Schlechter Wein in alten Schläuchen—Eine Replik auf Helmedag

In der Januarausgabe des WIRTSCHAFTSDIENST ver?ffentlichten wir einen Aufsatz von Professor Fritz Helmedag über die „Abh?ngigkeit der Besch?ftigung von Steuern, Budgetdefiziten und L?hnen“. Hierzu eine Replik von Professor Bernd Lucke und eine Erwiderung von Professor Fritz Helmedag.     

Contextualized representations of brand extensions: Are feature lists or frames the basic components of consumer cognition?

According to the common view in consumer behavior, consumers represent brands and product categories mentally as lists of independent product features and engage in feature matching when they evaluate brand-product category compounds such as brand extensions. However, we demonstrate that brand extension concepts are subject to context effects and largely contextually organized — empirical evidence which suggests that they are represented by more flexible mental structures than independent feature lists. As an alternative, brand extensions (e.g., McDonald's Theme Park) may be viewed as conceptual combinations in which the original brand or company name (e.g., McDonald's) acts on the head concept of the extension category (e.g., theme parks) as a modifier. Moreover, we suggest that the contextual and relational structure of brand extensions may be explained more adequately by mental frames than feature list representations.     

Innovation or imitation? The effect of spillovers and competitive pressure on firms’ R&D strategy choice

In this paper a firm’s R&D strategy is assumed to be endogenous and allowed to depend on both internal firm characteristics and external factors. Firms choose between two strategies, either they engage in R&D or abstain from own R&D and imitate the outcomes of innovators. This yields three types of equilibria, in which either all firms innovate, some firms innovate and others imitate, or no firm innovates. Firms’ equilibrium strategies crucially depend on external factors. We find that the efficiency of intellectual property rights protection positively affects firms’ incentives to engage in R&D, while excessive competitive pressure has a negative effect. In addition, smaller firms are found to be more likely to become imitators when the product is homogeneous and the level of spillovers is high. Regarding social welfare our results indicate that strengthening intellectual property protection can have an ambiguous effect. In markets characterized by a high rate of innovation a reduction of intellectual property rights protection can discourage innovative performance substantially. However, a reduction of patent protection can also increase social welfare because it may induce imitation. This indicates that policy issues such as the optimal length and breadth of patent protection cannot be resolved without taking into account specific market and firm characteristics.     

Domestic and international research joint ventures: The effect of collusion

We analyze the effect of research joint ventures (RJVs) on consumer welfare in an international context when collusion can occur. Our results suggest that antitrust authorities should distinguish between domestic and international RJVs and be more benevolent with international RJVs.     

Responsibility in the interconnected economy

This article seeks to establish a link between the field of business ethics and information ethics by exploring the connection between responsibility and the Internet from an economic perspective. This link finds its expression in the moral theory of Discourse Ethics as suggested by German philosophers such as Juergen Habermas and Karl‐Otto Apel. The term responsibility points in the direction of communication and therefore leads easily to discourse ethics. The economy in general and most economic practices also seem to be intimately linked to questions of responsibility. The growing spread and importance of the Internet poses new challenges and problems but also creates new possibilities for ethics as well as for the economy. Here several of these new developments are analysed and their impact on ethics as well as economy assessed. Consequences for the use and development of information technology are considered.     

Second-Best Pollution Taxes: an Analytical Framework and Some New Results

This paper compares the second-best optimal tax on polluting consumption goods with the Pigovian tax, which would internalize marginal environmental damage at a second-best optimum. It is shown that the relationship between the optimal tax on polluting consumption and the Pigovian tax is determined by the substitutability between labour and polluting consumption or clean and polluting consumption, depending on whether a wage tax system or a commodity tax system is being considered. The key factor determining the relationship between the two taxes is gross substitutability between the two taxed goods. As long as there is gross substitutability, the optimal dirt tax exceeds the Pigovian tax. The opposite can occur if and only if the two goods are gross complements.     

Asset allocation and multivariate position based trading

I add a second risky asset and a risk free bond to the univariate artificial market investigated by Lux and Marchesi (Int J Theor Appl Finance 3(4):675–702, 2000), keeping track of traders aggregate positions and wealth. Asset allocation and security selection are modeled as separate decision processes, as is common practice in financial institutions. Introducing position based trading avoids inconsistencies in traders inventories resulting from the order based setup of the original model, while preserving its ability to reproduce the stylized facts of financial return series.