Quantifying the CO2 Permit Price Sensitivity

Equilibrium models have been widely used in the literature with the aim of showing theoretical properties of emissions trading schemes. This paper applies equilibrium models to empirically study permit prices and to quantify the permit price sensitivity. In particular, we demonstrate that emission trading schemes both with and without banking are inherently prone to price jumps.     

Power learning: racing ahead of your competition

Adhering to accepted practices, not wanting to rock the boat, and squelching dissenting opinions sentence organizations to a repetition of their mistakes. To be successful, organizations must continually learn. Organizations that learn are competitive. They are on the leading edge. They create their own futures instead of being created by their futures. The objective of this article is to present a new approach to learning that greatly enhances the quality of training and educational programs. The key subjects include learning styles, left and right brain processing, and the 4MAT System. In addition, two brief case studies are presented.     

The Strategic Social Map of a Nongovernmental Organization

Currently, the traditional states-nation, as far as their social commitments are concerned, are giving way to the nongovernmental organizations (NGO). These organizations have a mission, strategy, and goals different from those organizations looking simply for profits. Nevertheless, NGOs are concerned about using management and information systems at least as good as those used by private companies. Organizations try to develop a social strategy taking their social responsibility as starting point. In this paper, the authors describe how to fix the organization mission, its strategy and goals, and also how to make its action map. A strategy proposal will be described, as well as the way on how to put it into practice. The main goals of this paper is to describe the mission, strategy, and goals of the organization; design its strategic social map; fix the limits of the organization's action; apply the theoretical model to a NGO; and design an information model in order to manage the strategic development. The authors would like to express their gratitude to M. Dolors Celma Benaiges, lecturer at the Escola Universitària del Maresme, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, for her assistance reviewing and translating the paper.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

An application of the renewal theoretic selection principle: The first divisible sum

Summary This paper deals with the distribution of the first partial sum of a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables which is divisible by some integerk>1. We give a formula for its characteristic function and obtain limit results fork. A new characterization of the geometric distribution is also given. The results are applicable to models such as periodically observed self-renewing aggregates.     

Activity-based costing methodology for third-party logistics companies

This paper will analyze the main costs that third-party logistics companies are facing and develops an activity-based costing methodology useful for this kind of company. It will examine the most important activities carried out by third-party distributors in both warehousing and transporting activities. However, the focus is mainly on the activity of distributing the product to the final receiver when this final receiver is not the customer of the third-party logistics company.The author is grateful to Gerard Ryan for his invaluable comments on this paper.     

Sicherungssysteme für Finanzdienstleistungsunternehmen im europäischen Vergleich – Theorieperspektive

The contribution discusses the design of guarantee schemes for financial services firms, with a focus on insurance guarantee schemes. It lists reasons that contribute to the development of guarantee schemes, especially stemming from a market failure risk. It further describes the pros and cons of ex-ante and of ex-post premium payments, and sets out arguments for and against risk based premiums of insurance guarantee schemes. The contribution also investigates whether the existence of insurance guarantee schemes might lead to a more risky insurance firm policy. Finally it examines in how far consumer protection based on insurance guarantee schemes prevents consumer protection based on market discipline that should be achieved by the third pillar of Solvency II.     

Model uncertainty and aggregated default probabilities: new evidence from Austria

Understanding the determinants of aggregated corporate default probabilities (PDs) has attracted substantial research interest over the past decades. This study addresses two major difficulties in understanding the determinants of aggregate PDs: model uncertainty and multicollinearity among the regressors. We present Bayesian model averaging (BMA) as a powerful tool that overcomes model uncertainty. Furthermore, we supplement BMA with ridge regression to mitigate multicollinearity. We apply our approach to an Austrian data set. Our findings suggest that factor prices like short-term interest rates (STIs) and energy prices constitute major drivers of default rates, while firms’ profits reduce the expected number of failures. Finally, we show that the results of our model are fairly robust with respect to the choice of the BMA parameters.