Die geplante Umsetzung der Richtlinie zum Fernabsatz von Finanzdienstleistungen — Konsequenzen für die Einbeziehung von AVB

The German legislator is planning to realize the guiding principle of distant considering financial service within the VVG. It’s basically welcomed because of the clarity it would deliver. It should be possible to also use the German policy model for distant selling. The necessary methods of procedure, which were used up until now, will be simplified by the introduction of the textform. It should be taken into consideration that the consumer forth needs to acquire the demanded information. The legislator should abide more strongly to the allegation of the guiding principle to avoid exposition difficulties. The signing of short term insurance contracts within distant selling adds difficulties. One must add information about an especially granted right of withdrawal which the consumer may exercise.     

Aus Hartz IV wird Bürgergeld — nur alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen?

In this article, we discuss reform elements of “Hartz IV”. This includes, on the one hand, merging unemployment benefits with housing benefits and the additional child benefits (Kinderzuschlag) and, on the other hand, reducing disincentives which prevent the recipients from earning higher incomes. Employment incentives can be improved if the effective marginal transfer withdrawal rate is reduced and, at the same time, the preferential treatment of “mini jobs” is reduced. In addition, the eligibility criteria should be simplified. This could reduce the rate of non-takeup and thus hidden poverty. One criticism of such a reform of Hartz IV is that it would increase the number of transfer recipients. However, this is not an economically sensible outcome in a reform effort. What is important is the disposable income of transfer recipients affected and that the design of the transfer withdrawal does not create lock-in effects.

     

Going NUTS: The effect of EU Structural Funds on regional performance

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states to allow them to catch up with the EU average. Under the Objective 1 scheme, NUTS2 regions with a per capita GDP level below 75% of the EU average qualify for structural funds transfers from the central EU budget. This rule gives rise to a regression-discontinuity design that exploits the discrete jump in the probability of EU transfer receipt at the 75% threshold for identification of causal effects of Objective 1 treatment on outcome such as economic growth of EU regions. We find positive per capita GDP growth effects of Objective 1 transfers, but no employment growth effects.     

Bank modelling methodologies: A comparative non-parametric analysis of efficiency in the Japanese banking sector

This study examines the efficiency of the Japanese banking system utilising the slacks-based measure. In addition, we also extend the comparative bank modelling methodology literature by utilising both the intermediation and production approaches, together with the profit/revenue-based approach, proposed in [Berger, A.N., Mester, L.J., 2003. Explaining the dramatic changes in performance of US banks: technological change, deregulation, and dynamic changes in competition. J. Financial Intermed. 12, 57–95]. We find that, across the three methodologies, there are marked differences in: mean efficiency scores; the dispersion of efficiency scores; and the ranking of banks and bank sectors. Hence, the results demonstrate a very high degree of modelling dependence, which has importance in the context of policy responses.     

Organization of industrial R&D on a global scale

Although the globalization of industrial R&D processes has increasingly attracted management scientists and considerable work on R&D internationalization has been done since the 70s, important problems in organizing geographically distributed R&D sites have not yet been resolved. This analysis is based on 165 interviews in 31 technology-based multinationals from Switzerland, Germany, USA, and Japan conducted between 1994 and 1997. We describe the extent of R&D internationalization, its key drivers and principal impediments. Two trends are identified: (i) a geographic concentration on leading technology centres, and (ii) a tightened coordination of R&D units. Overlaying structures, superimposed to regional and functional structures, play a central role in overcoming current deficits in global R&D management. Organizational constituents of this structure are technology offices (Schering), technology management as a competence center (Schindler), central project offices (IBM), central project management (Bayer), project oriented career development (Bosch), virtual project management departments (Roche), and cross-cultural job rotation (ATR).     

A nonparametric test for path dependence in discrete panel data

This paper proposes a test for path dependence in discrete panel data based on a characterization of stochastic processes that are mixtures of Markov chains. This test is applied to European Community Household Panel data on employment histories. The data allow to reject the null of no path dependence in all subsamples considered.     

Banking efficiency and stock market performance: an analysis of listed Indonesian banks

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the monthly profit-based technical efficiency and productivity of listed Indonesian banks and their market performance. We examined the banks through the prism of two modelling techniques, efficiency and super-efficiency, over the period January 2003 to end-July 2007. Within this research strategy we employed Tone??s (2001) non-parametric, Slacks-Based Model (SBM) and Tone??s (2002) super-efficiency SBM to estimate the bank efficiencies. They were then combined with recent bootstrapping techniques, namely the non-parametric truncated regression analysis suggested by Simar and Wilson (2007), to identify the determinants of the efficiency scores. With respect to the latter, in the case of the SBM efficiency scores, the Simar and Wilson methodology was adapted to two truncations, whereas in the super-efficiency framework the original technique was utilised. The first part of the analysis reveals that listed banks?? average efficiencies varied widely over the sample period, from a low of 34% to a high of 97%, with only one bank having a score in excess of unity under the super-efficiency framework. The two most efficient banks were domestically owned. With respect to the truncated regression analysis, we found that the banks?? efficiency scores were positively correlated with share prices and return on equity in all models, and with the log of total assets in the super-efficiency analysis. Moreover, it was found that the JCI index of the Indonesian Stock Exchange is positively related to bank efficiency in all models. Another interesting finding is that the coefficient for the share of foreign ownership is negative and statistically significant in the super-efficiency modelling. This suggests that Indonesian banks with foreign ownership tend to be less efficient than their domestic counterparts. Finally, Malmquist productivity results suggest that, over the study??s horizon, the sample banks displayed volatile productivity patterns in their profit-generating operations.