Immobiliencontrolling — Optimierung der immobilienbezogenen Kosten durch Gründung einer Generalmietgesellschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung Dipl.-Ing. (univ.) Michael Belau ist Director und Head of Rental Management Dipl.-Wirtschaftsing. (FH) Michael Schildger ist Vice President und Head of Finance Dr. Verena Sturm ist Manager Corporate Real Estate Services     

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITIQUE OF ARGYRIS AND SCHON'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO ORGANIZATION THEORY AND INTERVENTION

The purpose of this essay is to examine psychoanalytically Argyris and Schon's contributions to organization theory and intervention. The author focuses his attention on the problem of individual and organizational resistance to change in the light of Argyris and Schon's cognitive psychological assumptions about learning, reasoning, and effectiveness.     

Unemployment compensation and episodes of nonemployment

This paper examines the influence of unemployment insurance (UI) on the length of nonemployment spells experienced by young workers. The analysis introduces a flexible duration model to estimate the effects of the weekly benefit amount and weeks of eligibility on the amount of time spent between jobs by men, distinguishing between the experiences of UI and non-UI recipients. The empirical findings suggest three conclusions: (1) UI recipients experience longer spells of nonemployment than their non-UI recipient counterparts, at least up to the point of exhaustion of UI benefits; (2) the level of the weekly benefit amount does not significantly affect the length of nonemployment spells; and (3) increasing the number of weeks of eligibility offered by a UI program leads to longer episodes of nonemployment.     

Intraday Returns and the Frequency of Trading at the Ask on the Sydney Futures Exchange: A Research Note

This article documents and provides explanations for intraday patterns in returns for the Share Price Index (SPI) futures contract traded on the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE). Consistent with overseas futures markets research, a positive and significant overnight return is documented. Unlike overseas futures markets, we find little evidence of an end of day price rise. Our evidence suggests that overnight returns for the SPI contract are largely driven by the way returns are typically measured, which ignores the fact that there is a significantly greater frequency of sellers at the market close and buyers at the start of the day. These patterns are consistent with hedging behaviour by futures traders with long positions in the underlying stock.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . The basic ideas of Henry George , 19th century American economist and social philosopher, were not novel in Denmark , which had a tradition of land value taxation and free trade. But they had special appeal for its smallholder farmers. They demanded that George's principles be applied more fully, getting all tax revenues from the land 's unimproved value, so that taxes on buildings, personal property and wages could be abolished. Viggo Ullman 's Danish-Norwegian translation of Progress and Poverty won the commitment of folk school movement leaders and the intelligentsia. In 1903 large landowners gained control of the Liberal Party and proceeded to abolish the traditional land tax, producer of up to 50 percent of State revenues. The Radical Liberals split and took over, to some extent carrying out George's taxation principles. In 1919 a Georgist party, the "Retsforbundet" was founded; it won the balance of power in 1957. But lack of finances and organizing ability and growing voter apathy ended its progress.     

Data Fixation and the Use of Traditional Versus Activity-Based Costing Systems

An important debate in the contemporary accounting literature relates to the relative merits of activity-based versus volume-based product costing methodologies. Traditional volume-based costing systems are said to be flawed and may seriously mislead strategic decision making. Such arguments assume that decision makers use such information in an unproblematic way. This article reports on an experiment designed to investigate whether decision makers are able to overcome data fixation in a setting involving the use of product cost information. In response to criticisms of previous accounting studies of data fixation, subjects received some feedback after each decision, and were rewarded based on performance. The experiment involved subjects making a series of production output decisions based on detailed case information of a hypothetical firm facing different market conditions for each decision. A between-subjects design was utilized with two cost system treatments: activity-based costing (ABC) and traditional costing (TC). It was hypothesized that the group provided with ABC cost data would make 'optimal' decisions and the group provided with TC cost data would overcome fixation. The results of the experiment indicated that there was, in general, evidence of data fixation among TC subjects, but a small number of subjects did adjust to ABC costs. These results are discussed in the light of previous research and some future directions are outlined.     

Issues in the estimation and application of latent structure models of choice

Our paper provides a brief review and summary of issues and advances in the use of latent structure and other finite mixture models in the analysis of choice data. Focus is directed to three primary areas: (1) estimation and computational issues, (2) specification and interpretation issues, and (3) future research issues. We comment on what latent structure models have promised, what has been, to date, delivered, and what we should look forward to in the future.     

An Option-Pricing Approach to the Costs of Export Credit Insurance

This article investigates the relationship between a debtor country's external financial indicators and the costs associated with the insurance of export credits to that country. For this purpose a stylized model of export credit insurance (ECI) is developed, the central idea being that ECI is similar to a contingent claim such as a European put option. Thus, tools from option pricing theory were used to calculate the price of ECI, implying that not only the current financial position but also the volatility of the changes in that position determine such costs. The empirical results of a statistical analysis of the premium rates for ECI, applied by a private export credit insurer to seventy-seven developing countries during 1993, provide some support for these hypotheses. In particular, the reserves-over-imports ratio of a debtor country and the volatility of the rates of change of this ratio appear to contribute significantly to the premium rates that apply to that country. Thus, the article provides evidence that option pricing parameters do play role in practical insurance pricing, even if this pricing is not explicitly based on these parameters. Premium rates are set as if an underlying option market operated. Thus, the trade of countries with volatile external financial positions is saddled with higher costs than that of countries with more stable positions.     

Retail pricing: Does channel length matter?

The number of intermediary levels between a manufacturer and the final market in a distribution channel varies from industry to industry. In some cases, none are used (i.e. the distribution function is vertically integrated), while several middleman levels are used in other cases (e.g. the use of a wholesaler, a jobber, and a retailer in the distribution of meat). In this paper we examine the effect of competition on the profit-maximizing length of the distribution channel. We find that the optimal number of middleman levels increases with the substitutability of products in the market, but that there are institutional limits on the maximum number of levels in a channel. The analysis also suggests that differences in the objectives of channel members (e.g. the maximization of total channel profit versus the maximization of each member's individual profit) affect optimal channel length: a goal of total channel profit maximization produces a channel at least as long as one of individual (non-co-operative) member profit maximization. The work thus complements existing research focusing on intra-channel (e.g. cost-based) explanations of channel length, using a framework similar to those investigating competitive incentives for vertical integration in distribution.