Private debt overhang and the government spending multiplier: Evidence for the United States

Using state‐dependent local projections and historical US data, we find that government spending multipliers are considerably larger in periods of private debt overhang. In particular, while multipliers are below or close to one in low private debt states, we find significant crowding‐in of private spending in periods of debt overhang, resulting in multipliers that are much larger than one. In high private debt episodes, more government purchases even reduce the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product. These results are robust for the type of shocks, and when we control for the business cycle, financial crises, deleveraging episodes, government debt overhang, and the zero‐lower‐bound.     

Resource Acquisition,Internationalization, and the Catch-up Path of Chinese Construction Machinery Champions—The Case of Sany,XCMG, and Zoomlion

This study investigates the internationalization and resource accumulation process of the three largest Chinese construction machinery companies: Sany, XCMG and Zoomlion. It takes a longitudinal approach to analyze the internationalization process of the three companies over the last 25 years. Although the three companies’ paths in the early acquisition of technologies and firm-specific advantages (FSA) differ significantly, however, their internationalization process exhibits similar pattern. They all exploit the same home-country based FSAs in their south-south expansion into other emerging markets, and seem to mimic each other in their strategic moves. In the south-north expansion into advanced economies they skip the export stage and rely almost exclusively on foreign direct investment of both forms, greenfield and M&A, to pursue asset augmenting objectives and overcome their “liability of origin”. The study concludes by discussing several topics of interest, such as the implications of accelerated resource accumulation, the impact on competition with advanced multinationals in the home market or possible effects on the level of state support and risk taking behavior in the internationalization process by the companies’ ownership type.     

Time variation in U.S. wage dynamics

Supply and demand shocks had much stronger long-run effects on nominal wages and prices during the “Great Inflation”. For supply shocks, there is even a sign switch in the nominal wage response. Before and after the “Great Inflation”, nominal wages moved in the same direction as real wages and in the opposite direction of the price level, whereas nominal wages and prices moved in the same direction at longer horizons after the shock in the 1970s. Estimation of a DSGE model shows that these results reflect changes in the degree of wage indexation over time, which was considerably higher during the “Great Inflation”.     

Analyzing technological threats and opportunities in wireless data services

The ability to assess the threat and opportunity that technological innovations pose to an organisation's profitability, growth and survival has become one of the key elements in the development of offensive and defensive innovation strategies. Central to this process of assessing technological threats and opportunities is the need to analyze various aspects of identified technological developments. A range of analysis techniques exists, and a number of these are discussed and simultaneously applied to a specific technological development. While threat and opportunity assessment is relevant to almost any company in any industry, it is especially relevant to industries characterised by high rates of volatility such as the communications industry. The technological development, which has been chosen to apply these analysis techniques to, is the offering of 2.5/3G wireless data services, which is currently of great significance in the communications industry. The point of view that is taken is that of a European mobile network operator (MNO) that needs to assess the threats and opportunities that this development poses to its business. The result shows that the analysis process leads to a better understanding of not only the identified developments, their driving forces and enablers, but also their possible impacts on the organisation. This greatly enables the extent to which developments represent a threat or opportunity for a specific organisation to be assessed. In the framework of the overall technological threat and opportunity assessment methodology, the results of the analysis process will feed into the strategy formulation process where possible organisational responses can be developed.     

Effect evaluation of a multifactor community intervention to reduce falls among older persons

The objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a multifactor and multimethod community intervention programme to reduce falls among older persons by at least 20%. In a pre-test-post test design, self-reported falls were registered for 10 months in the intervention community and two control communities. After the pre-test registration, participants followed the intervention programme (Information and education, Training and exercise and Environmental modifications) for 14 months. All communities were situated in the Province of Friesland in the north of The Netherlands. The study ran from November 1999 to November 2002. The participants (intervention 1122; control 630) were aged 65 years and older and lived independently. There was no significant decrease in total falls, except outside the home, among women (odds ratio = 0.54, 95% CI = 0.30-0.98; p = 0.041). The multifactor intervention programme was not effective. The reduction of falls outside the home among women could be due to reduced outdoor physical activity.     

Polit-ökonomische Aspekte des Berichts zur Lage der Verbraucher:innen

Wirtschaftsdienst - Der Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen hat erstmals ein breit angelegtes Gutachten zur Lage der Verbraucher:innen in Deutschland vorgelegt. Gert G. Wagner,...