Do new brooms sweep clean? When and why dismissing a manager increases the subordinates’ performance

If a manager stays in office for a long time he will have learned much about his subordinates. Thus competition among them will be weak as the manager has made up his mind who is suited best for which position. With a new manager the “race” for favorable tasks is restarted leading subordinates to exert higher effort. But for the firm-owner the trade-off arises that with a new manager effort is larger but the quality of task allocation is worse since information is lost. The optimal dismissal policy will be nonmonotonic in the expected heterogeneity of the subordinates’ abilities.     

Marktkonzentration und Marktmachtanalyse für den deutschen Regelenergiemarkt

We analyze the German market for tertiary electricity reserves in 2008. The cost of tertiary reserves of about €200 million accounted for 15% of the total cost of system services. The aim of the paper is to analyze the market structure to reveal possible opportunities for the execution of market power. To do so, we apply various concentration measures for the total market, as well as for all submarkets (i.e., different time frames, positive and negative reserves). We analyze: market shares, Herfindahl-Hirschman-Index, Pivotal Supplier Index (PSI) and the Residual Supply Index (RSI). Based on all concentration indicators, we find that all submarkets are best characterized as tight oligopolies with a (competitive) fringe. The four largest companies always qualify as being jointly dominant according to German competition law. The role of the fringe firms is, however, not negligible, in particular not for positive reserves. Strongest indication for market power is found for negative reserves from 0–8 a.m. Our analysis highlights that relying on single concentration indicators (e.g., market shares) can be misleading. It is sensible and often necessary to consider the full set of indicators.     

Understanding culinary tourist motivation,experience, satisfaction,and loyalty using a structural approach

Research on culinary tourism lacks an empirical examination of the relationship between motivation, experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. Drawing on the extant literature, this paper examines the relationships between antecedents and outcomes of culinary tourist participation in cooking classes using a structural equation modelling approach. Based on a convenience sample of 300 international tourists at cooking schools in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the structural model confirmed direct and indirect interrelationships among four main constructs of the study. It was found that culinary tourists’ motivation positively influences both the culinary experience and satisfaction; and that the culinary tourist experience is positively associated with both culinary tourist satisfaction and loyalty, suggesting that the more tourists are motivated to participate in cooking classes, the more experiential value and satisfaction are perceived. Moreover, the more experiences encountered at the cooking class, the more satisfied and loyal the tourists become. Understanding the key motivators and elements of satisfaction in cooking classes can contribute to the achieving of sustainable destination loyalty. The findings are relevant to Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) as part of developing sustainable strategies that are in line with specific culinary needs and experiences of cooking class participants.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

China’s Corporate Governance and Reforms

I. IntroductionSince 1978, China’s economic reforms have called for an incentive mechanism to beincorporated in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while the reforms have demonstratedconsiderable success. In the early 1990s, the Chinese government took further steps andbegan to list SOEs on stock exchanges to raise external capital and improve their efficiency.Corporate governance still remains an important issue in China as shown by the largenumber of corporate failures and scandals in r…     

The effect of the financial crisis on systemic trust

Policymakers throughout Europe are faced with the challenge of re-establishing trust, and especially systemic or institutional trust, that has been lost in the wake of the financial crisis. This paper looks at recent empirical evidence concerning the reaction to the crisis in terms of citizens’ diminished levels of systemic trust. Special attention is paid to the confidence invested in political institutions at the European and the national level, on the one hand, and in the free market economy, on the other.