The urban growth potential of second-generation migrant entrepreneurs: A sectoral study on Amsterdam

A rise in second-generation migrant entrepreneurs and an increasing focus on modern economic sectors have become new trends in migrant entrepreneurship in recent years. Although traditional sectors are still the most popular among the first-generation migrant entrepreneurs, because of the increasing pressure and their high competitiveness in traditional areas, nowadays new market niches are rapidly developing. While the first generation has more often become active in new areas such as the producer services sector which includes finance, insurance, real estate and business-related professional services, the second generation has contributed to the emergence of new areas of immigrant business activity such as the ICT sector and the creative industries.Against this background, this study focuses on the external orientations of the second-generation migrant entrepreneurs by addressing in particular the way – and the extent to which – the choice for entrepreneurship is made by higher-educated young ethnic generations. This is a new field of entrepreneurship research in many European countries. The empirical data of our study is based on in-depth personal interviews held in the first half of 2007. We employed a recently developed multivariate qualitative classification method, coined rough set analysis, in order to investigate the motivation, goals and strategies of second generation Turkish entrepreneurs in the ICT and the financial services sector in the Netherlands.The results of our study show that the second generation Turkish entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have started to be involved in new and non-traditional sectors like ICT and financial services sectors. The motivation and driving forces of the second-generation Turkish entrepreneurs are stemming from both their personal characteristics shaped by their higher educational level and their previous working experience as an employee or entrepreneur in the same sector. The demand for and a gap in the sector as well as the growing and promising structure of the sector play also an important role in pulling the second generation Turkish immigrants to become entrepreneur in these new sectors.     

Environmental evaluation of agri-environment schemes using participatory approaches: Experiences of testing the Agri-Environmental Footprint Index

The Agri-Environment Footprint Index (AFI) has been developed as a generic methodology to assess changes in the overall environmental impacts from agriculture at the farm level and to assist in the evaluation of European agri-environmental schemes (AES). The methodology is based on multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and involves stakeholder participation to provide a locally customised evaluation based on weighted environmental indicators. The methodology was subjected to a feasibility assessment in a series of case studies across the EU. The AFI approach was able to measure significant differences in environmental status between farms that participated in an AES and non-participants. Wider environmental concerns, beyond the scheme objectives, were also considered in some case studies and the benefits for identification of unintentional (and often beneficial) impacts of AESs are presented. The participatory approach to AES evaluation proved efficient in different environments and administrative contexts. The approach proved to be appropriate for environmental evaluation of complex agri-environment systems and can complement any evaluation conducted under the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. The applicability of the AFI in routine monitoring of AES impacts and in providing feedback to improve policy design is discussed.     

The history of happiness

In the 18th century, the Enlightenment ushered in the notion that happiness was the attainment of a worthy life. Since then the pursuit of happiness has spread to every aspect of behavior, from religion and politics to work and parenting. Today the happiness imperative creates pressures that, paradoxically, can make us miserable. Sadness is often mistaken for a pathology. Understanding the cultural commitment to good cheer as an artifact of modern history, not as an inherent feature of the human condition, opens new opportunities for understanding key facets of our social and personal experience.     

Ein versicherungsmathematischer Ansatz zur Berechnung von Marktwerten der Deckungsrückstellung in der Lebensversicherung

Based on well-known actuarial calculation principles for the determination of the liabilities for life insurance contracts, we present a method for the calculation of fair values of liabilities. This method is consistent with the Solvency II requirements. The main principle is the discounting of probability weighted future cash flows, including assumptions on interest rates, costs and lapse for the calculation of actuarial present values. In addition to the mathematical framework, we discuss some numerical results that compare the traditional liabilities with the fair value approach. The presented principles are also relevant for the IFRS directives, which are at the moment available as exposure draft.     

International financial integration and national price levels: The role of the exchange rate regime

This paper proposes a new perspective on systematic deviations from purchasing power parity. Panel evidence for OECD countries shows that international financial integration increases the national price level under managed exchange rate regimes and lowers the price level under floating exchange rates. An open economy sticky-price model reproduces these findings by relating them to the possibility of insurance against consumption losses in internationally integrated financial markets. The utilization of insurance is reflected by relative price adjustments which manifest themselves in changes of the national price level. The direction of relative price adjustments, however, depends on the extent to which insurance is used under different exchange rate regimes: under a peg, financial integration raises the national price level; under a float, however, financial integration lowers the national price level.     

Dynamic jump intensities and risk premiums: Evidence from S&P500 returns and options

We build a new class of discrete-time models that are relatively easy to estimate using returns and/or options. The distribution of returns is driven by two factors: dynamic volatility and dynamic jump intensity. Each factor has its own risk premium. The models significantly outperform standard models without jumps when estimated on S&P500 returns. We find very strong support for time-varying jump intensities. Compared to the risk premium on dynamic volatility, the risk premium on the dynamic jump intensity has a much larger impact on option prices. We confirm these findings using joint estimation on returns and large option samples.     

Overnight public information,order placement,and price discovery during the pre-opening period

This study examines the impact of corporate news announcements released overnight on price discovery during the pre-opening period in the Australian Securities Exchange. Our results suggest that the presence of these announcements increases the efficiency of indicative opening prices and that the intensity of these announcements significantly influences the aggressiveness of pre-opening orders. Using earnings announcements to compare the speed of price adjustments in response to overnight and daytime information of a homogeneous type, we find that prices respond immediately to overnight news upon the commencement of trading, whereas adjustments based on trading-hours news tend not to be instantaneous. Overall, our evidence highlights the important role of the pre-opening period in price discovery and the prospect of further enhancing this role by timing the release of public information to occur during non-trading hours.     

"Selling America to the World"? The Rise and Fall of an International Film Distributor in its Largest Foreign Market: United Artists in Britain, 1927-1947

Few industries are as widely associated with the spread of Americanvalues, ideas, and products as the film industry. U.S. firmscertainly dominated the global market for feature films, butdid they do so simply by "selling America to the world" or wasthere more to be gained by catering to the diverse tastes ofinternational audiences? This article examines the operationsof a leading U.S. film distributor in its largest foreign market.United Artists, like other U.S. firms, was forced to offer aminimum proportion of British films for distribution in theUnited Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s. Was this requirementa burden, or were the firm’s British films actually atthe heart of its success in the U.K. market?     

The Challenge of Globalization for Large Chinese Firms

As China joins the World Trade Organization, the authors question whether China’s large firms will be able to compete on the global level playing field. Over the past two decades, Chinese large enterprises have undertaken extensive evolutionary change but, at the same time, the world’s leading firms have undergone a revolutionary transformation. Based on analysis of firms with the aerospace, oil and petrochemical industry, the authors conclude that China’s leading firms face critical challenges, even in sectors in which China’s policy-makers have scored significant successes.     

SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THE COMPOSITION OF TAX‐BASED STIMULUS PACKAGES?

We investigate the effects of tax policy shocks on the U.S. economy over the 1972:3–2008:4 period within a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework. Disaggregating tax shocks suggests that the positive output multipliers documented for total taxes by the previous literature are present only for indirect tax innovations. We also show that both labor and corporate taxes have similar effects on output, with labor tax multipliers being slightly larger in magnitude. The positive and negative responses of inflation following respectively corporate and labor tax shocks imply that former shocks work through aggregate supply, whereas the latter work predominantly through aggregate demand. (JEL C32, E62, H20)