Between dependence and deprivation: The interlocking nature of land alienation in Tanzania

Studies of accumulation by dispossession in the Global South tend to focus on individual sectors, for example, large‐scale agriculture or nature conservation. Yet smallholder farmers and pastoralists are affected by multiple processes of land alienation. Drawing on the case of Tanzania, we illustrate the analytical purchase of a comprehensive examination of dynamics of land alienation across multiple sectors. To begin with, processes of land alienation through investments in agriculture, mining, conservation, and tourism dovetail with a growing social differentiation and class formation. These dynamics generate unequal patterns of land deprivation and accumulation that evolve in a context of continued land dependency for the vast majority of the rural population. Consequently, land alienation engenders responses by individuals and communities seeking to maintain control over their means of production. These responses include migration, land tenure formalization, and land transactions, that propagate across multiple localities and scales, interlocking with and further reinforcing the effects of land alienation. Various localized processes of primitive accumulation contribute to a scramble for land in the aggregate, providing justifications for policies that further drive land alienation.     

Is R & D Financially Constrained? Theory and Evidence from Irish Manufacturing

We re-examine the effects of liquidity constraints on R & D investment. Inour theoretical section we extend the neoclassical framework of investmentin physical capital by introducing R & D and liquidity constraints. Weanalyse this issue empirically using firm-level data for R & D activemanufacturing firms in the Republic of Ireland. Our results provide evidencethat suggests that R & D investment is financially constrained. This is inline with previous studies of U.S. firms.     

Aktuelle Entwicklungen in der Beaufsichtigung und Rechnungslegung von Versicherungsunternehmen: IFRS und Solvency II

Accounting and supervision are closely related, especially via the determination of regulatory capital. As a precondition for the harmonisation of solvency rules within Europe, as discussed in the context of Solvency II, there is a need for harmonised accounting rules regarding the recognition and measurement of assets and liabilities. The International Financial Reporting Standards resp. International Accounting Standards (IFRS resp. IAS) are used as a starting point. Insurance contracts are accounted for under IFRS 4, published in March 2004, which is only established as an interim standard allowing insurance companies to continue their existing accounting policy without major changes in their accounting systems. The IASB has just begun working on a final standard (Phase II). The IASB’s work on the final standard should be taken into account for the determination of regulatory capital as well. The third pillar of Solvency II is an additional connection between international accounting standards and the Solvency II project: extensive disclosure requirements companies shall provide disciplinary transparency with regard to their risk management systems and risk profiles.     

Non-executive compensation in German and Swiss banks before and after the financial crisis

We provide an extensive overview of the determinants of compensation schemes for non-executive employees in the German and Swiss financial services industry. We analyze how pay systems adjust in the aftermath of the financial crisis and find that the crisis had a deep impact on short-term bonus payments. Our results indicate that restrictions on bonus payments may lead to higher fixed salaries and, hence, to a lower performance sensitivity of compensation. We also show that fixed compensation packages are highly standardized between banks, whereas bonus payments are more strongly related to differences between individuals. In Germany, bonuses vary to a higher extent across companies, whereas in Swiss banks, the differences are almost negligible when adding firm controls.     

Family size and child outcomes: Is there really no trade-off?

We study the impact of family size on intermediate and long-term outcomes using twin births as an exogenous source of variation in family size in an unusually rich dataset. Similar to recent studies, we find no evidence of a causal effect on long-term outcomes and show that not taking selection effects into account will likely overstate the effects. We do, however, find a small but significant negative impact of family size on grades in compulsory and secondary school among children who are likely to be vulnerable to further restrictions on parental investments.     

The management of an ageing workforce: organisational policies in Germany and Britain

Demographic change as well as pressure from the European Union and national government are forcing organisations to change age‐discriminatory HRM approaches. Based on a qualitative analysis of eight British and German organisations, we found that commitment, scope, coverage and implementation of age management differ due to country‐specific institutions, particularly government, in nudging employers and unions to preferred age practices. This confirms the path dependency concept suggested by institutional theory. Nevertheless, we also found that industry‐specific factors mediate the implementation of age management, leading to some convergence across countries. This indicates that organisations deviate from the institutional path to implement practices that they deem important.     

Randomized observation periods for the compound Poisson risk model: the discounted penalty function

In the framework of collective risk theory, we consider a compound Poisson risk model for the surplus process where the process (and hence ruin) can only be observed at random observation times. For Erlang(n) distributed inter-observation times, explicit expressions for the discounted penalty function at ruin are derived. The resulting model contains both the usual continuous-time and the discrete-time risk model as limiting cases, and can be used as an effective approximation scheme for the latter. Numerical examples are given that illustrate the effect of random observation times on various ruin-related quantities.