On optimal growth when there are many goods and factors

This paper summarizes some findings with respect to optimal growth when saving and the state of the arts are endogenous, natural resources shrink, and the numbers of goods and basic factors are possibly large. Outcomes of some numerical experiments are reported. The dynamic-programming algorithm is used for time-optimization and linear programming for instantaneous optimization. Progress can plausibly balance out depletion, without the help of capital accumulation. Many goods can produce a multiplicity of maximal extreme points in solution space, from which the productioin-possibility frontier becomes a multiple-dimensional hyperplane, moving outward over time.Presidential Address presented at the Forty-Third International Atlantic Economic Conference, London, England, March 11–18, 1997.     

MRSA – Angemessen reagieren

Nosokomiale Infektionen - Multiresistente Mikroorganismen haben sich weltweit zu einem gro?en Problem entwickelt. Neben den Methicillin-resistenten Staphylokokken (MRSA) steigen auch die Resistenzzahlen anderer Mikrobenarten dramatisch. Insbesondere kritisch kranke Patienten sind durch sie gef?hrdet. Doch wie sieht ein angemessener Umgang mit Problemkeimen aus? Franz Sitzmann diskutiert übliche Strategien und zeigt Alternativen auf.     

Neo-protectionism and economic growth

The world economy is threatening to find itself in a vicious circle of escalating protectionism. Franz Peter Lang explains the dangers and consequences of this. Gary Banks argues that the “new protectionism” is not so much a temporary by-product of the recession as the external manifestation of internal domestic struggles between vested interests and the public interest, and pleads for the establishment of a “transparency institution”.     

Die Zusammenhänge zwischen den Veränderungen der Nachfragestruktur und dem wirtschaftlichen Wachstum

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Rural development and financial markets in Romania

In the transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, such as in Romania, the domestic financial market plays two important roles. First, the financial market itself must be fundamentally restructured. Second, its efficient functioning is a crucial precondition for economic transformation. In transition economies, however, financial market institutions tend to concentrate their services on urban or larger rural enterprises. So far, small rural enterprises, even those with profitable investment plans, often do not have access to the financial market. This paper briefly characterizes the key issues of agricultural production units and their institutional environment and analyzes the depth and the efficiency of rural finance and its effect on Romania's rural economic transformation. It concludes with policy and institutional recommendations to strengthen rural finance.     

Representation in UK Employment Tribunals: Analysis of the 2003 and 2008 Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications (SETA)

The perception is that formal representation is increasingly common in UK Employment Tribunals (ETs), as case volumes and complexity increase. We investigate the nature of representation in UK ETs using the 2003 and 2008 Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications (SETA). The results suggest that between 2003 and 2008, the extent of formal claimant representation declined. The majority of employers and claimants are either heavily represented or have little/no representation, and there is little evidence that claimant representation is a response to employer representation at least at the level of individual claims. Overall, however, it would seem that some of the ‘accessible, informal and inexpensive’ characteristics envisaged by Donovan continue to apply only to cases within certain jurisdictions.     

The integration of direct real estate and stock markets in Asia

Currently, there exists relatively little research investigating the long-term association between stock and direct real estate markets. Using appropriate transaction-based property indices, this study focuses on the relationship between stock and direct real estate markets in nine Asian countries from the period 1980 to 2012 through both linear and nonlinear cointegration techniques. We find empirical evidence of linear cointegration of stock and property markets in Taiwan, fractional cointegration in Singapore and Hong Kong and no evidence of cointegration in China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. It is concluded that segmentation of property markets from stock markets does not appear to be linked to the differences in the maturity of national financial markets and that the differing degrees of integration across Asia may instead be reflective of a range of factors impacting upon the underlying economic structures in each country.     

What Makes a Family Firm Innovative? CEO Risk‐Taking Propensity and the Organizational Context of Family Firms

Investigating the new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms connects two important topics that have recently received considerable attention in innovation and family firm research. First, new product portfolio innovativeness has been identified as a critical determinant of firm performance. Second, research on family firms has focused on the questions of if and why family firms are more or less innovative than other organizational forms. Research investigating the innovativeness of family firms has often applied a risk‐oriented perspective by identifying socioemotional wealth (SEW) as the main reference that determines firm behavior. Thus, prior research has mainly focused on the organizational context to predict innovation‐related family firm behavior and neglected the impact of preferences and the behavior of the chief executive officer (CEO), which have both been shown to affect firm outcomes. Hence, this study aims to extend the previous research by introducing the CEO's disposition to organizational context variables to explain the new product portfolio innovativeness of small and medium‐sized family firms. Specifically, this study explores how the organizational context (i.e., ownership by top management team [TMT] family members and generation in charge of the family firm) of family firms interacts with CEO risk‐taking propensity to affect new product portfolio innovativeness. Using a sample of 114 German CEOs of small and medium‐sized family firms operating in manufacturing industries, the results show that CEO risk‐taking propensity has a positive effect on new product portfolio innovativeness. Moreover, the analyses show that the organizational context of family firms impacts the relationship between CEO risk‐taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness. Specifically, the relationship between CEO risk‐taking propensity and new product portfolio innovativeness is weaker if levels of ownership by TMT family members are high (high SEW). Additionally, the effect of CEO risk‐taking propensity on new product portfolio innovativeness is stronger in family firms at earlier generational stages (high SEW). This result suggests that if SEW is a strong reference, family firm‐specific characteristics can affect individual dispositions and, in turn, the behaviors of executives. Therefore, this study helps extend the knowledge on the determinants of new product portfolio innovativeness of family firms by considering an individual CEO preference and the organizational context variables of family firms simultaneously.