Digitalisierung für Gesundheit — ökonomische Aspekte des Gutachtens des SVR Gesundheit

Wirtschaftsdienst - Am 24. März 2021 hat der ?Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der Entwicklung im Gesundheitswesen“ sein Gutachten ?Digitalisierung für...     

Mediennutzungsmotive türkeistämmiger Migranten in Deutschland

Media use of migrants is a widely discussed issue in the German debate on the integration of foreigners. Research so far shows that the correlation between the language of the media used and social integration is only indirect and to some extent unclear. In general, a complementary use of country-of-origin and country-of-residence media by migrants can be observed, which tends to persist independent of the process of social integration. The present text examines the motives that constitute this complementary media use by Turkish migrants (the largest national foreign group) in Germany by referring to a representative telephone survey (CATI) undertaken among the Turkish adult population in 2008. As a result, it shows that the way media serve the informational needs of their clientele to a large extent explains the media use of the group observed.     

Using Taylor Rules to Understand European Central Bank Monetary Policy

Abstract. Over the last decade, the simple instrument policy rule developed by Taylor has become a popular tool for evaluating the monetary policy of central banks. As an extensive empirical analysis of the European Central Bank's (ECB) past behaviour still seems to be in its infancy, we estimate several instrument policy reaction functions for the ECB to shed some light on actual monetary policy in the euro area under the presidency of Wim Duisenberg and answer questions like whether the ECB has actually followed a stabilizing or a destabilizing rule so far. Looking at contemporaneous Taylor rules, the evidence presented suggests that the ECB is accommodating changes in inflation and hence follows a destabilizing policy. However, this impression seems to be largely due to the lack of a forward-looking perspective in such specifications. Either assuming rational expectations and using a forward-looking specification, or using expectations as derived from surveys result in Taylor rules that do imply a stabilizing role of the ECB. The use of real-time industrial production data does not seem to play such a significant role as in the case of the United States.     

Determinants of Food Industry Performance: Survey Data and Regressions for Denmark

This paper investigates empirically the determinants of firms’ performance in the agri‐food sector by using recent survey data for Denmark. Treating sales per employee as a proxy for value added, we estimate several bootstrapped regression models to draw conclusions on the marginal effects of potential performance determinants such as the form and nature of ownership, stage of the food chain and commodity sector, new product development, staff quality, firms’ competitive stance, and elements of firms’ strategy. To draw robust inferences we apply, besides the ordinary heteroscedasticity‐corrected Tobit maximum likelihood estimator, a non‐parametric least absolute deviations estimator (LAD/CLAD) based on a quantile regression procedure. The results indicate that we cannot reject the hypothesis of no influence of dominant orientation on value added. Rather, firms’ focus on human capital, stage and commodity sector better explains their value addition. We reject the hypothesis that regional networks have no influence on value added. Location in Århus, emphasis on human capital and the negative influence of outsourcing on value added all provide supporting evidence. We reject the hypothesis of no influence of foreign direct investment (FDI), and moreover propose that FDI has targeted the Danish domestic market as a source of value added.     

Am Tage schaue ich nicht fern!

Although the share of older people in our society increases, the media sciences rarely examine this group of media users. Existing studies often limit themselves to chronological age and neglect a more theoretical approach. This study includes theoretical references from gerontological research, which describes aging as a multidimensional process, and links them to user-oriented perspectives of mass communication research. Referring to qualitative data from interviews with elderly people, the study achieves to identify prospects, appraisals and resources, which influence media use of people in the process of aging.     

Poor but allocatively efficient—evidence from the Eastern Amazon

This research empirically investigates the well‐known “poor‐but‐efficient” hypothesis formulated by Schultz (1964) assuming that small‐scale farmers in developing countries are reasonably efficient in allocating their scarce resources by responding positively to price incentives. Deviating from Schultz it is assumed here that scale effects explain a considerable proportion of small‐scale farmers' relative efficiency. The theoretical underpinnings of the scale efficiency concept are briefly reviewed before a normalized generalized Leontief (GL) profit function is modeled by using its output supply and input demand system to capture the joint production of cassava flour and maize by a sample of small‐scale farmers in the Bragantina region of the Eastern Amazon, Brazil. The discussion of theoretical consistency and functional flexibility is considered by imposing convexity on the GL profit framework. The empirical results confirm our revised hypothesis that small farmers in traditional development settings are “poor‐but‐allocatively efficient” by clearly suggesting considerable inefficiency with respect to the scale of operations.     

Why develop open-source software? The role of non-pecuniary benefits, monetary rewards, and open-source licence type

A review of the basic theory of optimal open-source softwarecontributions points to three key factors affecting the decisionto contribute to the open-source development process: non-pecuniarybenefits, future expected monetary returns, and open-sourcelicence type. This paper argues that existing large-scale softwaredeveloper surveys are inadequate for measuring the relativeimportance of these three factors. Previous econometric studiesthat collect their own unique datasets also fall short becausethey generally measure the importance of only one supply factorin isolation. To fill the gap, I specify an estimable dynamicprogramming model of joint labour supply and open-source participationdecisions that can provide empirical estimates of relative importancewithin a single unified framework of optimal decision-making.