Kommunikation von Innovationen — Marketing und PR als „Spielmacher“

Zusammenfassung  Im Innovationsprozess, bei dem Kunden, Mitarbeiter und andere Stakeholder frühzeitig eingebunden werden, bekommen auch Marketing- und PR-Verantwortliche neue Aufgaben. über Kreativit?t, Vermittlungskompetenz und Medien-Know-how hinaus sind neue F?higkeiten und Rollenbilder gefragt. Als besonders geeignet für die ver?nderten Anforderungen haben die Autoren die Strategie der „Spielmacher“ identifiziert. Lesen Sie, was diese Strategie auszeichnet, welche Rollen Kommunikationsabteilungen im Innovationsprozess übernehmen und wie das in der Praxis aussieht.     

The cross-country importance of global sentiments—evidence for smaller EU countries

This paper examines the importance of the economic sentiments of some macroeconomic key variables in Estonia, Slovenia and Latvia. We analyze the importance of domestic as well as foreign sentiments with respect to these economies against the background of their accession to the European Monetary Union. For this purpose, we develop and apply a framework which is based on a restricted autoregressive model. We focus on two issues: firstly, we investigate the relationship between domestic stock prices, income and sentiments; and, secondly, we take external effects stemming from EMU and US share prices and sentiments into account. Our results show that European sentiments are important for income and domestic sentiments. Furthermore, we are able to establish linkages between global share prices and domestic income. From a more general perspective, we find a significant positive influence stemming from (domestic) share prices on sentiments in Estonia and Latvia, and also find evidence for an inverse relationship in Latvia.     

Boom or Bubble in the US Real Estate Market?

This paper attempts to provide an answer to the question whether the recent surge in US real estate prices is fundamentally driven, or whether the current situation reflects bubble symptoms. This is a question of paramount importance since in the case of a bubble in real estate prices the question emerges if and how the Fed should react to it. Implicitly, monetary policy in the euro area is addressed as well, with France and Spain experiencing exorbitant price increases of real estate during at least the last four years and the ECB trying to play down the dangers of this development for price stability.

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* The authors gratefully acknowledge valuable comments by Thorsten Polleit.     

Bankruptcy law and financial structure: The impact of managerial incentives

Abstract

Providing the manager of a firm with suitable incentives to act in the investors’ interest may be socially efficient, but not individually rational for the investors themselves. This paper specifies a second-best arrangement and shows how investors can be induced to implement it by means of an optimal bankruptcy code in the case where only standard financial contracts are available. It explains why bankruptcy law should, in some states of nature, let shareholders and senior creditors decide jointly, and provides a rationale for the existence of junior debt, which never enjoys any power of decision.     

Portfolio choice of financial investors and European business cycle convergence: a panel analysis for EU countries

We investigate the linkage between business cycle convergence and financial portfolio choice for a panel of 18 EU countries. We construct an index of similarity of financial portfolios which we then put into context with the view that “the financial world” has an impact on business cycles and contributes to business cycle convergence via the consumption-wealth linkage. The model which guides our analysis is the International Asset Pricing Model (IAPM). Portfolios of the 18 EU countries investigated by us turn out to become more similar over time. According to our fixed effects GMM TSLS estimations, similar portfolios contribute to a convergence of business cycles—via a convergence of consumption cycles. This turns out to be especially true for country-pairs that include euro area non-member countries and, thus, have quite different income and wealth structures.     

Prospective NATO or EU membership and institutional change in transition countries1

This article quantifies the impact of incentives related to potential membership on institutional change as measured by the World Bank Governance Indicators. Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2008, we show that pre‐accession incentives provided by EU and NATO clearly matter for institutional development. In addition, path‐dependency determined by cultural norms may be overcome by economic liberalization, while foreign aid hampers institutional development.     

Exchange Rate Movements and Unemployment in the EU Accession Countries—A Panel Analysis

According to the traditional “optimum currency area” approach, not much will be lost from a very hard peg to a currency union if there has been little reason for variations in the exchange rate. This paper takes a different approach, and highlights the fact that high exchange rate volatility may as well signal high costs for labor markets. The impact of exchange rate volatility on labor markets in the CEECs is put to the test, finding that volatility vis‐à‐vis the euro significantly increases unemployment. Hence, the elimination of exchange rate volatility could be considered as a substitute for a removal of employment protection legislation. However, labor market reform could be argued to be an equally worthy strategy, backed up by central bank independence and the adoption of an anti‐inflation monetary policy rule.     

Die Außenhandelspolitik der EU gegenüber China

China wird als Au?enhandelspartner der EU zunehmend bedeutend. Welche Produkte werden gehandelt? Wie kam es zu Handelskonflikten? Welche Chancen und Risiken gibt es im Au?enhandel mit China? Welche Handelsstrategie sollte die Europ?ische Union gegenüber China verfolgen?