How sensitive are consumer expenditures to retail energy prices?

There is growing evidence that the primary effect of energy price shocks on the U.S. economy involves a reduction in consumer spending. We quantify the direct effect on real consumption of unanticipated changes in discretionary income, shifts in precautionary savings, and changes in the operating cost of energy-using durables. The possibility of asymmetries in the response of real consumption to energy price shocks is also considered. We demonstrate that linear models are consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 (when energy prices increased sharply) and in 1986 (when they fell sharply). It is shown that historically energy price shocks have been an important factor in explaining U.S. real consumption growth, but by no means the dominant factor.     

User,Use & Utility Research

Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) is at a turning point. Planning, designing, developing and operating IT used to be a management task of a few elites in public ad-ministrations and corporations. But the continuous digitization of nearly all areas of life changes the IT landscape fundamentally. Success in this new era requires putting the human perspective – the digital user – at the very heart of the new digitized service-led economy. BISE faces not just a temporary trend but a complex socio-technical phenomenon with far-reaching implications. The challenges are manifold and have major consequences for all stakeholders, both in information systems and management research as well as in practice. Corporate processes have to be re-designed from the ground up, starting with the user’s perspective, thus putting usage experience and utility of the individual center stage. The digital service economy leads to highly personalized application systems while organizational functions are being fragmented. Entirely new ways of interacting with information systems, in particular beyond desktop IT, are being invented and established. These fundamental challenges require novel approaches with regards to innovation and development methods as well as adequate concepts for enterprise or service system architectures. Gigantic amounts of data are being generated at an accelerating rate by an increasing number of devices – data that need to be managed. In order to tackle these extraordinary challenges we introduce ‘user, use & utility’ as a new field of BISE that focuses primarily on the digital user, his or her usage behavior and the utility associated with system usage in the digitized service-led economy. The research objectives encompass the development of theories, methods and tools for systematic requirement elicitation, systems design, and business development for successful Business and Information Systems Engineering in a digitized economy – information systems that digital users enjoy using. This challenge calls for leveraging insights from various scientific disciplines such as Design, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Sociology. BISE can provide an integrated perspective, thereby assuming a pivotal role within the digitized service led economy.     

The Taylor principle in a medium-scale macroeconomic model

We consider a medium-scale New-Keynesian model which combines features that have been shown to explain fairly well postwar U.S. business cycles. Our main result demonstrates that the determinacy properties of forward-looking interest rate rules resemble, at least qualitatively, the corresponding outcomes under current-looking rules. We explain how and why the empiri-cally relevant features of our model generate this novel result.     

Distinguishing characteristics of ahuman economics

What are the requirements for an economics that is compatible with, and affirmative of, a meaninful image of human nature? Where does conventional economic theory show its most glaring deficiencies in this respect? What are the core human values that need to inform economic thought capable of guiding us in the design and construction of a more humane economic system? Why is the bulk of contemporary heterodox economic thinking antagonistic to the project of a human-centered economics? These are the basic questions addressed and explored in this article.     

Transparenz als Erfolgsfaktor der Vertriebssteuerung: das Beispiel Evonik Health &; Nutrition

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

How to Become Central in an Informal Social Network: An Investigation of the Antecedents to Network Centrality in an Environmental SCM Initiative

Environmental supply chain management (SCM) initiatives often evolve as informal, grassroots efforts that are driven by policy entrepreneurs at lower management levels in an organization. These individuals usually are not in positions of power or authority to convince others to support the initiative. They thus rely on central positions in informal networks to gain access to and influence over other employees to be better able to sell these initiatives. This study examines how individuals arrive at positions of centrality within the networks surrounding environmental SCM initiatives. Linking social network theory and social capital theory with findings from the organizational behavior and environmental arena, the study investigates how an individual's proactive personality and commitment profile—affective, normative, and continuance commitment—might affect network centrality through the mediating role of championing behavior. Investigating the implementation of an environmental SCM initiative at a multinational enterprise, the authors identified a 90‐actor social network surrounding the initiative. The results provide evidence that championing behavior fully mediates the relationship between commitment and network centrality and to a lesser extent between proactive personality and network centrality. These findings suggest that championing behavior can enable an actor to become more central in social networks. Further, the results indicate that in an environmental SCM context, engendering the right type of commitment is a much more important driver of championing behavior than the proactive personalities of individual actors. This finding suggests that even employees who do not have proactive personalities can champion environmental initiatives and become central within the informal networks that surround these initiatives, if they strongly desire to support the initiative and believe that the initiative will lead to positive change.     

East european trade with the developing world: soviet diplomatic partner or economic self-interest

Prior to the demise of the Communist system in Eastern Europe, the trade of these countries with the developing world was supportive of Soviet diplomatic aims at least in part. In the late 1950s, correspondence between the trade links of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was particularly close. In later periods, the trade of Eastern Europe was less closely aligned with that of the Soviet Union, but there was still evidence that East European trade with the developing world followed upon Soviet goals and initiatives in some instances, indicating the strong possibility of overall Soviet direction. Trade with countries in the Middle East had by far the strongest association for East European trade with that of the Soviet Union.