Intergenerational transmission of educational attainment in Austria

Up to now, there exist several studies documenting the educational expansion in Austria in the 20th century but only few studies measureing the degree of persistence of educational attainment over generations. Furthermore, for Austria there are no internationally comparable persistence-measures of educational attainment available. This study aims to fill this gap and delivers key-measures for intergenerational persistence of educational attainment. The Austrian Household Survey on Housing Wealth includes information on socioeconomic characteristics of respondents and their parents. The results demonstrate strong persistence in educational attainment in Austria. Using uni- as well as multivariate econometric techniques and a Markovian approach we show that educational persistence decreased over time. Overall, Austria ranks third in terms of intergenerational educational attainment persistence among a number of european countries and the US. Our results therefore allow to question the significance of meritocratic values and equal opportunity for educational advancement in the Austrian society compared to other European countries and the USA.     

Effects of Personal Values on Auditor’s Ethical Decisions: A Comparison of Pakistani and Turkish Professional Auditors

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of personal values on auditor’s ethical decision-making in two countries, namely, Pakistan and Turkey. This study is the first that empirically addresses the role of values in the ethical decision-making processes of Pakistani and Turkish Professional auditors. This study surveys a random sample of these countries' professional certified auditors to assess their value preferences and reactions to an ethical dilemma. This study measures practicing auditors' value preferences by using the Rokeach value survey (RVS), and a case study is used to measure the reactions to an ethical dilemma involving client pressure for aggressive financial reporting. This study did not find statistically significant difference between the mean values of moral intensity in these two countries. On the other hand, we found statistically significant differences between the terminal and instrumental values of the auditors in the countries studied. This study suggests that perceptions of moral intensity influenced both ethical judgments and behavioral intensions.     

A Tractable Model to Measure Sector Concentration Risk in Credit Portfolios

We explore a simplified version of the value-at-risk approximation developed by Pykhtin (Risk Magazine, March, 85–90, 2004), which only requires risk parameters on a sector level. We measure the impact of credit concentrations in business sectors on the economic capital of credit portfolios. We base our portfolios’ sector composition on credit information from the German central credit register. Our results show that the approximation formula performs well for fine-grained portfolios that are homogeneous on a sector level in terms of probability of default (PD) and exposure size. We explore the robustness of our results for portfolios which are heterogeneous in terms of these two characteristics. We find that low granularity ceteris paribus causes the approximation formula to underestimate economic capital, whereas heterogeneity in individual PDs causes overestimation. Indicative results imply that in typical credit portfolios of banks, PD heterogeneity will at least compensate for the granularity effect. This result suggests that the approximation estimates economic capital reasonably well and/or errs on the conservative side.     

Heilende Düfte

Aroma?le in der Kinderkrankenpflege - S?uglinge und Aromapflege – geht das zusammen? Inwieweit lassen sich ?therische ?le auch bei Babys und Kindern anwenden? Melanie Ullrich und Ulrike Landschütz zeigen M?glichkeiten auf.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Rating model arbitrage in CDO markets: An empirical analysis

We analyze whether information asymmetry between issuers and investors leads to rating model arbitrage in Collateralized Debt Obligation markets. Rating model arbitrage is defined as the issuer's deliberate capitalization of information asymmetry at the investor's cost on the basis of different rating processes. Using data from CDO transactions grouped by both rating agencies and underlying rating methodologies, we test for homogeneity of characteristic transaction features within the group and heterogeneity between the different groups. We find that the hypothesis stating non-existence of rating model arbitrage on the basis of information asymmetry does not hold as individual patterns of transaction characteristics within each group could be identified.     

Zuwendung inbegriffen

Besser leben im Heim - Pflegekr?fte arbeiten oft unter Zeitdruck. Um die Lebensqualit?t von Bewohnern mit erheblich eingeschr?nkter Alltagskompetenz zu verbessern, sieht der Gesetzgeber im Pflege-Weiterentwicklungsgesetz vom 1. Juli 2008 zus?tzliche Betreuungskr?fte vor. Im Rummelsberger Stift St. Lorenz in Nürnberg macht man mit ihnen positive Erfahrungen.