The European Green Deal — More Than Climate Neutrality

Intereconomics - The European Green Deal aims at climate neutrality for Europe by 2050, implying a significant acceleration of emission reductions. To gain the necessary support, it needs to reduce...     

Systemic Cooperative Actions among Competitors: the Case of a Furniture Cluster in Brazil

The purpose of this article is to describe cooperation practices observed in competitors companies in a furniture cluster in Brazil. The literature refers to it as coopetition. The research method was the multiple case study. The main research technique was the semi-structured interviews with practitioners of the cluster. The study created a theoretical framework for cooperative practices in industrial clusters formed by four types of practices: logistics, marketing and sales, formation of the workforce, and innovation and technology. The study investigates these four types of cooperation in five large companies that compete in the same market, the anchor companies of the cluster. The only entirely complied type of collaboration is the formation of the workforce of the cluster. In the other practices, cooperation involving competitors is lower than reported in the literature. The main reason for this low cooperation is excessive rivalry and mutual distrust in the cluster, and competition by differentiation, which partially prevent the gain of scale provided by cooperative actions.     

Navigating Rough Waters: Global Shipping and Challenges for the North Range Ports

Intereconomics - Ports and shipping have been in the spotlight in 2021 with surging demand, skyrocketing freight rates and week-long queues. This development stands against the background of the...     

Premiummarken im Sortiment des Einzelhandels — Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsperspektiven

Das Führen von Premiummarken bietet dem Einzelhandel unter den aktuellen Marktbedingungen nicht nur M?glichkeiten einer individuellen Akzentuierung und Differenzierung von Sortimenten, sondern auch interessante Entwicklungsperspektiven.Wesentliche Herausforderungen bestehen dabei in einer zielgruppenbezogenen Entwicklung von Premiummarkenstrategien sowie in einer st?rkeren Professionalisierung der Markenführung.     

Mortality due to injuries in Maputo City, Mozambique

Records of all registered deaths due to injuries maintained by the Legal Medicine Department in Maputo City for the period 1 January to 31 December 2000 were reviewed. Among the 1135 registered deaths, road traffic injuries accounted for the most common underlying cause of death (43.7%), followed by firearm discharge (8.7%) and burns (7.8%). For all deaths, skull fracture (21.9%), organ system injury (17.2%) and brain tissue injury (9.3%) were the most important intermediate causes of death and among the immediate causes of death acute anaemia (21.9%) was the most common followed by asphyxia (14.4%) and traumatic shock (12.0%). Overall, most cases were seen in the age group 20-29 years (27.0%) and comprising mainly males (male/female ratio 3.1). The most commonly reported cause for the victims to sustain injuries leading to death were accidents (59.4%), followed by homicides (19.8%), unknown causes (16.1%) and suicides (4.2%). Prevention of road traffic injuries and improved emergency care and health facility-based treatment is needed to reduce injury-related mortality.     

Sustainable Supply Chain Management Integration: A Qualitative Analysis of the German Manufacturing Industry

Firms are increasingly integrating sustainability into their supply chain management (SCM) practices. The goal is to achieve sustainable flows of products, services, information and capital to provide maximum value to all corporate stakeholders. Prior research on SCM integration has insufficiently addressed sustainability. The objective of this research is to provide for a coherent and testable model of sustainable supply chain management integration (SSCMI). By drawing on four cases from the German manufacturing industry, we seek to identify the most important factors that enable or impede the integration of sustainability into SCM.     

ANALYST BEHAVIOR SURROUNDING TENDER OFFER ANNOUNCEMENTS

We examine the usefulness and credibility of analyst recommendations by focusing on their behavior surrounding tender offer announcements. For our 1998–2001 sample, we find analysts did not identify takeover targets through their recommendations nor did they distinguish between wealth‐increasing and wealth‐decreasing tender offers. We find some evidence of conflicts of interest in analyst recommendations, but it is confined to the 1999–2000 dot‐com period. However, the long‐run performance following recommendations suggests that these conflicts have little ultimate cost to investors.     

New evidence on the dynamic wage curve for Western Germany: 1980–2004

Blanchflower and Oswald [Blanchflower, David G. and Oswald, Andrew J., 1994a, The Wage Curve, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press), Blanchflower, David G. and Oswald, Andrew J., 1994b, Estimating a Wage Curve for Britain 1973–90, The Economic Journal 104, 1025–1043. Eine praktische Einführung, Nürnberg] reported that they have found an ‘empirical law of economics’ — the Wage Curve. Our paper reconsiders the western German Wage Curve using disaggregated regional data and is based on almost one million employees drawn from the Federal Employment Services of Germany over the period 1980–2004. We find that the wage equation is highly autoregressive but far from unit root. The unemployment elasticity is significant but relatively small: only between ? 0.02 and ? 0.04. We also check the sensitivity of this elasticity for different population groups (young versus old, men versus women, less educated versus highly educated, German native versus foreigner), confirming that it is stronger the weaker the bargaining power of the particular group.