Business aviation in Germany: An empirical and model-based analysis

The primary role of large airports is to serve the general public with scheduled and charter air transport services, with a secondary role of providing direct air transport access to regional industry and to firms who operate their own fleets of aircraft. Because of the complexity of slot allocation procedures and increasing runway capacity problems at airports, there is a growing problem in realising this secondary function. Neighbouring regional airports could play a complementary role and cope with some of this growth in traffic. Here we quantify the distribution of growing business aviation demand between airports to explore potential ways of accommodating it at both major and nearby secondary facilities.     

Guilt Appeals and Prosocial Behavior: An Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Anticipatory Versus Reactive Guilt Appeals on the Effectiveness of Blood Donor Appeals

This study investigates the effectiveness of guilt-arousing communication in promoting prosocial behavior. By analyzing the distinct effects of anticipatory versus reactive guilt appeals, we contribute to the discussion of guilt appeals as drivers of prosocial behavior, especially blood donation. Research on persuasive communication provides the theoretical basis of our study and we validate our hypotheses by means of two 2?×?2 factorial between-subjects designs. We find that anticipatory rather than reactive guilt appeals are more effective in generating prosocial action tendencies. Compared to noninformational reference group influences, messages endorsed by members of informational reference groups yielded more favorable attitudinal responses. Besides their significant main effect, two-sided messages reinforce the favorable impact of anticipatory guilt appeals. The study concludes with practical implications for nonprofit organizations and public blood donor services as well as avenues for future research.     

Questionnaire based mortality assessment: an exploratory analysis of NHANES III

The need for speed and efficiency in life insurance underwriting has never been greater. With increasing acquisition costs, the need for timeliness to complete the sales process, and the need for accurate mortality prediction a great deal of resources have been devoted to the development of non-traditional underwriting processes and criteria in hopes of streamlining the process. In this paper, we describe an exploratory analysis of mortality linked data from the US NHANES III study. Our goal for this analysis was to identify mortality predictors that would be good candidates for further investigation in insurance applicants, especially in the context of simplified issue products which focus on younger age applicants. We identified aerobic exercise, dental health, alcohol beverage type and quantity, and dietary components and patterns as factors that may hold promise as mortality predictors in persons age 17-65. Though the limitations of this analysis preclude the immediate use of these factors as underwriting criteria, it does appear that several of these hold promise, and should be tested in an insurance application context. Focus groups, market testing, or even insertion as non-actionable questions in a subset of applications may be ways to collect further data on them.     

Inflation persistence in the Euro area before and after the European Monetary Union

This paper provides new evidence on inflation persistence before and after the European Monetary Union (EMU). Taking into account fractional integration of inflation, we confirm that inflation dynamics differed considerably across Euro area countries before the start of EMU. Since 1999, however, results obtained from panel estimation indicate that the degree of long run inflation persistence has converged. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that the persistence of inflation has significantly decreased in the Euro area, probably as a result of the more effective monetary policy of the ECB.     

Determining the optimal market structure using near-zero intelligence traders

We evaluate an agent-based model featuring near-zero-intelligence traders operating in a call market with a wide range of trading rules governing the determination of prices, which orders are executed as well as a range of parameters regarding market intervention by specialists and the presence of informed traders. We optimize these trading rules using a population-based incremental learning algorithm seeking to maximize the trading volume. Our results suggest markets should choose a large tick size and ensure only a small fraction of traders are informed about the order book. The effect of trading rules regarding the determination of prices, priority rules, and specialist intervention, we find to have an ambiguous effect on the outcome.     

Modernization and dependence

The salient feature of the theoretical discussion of development problems is still the rivalry between two approaches. An outline and critique of the dependencia school and the modernization theory is provided in the following article which also points out possibilities of combining both these sets of explanations in an attempt to overcome the dichotomy of development theory.     

The Repo Auctions of the European Central Bank and the Vanishing Quota Puzzle*

Until June 2000 the European Central Bank (ECB) used fixed rate tenders for its weekly repo auctions. A switch to variable rate tenders became necessary due to massive overbidding by banks. In this paper we introduce a stylized game among banks to investigate this overbidding phenomenon. Our results confirm the weakness of the fixed rate tender format and indicate that the ECB's liquidity management has significantly improved since the switch to the variable rate system. Yet recent episodes of rate cut expectations suggest that the ECB's practice of setting a minimum bid rate should be abandoned in favor of a more symmetric interest rate target.     

The prison rule in roulette

Summary In many casinoes a bet on even money chances is not immediately lost when a zero falls. Instead, the stake is imprisoned, and the gambler has the options of demanding half his money back or letting the next spins of the wheel decide on the fate of the stake. These options are compared in respect to their winning probabilities by simple recursive methods.