Die ökonomischen Konsequenzen der Korruption

Korruption ist ein weltumspannendes Ph?nomen, das—wie die jüngsten F?lle bei BMW, Infineon, Siemens und Volkswagen deutlich machen—auch in Deutschland aktuell ist. Wie ?u?ert sich Korruption, welche Folgen hat sie für die Volkwirtschaft, und wie l?sst sie sich bek?mpfen? Robert Vehrkamp behandelt die ?konomischen Konsequenzen der Korruption, Johann Graf Lambsdorff und Mathias Nell die Reformma?nahmen, die für ihre wirksame Bek?mpfung erforderlich sind.     

INNOVATION AND GROWTH WITH RICH AND POOR CONSUMERS

This work studies the impact of income inequality on the level of innovative activities in a model where innovations result in quality improvements. In contrast to the standard model of innovations and growth, the equilibrium outcome may be characterized by a situation where not only the quality leader but also producers of worse qualities are on the market. In that case the quality leader sells to the rich, whereas the producer of the second‐best quality sells to the poor. In general, we find that a more equal distribution of income is favourable for innovation incentives. This is consistent with empirical evidence suggesting that countries with a more equal distribution of income have grown faster.     

Insights Regarding the Applicability of the Defining Issues Test to Advance Ethics Research with Accounting Students: A Meta-analytic Review

Numerous researchers have investigated accounting students’ levels of moral reasoning, ethical choice and judgment employing the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and using its P score as an indicator of moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, a number of DIT studies report conflicting results. Moreover, despite widespread use of the DIT, there is concern that it may not adequately measure all facets of ethical judgment (cf. Bailey et al., Behav Res Account 22(2):1–26, 2010). Thus, we endeavor to provide insight not only into the contradictory results but also about the applicability of the DIT for studying accounting students. To do so, we collect published and unpublished DIT studies employing accounting students as subjects and use meta-analysis to aggregate findings across these studies to quantify their results, examining commonly employed variables. We show significant relationships between P scores and some variables (length of professional experience, choice of major, political ideology, gender, GPA and education level) but not others (age). Further, our findings demonstrate that the DIT provides added insights when exploring questions of ethical choice, and ethics instruction, particularly when the instruction is embedded in an accounting course. Finally, we find that the level of DIT P scores reported in the studies relates to whether the study was published. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research.     

A Model of Bargaining over Hazardous Waste Cleanup

We put forward a formal model of a bargaining problem in which two parties suspected of contaminating the environment are responsible for clean-up costs. If the parties do not negotiate an agreement on a cost allocation, one will be imposed by the government. This process is commonly used in environmental cleanups performed under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). Passed by the US Congress in 1980 and administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), CERCLA provides the U.S. government with authority to manage releases (or threatened releases) of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. We conclude that potentially responsible parties will be induced to settle only in the face of specific allocations of clean-up and explicit threats. For example, at the Middlefield–Ellis–Whisman Superfund site in Mountain View, California, the responsibilities of the different parties for soil and groundwater contamination are understood by all, yet our negotiation model predicts that without the threat that additional costs will be imposed, agreement on the allocation of clean up costs will never be reached.     

Factors Affecting Self-Employment among Indian and Black Caribbean Men in Britain

The central issue addressed in this paper is encapsulated in the fact that many Indians, but relatively few black Caribbeans, are self-employed in Britain. This paper suggests two factors: first, black Caribbeans were "ethnically disinclined" to enter business; second, they did not posses the attributes that were positively related to entering business. Using data from the 1991 Census, this paper pinpoints how much of the observed paucity of self-employed black males in Britain was use to ethnic disinclination and how much was due to attribute disadvantage. More generally, it points to the importance of harnessing attitudes to attributes for generating a high rate rate of entry into self-employment. In this context, the acquisition of "social" attributes that relate to family formation, and the welding of the family into a cohesive economic unit, are at least as important as those attributes, like education, which relate purely to the individual.     

Luft zum Atmen

Mehr Sicherheit im Umgang mit Trachealkanülen - Pflegende, die Patienten mit einer Trachealkanüle betreuen, müssen den Kanülenwechsel sicher beherrschen. Denn bei Komplikationen kann das Warten auf den Arzt katastrophale Folgen haben. Daher muss der Umgang mit den Kanülen zur Routine werden.     

Corporate Sustainability Reporting: A Study in Disingenuity?

Over recent years, there has been a focus in corporate activity upon the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and one of its central platforms, the notion of sustainability, and particularly sustainable development. We argue in this article that the use of such a term has the effect of obfuscating the real situation regarding the effect of corporate activity upon the external environment and the consequent implications for the future. One of the effects of persuading that corporate activity is sustainable is that the cost of capital for the firm is reduced as investors are misled into thinking that the level of risk involved in their investment is lower than it actually is. We analyse the effects of this misrepresentation and argue for a fuller debate about sustainability.