House prices and land regulation in the Copenhagen area

We analyse house prices from 1992 to 2011 in the metropolitan area of Copenhagen. In line with most other metropolitan areas in Europe, Copenhagen house prices showed solid increases during this period until 2007 when a downturn in prices began. The price gradient from the centre of the metropolis to the outskirts also became steeper over these years. We investigate the influence of land regulation on this development and find indications of an upward pressure on house prices from restrictive land regulation at the municipal as well as the national level.     

Strong rationalizability for two-player noncooperative games

Summary. The paper introduces a version of rationalizability that ignores strategies that are supported by negligible sets of beliefs, where a negligible set is one whose Lebesgue measure is zero. The theory is developed solely for the special case of point rationalizability; conditions are then derived under which point rationalizability entails no loss of generality. When these conditions obtain, the predictions yielded by this approach are often (although not always) a significant reduction over what is predicted by rationalizability. Received: September 10 1996; revised version: July 18, 1997     

Balanced growth and structural breaks: evidence for Germany

One of the central hypotheses of the neoclassical growth literature is the balanced-growth hypothesis, which predicts that output, consumption and investment grow at the same rate. Empirically, this implies that the consumption-to-output ratio and the investment-to-output ratio must be stationary and that consumption and investment must be cointegrated with output. This article tests these implications with respect to Germany, using unit root tests and cointegration techniques that allow for an endogenously determined structural break. We find that the long-run growth path of the German economy is consistent with the balanced-growth hypothesis if we allow for a structural break associated with the worldwide productivity slowdown of the early 1970s.     

Roles of Statistics in the Life Sciences

Quantitative methodologies have always been central in the life sciences, and some of these belong to the general area of statistics. Other methods of data analysis have their part to play, and it is of ongoing importance for the field of statistics to adapt to these developments.
Besides the role of statistical methods in generating new knowledge, there are also regulatory uses of statistics, particularly in drug registration and in environmental standard setting. These dual roles of statistical methods should not be confused.
Statistical data from official sources and elsewhere play important roles in the life sciences, and often necessitate very careful adherence to confidentiality.
The historical role of the ISI towards life sciences has been modulated by the existence of other international organizations in the area.     

Picking funds with confidence

We present a new approach to selecting actively managed mutual funds that uses both portfolio holdings and fund return information to eliminate funds with predicted inferior performance through a sequence of pairwise fund comparisons. Our methodology determines both the number of skilled funds and their identities, and locates funds with substantially higher risk-adjusted returns than those identified by conventional alpha-ranking methods. We find strong evidence of time-series variation in both the number of funds identified as superior using our approach, as well as in their performance across different economic states.     

Determinants of absenteeism in a large Danish bank

An empirical study of the determinants of absenteeism in a large Danish bank is performed. The study is based on information from approx. 7,000 employees in 500 different units. Based on a review of the absence literature a model combining the psychological and economic approaches to absence studies is constructed. The model is based on hedonic theory and uses the frequency metric when measuring absence. The results of the empirical study show that there is indeed a significant negative relationship between job satisfaction and absence. Furthermore, the study shows that demographic variables for both employees and employers play an important role for the frequency of absence. One very interesting result is that the absenteeism for employees is very clearly related to observed absence by the unit manager.     

Sociocultural Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions: Unresolved Paradoxes and Directions for Future Research

Despite decades of research, the key factors for success in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and the reasons why M&As often fail remain poorly understood. While attempts to explain M&A success and failure have traditionally focused on strategic and financial factors, an emergent field of inquiry has been directed at the sociocultural and human resources issues involved in the integration of acquired or merging firms. This research has sought to explain M&A performance and underperformance in terms of the impact that variables such as cultural fit, management style similarity, the pattern of dominance between merging firms, the acquirer's degree of cultural tolerance, and the social climate surrounding a takeover have on the postmerger integration process. In this article, we attempt to take stock of, and synthesize, the findings from research on sociocultural and human resources integration in M&A, to identify conflicting perspectives and unresolved questions as well as several underresearched areas, and then use our analyses to propose an agenda for the next stage of research in this field. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Optimal Feedback Controls: Comparative Evaluation of the Cod Fisheries in Denmark, Iceland, and Norway

The economic efficiencies of the Danish, Icelandic, and Norwegian cod fisheries are examined. For this purpose, nonlinear aggregate models of these fisheries are constructed. Comparing the calculated optimal harvest and biomass quantities with the actual fisheries provides a measure of the degree of efficiency in these fisheries. The comparisons confirm that the cod harvesting policies of these countries have been hugely inefficient in the past. It appears that inefficiency has been increasing over the last three to four decades, even after TAC regulations replaced open access, indicating that the management policies adopted by all three countries have failed to cure overfishing.     

Computer facilitated changes in the management power structure

The effects of introducing a computer information system on power and influence structure is analysed in a radio and television company. First the concept of power is discussed using measures of general influence, changes in power bases, changes in channels and means of influence, and limits of discretion. The study found that the discretion within a job and the possibilities for influencing others are not directly related. The implementation of the computer information system resulted in all functional groups of employees losing discretion, whilst the gatekeepers to the technology gained in influence.