries get the emissions allowances that they need to continue business as usual. In the future, it would be desirable to harmonise the specific rules of the initial allocation plan among all European countries in order to avoid strategic behaviour and a weakening of the entire trading system.     

International Trade and Unemployment—the Worker‐selection Effect

This paper investigates the labor market effects of trade liberalization. We incorporate trade unions and heterogeneous workers into the Melitz framework. Workers differ with respect to their abilities. Our main findings are: (i) trade liberalization harms low‐ability workers, they lose their job and switch to long‐term unemployment (worker‐selection effect); (ii) high‐ability workers are better off in terms of both higher wages and higher employment; (iii) if a country is endowed with a large fraction of low‐ability workers, trade liberalization leads to a rise in aggregate unemployment—in this case, trade liberalization may harm a country's welfare; (iv) the overall employment and welfare effect crucially hinges on the characteristics of the wage bargain.     

正确押注创新

正市场依旧变化无常,想要实现发展目标难上加难。但是,最佳创新企业无论是在顺境还是逆境中,都在市场上遥遥领先。他们制定清晰的创新战略,在探索期就筛选创意,并将资源投入到最有发展前景的创意上。他们怎么做到的?