SYSMIN: An evaluation

The Third Lomé Trade and Co-operation Convention between the European Community and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries was signed on 8th December 1984. It is valid for the period from 1.3. 1985 to 28.2. 1990 and incorporates an extension of SYSMIN, the special financing facility for mining products created five years earlier under Lomé II. Now that Lomé III has passed its mid-term it is time to take stock of what SYSMIN has achieved and to begin thinking about improvements to be negotiated for Lomé IV.     

Gibt es einen transmedialen Nutzungsstil?

The article deals with the question of whether there are individual patterns of media use that can be observed not only across different situations but also across media types.We do not deal with the question in which quantity individuals use different media types; we rather focus on the media-specific style of usage they exhibit. As example, we assume that persons who usually choose television programs spontaneously also prefer spontaneous and heuristic selection styles when using other media types. Starting with an overview of previous theories, an explanation of the concept of ?trans-media use patterns‘ (TMUP), and some earlier empirical evidence, the paper develops a catalogue of different dimensions of TMUP and suggests media-specific operationalizations for television, daily newspapers, magazines, and web sites. This catalogue was submitted to n = 382 persons as a part of a questionnaire in summer 2004 (representative quota sample). The results confirm the concept: Almost all dimensions of TMUP correlate across the four media types; most of them significantly. Furthermore, the study shows how close the different media types are to each other in terms of usage and handling when looked at from the users’ perspective. A final outlook discusses the relevance of the concept and sketches future steps for theoretical and empirical research.     

Informationswert und Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse bei dispositiver EDV-Anwendung

Zeitschrift für die gesamte Versicherungswissenschaft -     

The optimal intertemporal decision on industrial production and harvesting a renewable natural resource

This paper grew out of a research project financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in its program Economics of Natural Resources. This support is gratefully acknowledged. I also thank H. Wacker for helpful discussions. I also thank two anonymous referees for valuable comments on an earlier draft.     

Empirical Risk Analysis of Pension Insurance: The Case of Germany

The book reserve system is the most widespread method of financing occupational pension plans in Germany. The pension liabilities are mutually insured by the Pensions-Sicherungs-Verein VVaG (PSVaG) against bankruptcy. The PSVaG recently stated that the insurance system needed to be reformed. In the future, risk-adjusted premiums as foreseen for the newly established Pension Protection Fund in the United Kingdom could become feasible. We perform a credit portfolio analysis to determine the risk profile of the PSVaG. The magnitude of a tail risk event suggests that under the current financing system it can only be smoothed out over decades. Under an expected loss pricing plan insurance premiums would vary greatly. In a marginal risk contribution approach the variation of the premiums would be less pronounced.     

The need for Positive Adjustment Policies in the 1980s

In view of the close relationship between macro-economic performance, structural adjustment and international trade, the OECD Council established in 1979 a programme of work on Positive Adjustment Policies. Under this mandate, a Special Group of the Economic Policy Committee (under the chairmanship of Dr. Hans Tietmeyer, presently Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Finance in Bonn) was to review the macro-economic, structural and international implications of industrial, regional, manpower and other micro-economic policies, and to examine the adjustment policies of individual member countries. This work resulted in a Ministerial Declaration in 1982 on Positive Adjustment Policies and in a Final Report of the Special Group which is to be published shortly. The following article by Prof. Wolfgang Michalski, who directed this OECD project, is a résumé of the main conclusions.     

Capacity effects and winner fund performance: the relevance and interactions of fund size and family characteristics

This study analyzes the existence of capacity effects and performance persistence for US equity mutual funds for the period from 1992 to 2007. We focus on winner funds and distinguish between capacity effects from both size and inflows and explore their interactions with two measures of family size, i.e. family total net assets under management (family TNA) and the number of funds at the family level (family breadth). The differentiation of family size allows us to analyze competing effects at the family level such as economies of scale as well as organizational complexity costs and conflicts of interest. Our empirical results confirm diseconomies of scale at the winner fund level and indicate that only small winner funds with low inflows significantly outperform the four-factor benchmark on a net return basis. There are no universal benefits from economies of scale at the family level, but our findings suggest the existence of conflicts of interest in families offering a relatively large number of funds. Small winner funds in families offering a small number of funds significantly outperform while economies of scale only materialize among extremely small winner funds. We provide detailed robustness checks for our empirical results. Overall, simply conditioning on fund size is not sufficient for selecting future outperforming funds. The results indicate that fund investors may earn positive abnormal returns when combining information on fund size with information on fund flows or fund family affiliations in their asset allocation decisions.     

Frequent business travelers across Europe: Career aspirations and implications

In human resource management (HRM) and career research, the focus has typically been on traditional expatriates (e.g., Mayrhofer, Sparrow, & Zimmermann, 2008). Even though alternative forms of international mobility, such as flexpatriates (i.e., frequent business travelers and international commuters; Mayerhofer, Hartmann, & Herbert, 2004), have become quite common, this trend still seems to be neglected in research (e.g., Harris, Brewster, & Erten, 2005). This empirical article presents career aspirations of Austrian flexpatriates as well as perceived consequences of frequent flying on future careers, private life, and well‐being. The results are compared with selected theoretical concepts from career and career‐success literature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Fettleibigkeit begünstigt Entstehung chronischer Wunden

Je h?her der BMI, desto h?her das Risiko – Das Entstehen chronischer Wunden kann durch die Adipositas, insbesondere die Adipositas permagna, begünstigt oder sogar ausgel?st werden. Deshalb müssen neben allen Ma?nahmen der modernen lokalen Wundbehandlung immer auch die M?glichkeiten zur Reduktion des übergewichts der betroffenen Patienten bedacht werden.