Der Ereignisbegriff in der Publizistikwissenschaft

This article wants to clarify the notion of »event«. It is based on the differentiation of two levels of action–the level of what is covered in the media, and the level of coverage. Action on one level affects the level it happens on, but it also affects the other level. Neither is coverage independent of the occurrence that is covered, nor is the occurrence that is being covered independent of coverage. The notions that are proposed are meant to demonstrate important interdependencies between the two levels of action and to make possible empirical analyses of the relation between coverage and the events covered. This relates to the comparison of the coverage of different media and to the change in the depiction of reality in one medium. The latter is shown for the coverage of German issues in three quality newspapers for the period from 1951 to 1995.     

A Poole Analysis in the New Open Economy Macroeconomic Framework*

This paper evaluates simple monetary policy rules in the tradition of the Poole analysis within a general two‐country model for a large economy and a small open economy. The results for the large economy resemble those of the original Poole scenario and also extend to the welfare measure. In particular, an interest rate rule is preferable to a money supply rule when liquidity shocks dominate, whereas a money supply rule fares better with real shocks. For the small open economy, the stabilization properties of the large‐economy case continue to hold for domestic shocks, but a money supply rule performs better than an interest rate rule using the welfare measure. If shocks originate in the foreign economy, a money supply rule turns out to be superior both in terms of its stabilization properties as well as in terms of welfare.     

Where Does Education Pay Off in Sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from Two Cities of the Republic of Congo

Using first-hand data from the 2009 Employment and Informal Sector Survey (EESIC) in the two largest cities of the Republic of Congo, Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, we analyze the impact of education on labour market outcomes, and identify the segments where education pays off the most. Multivariate analyses of the risk of unemployment and sectoral choice indicate that young people face serious difficulties in the labour market: for most of them, their only choice is to remain unemployed or to join the informal sector. To measure the specific impact of schooling on earnings, we address issues related to sample selection and endogeneity of education in the earnings function. The results shed light on heterogeneity in the returns to schooling across the two main cities and institutional sectors. An important finding is that the informal sector does not systematically lag behind the formal sectors in terms of returns to education. We emphasize convex returns to education, meaning that the last years in secondary and tertiary schooling yield the highest returns, while those of primary education are generally lower. This convexity is also apparent in the informal sector, where education (albeit on another scale) again appears as an important determinant of earnings.     

Legal Requirements for the Personalization of Commercial Internet Applications in Europe

Most electronic-commerce (e-commerce) applications require the collection and storing of information about customers. As a consequence, the performed transactions involve legal issues. For 3 years, we have been involved in a project that has studied the potentials of personalization of e-commerce systems from the particular angle of small- and medium-sized enterprises. In this article, we pick up a couple of scenarios that many e-commerce vendors face when implementing personalization on their Web sites. The specific focus of the discussion is the legal use of costumer profiles for e-commerce applications. Because most legal issues are difficult to understand for nonlawyers, in this article, we make use of a case study, which shows explicitly what e-commerce vendors need to keep in mind when implementing personalization on their Web sites.     

Bubbles in Stochastic Economies: Can They Cure Overaccumulation of Capital?

It is well known that bubbles possess the potential to increase economic welfare due to a reduction of capital accumulation in deterministic overlapping generations economies that are in a dynamically inefficient state. However, actual economies are stochastic, where the concept of dynamic efficiency has turned out to be a complex issue. This paper contributes in two ways. First, the model presented in this paper establishes that dynamic inefficiency is not a necessary condition for deterministic bubbles in a stochastic economy. Second, a simulation shows that although bubbles are unable to persist in the stochastic steady state, they can still cure overaccumulation of capital for a time long enough to cover agents relevant time horizon.     

Consumption,wealth and business cycles in Germany

This paper studies the long-run relationship between consumption, asset wealth and income—the consumption–wealth ratio—based on German data from 1980 to 2003. We find that departures from this long-run relationship mainly predict adjustments in income. The German consumption–wealth ratio also contains considerable forecasting power for a range of business cycle indicators, including the unemployment rate. This finding is in contrast to earlier studies for some of the Anglo-Saxon economies that have shown that the consumption–wealth ratio reverts to its long-run mean mainly through subsequent adjustments in asset prices. While the German consumption wealth ratio contains little information about future changes in German asset prices, we report that the U.S. consumption–wealth ratio has considerable forecasting power for the German stock market. One explanation of these findings is that in Germany—due to structural differences in the financial and pension systems—the share of publicly traded equity in aggregate household wealth is much smaller than in the Anglo-Saxon countries. We discuss the implications of our results for the measurement of a potential wealth effect on consumption. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the position of the Deutsche Bundesbank. We gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from an anonymous referee as well as from Heinz Herrmann, Helmut Lütkepohl, the editor, Baldev Raj, Burkhard Raunig, Monika Schnitzer, Harald Uhlig and Christian Upper. We also benefitted from comments by seminar participants at the ECB, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the CESifo Macro, Money and International Finance Area Conference 2005, the EEA 2005 annual congress and at the 2005 IAEA Meetings. Last but not least, we would like to thank Mark Weth for very useful information concerning the construction of the financial wealth data. Hoffmann’s work on this paper is also part of the project The International Allocation of Risk funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the framework of SFB 475. Responsibility for any remaining errors and shortcomings is entirely our own.     

Pathwise superreplication via Vovk’s outer measure

Since Hobson’s seminal paper (Hobson in Finance Stoch. 2:329–347, 1998), the connection between model-independent pricing and the Skorokhod embedding problem has been a driving force in robust finance. We establish a general pricing–hedging duality for financial derivatives which are susceptible to the Skorokhod approach.Using Vovk’s approach to mathematical finance, we derive a model-independent superreplication theorem in continuous time, given information on finitely many marginals. Our result covers a broad range of exotic derivatives, including lookback options, discretely monitored Asian options, and options on realized variance.     

Globalization and the dynamics of cultural identity

This paper presents a simple model where micro-founded dynamics of cultural identity are endogenous and interact with an international trade equilibrium. This process generates a strong home bias under autarky. We then show that goods market integration causes a phenomenon of cultural divergence, whereby the distributions of cultures become more dissimilar across countries and one of the cultures that existed under autarky ultimately disappears. By way of contrast, we show that social integration causes cultural convergence and can counterbalance the effects of goods market integration.