The optimal portfolio for the two-pillar mandatory pension system: the case of Poland

In the recent decade, there has been observed across the Central and Eastern European states the regulatory trend towards the increase of the non-financial (first) pension pillar size at the expense of the financial (second) pillar. It tends to question the consequences of this shift for the future retirement benefits. Applying the portfolio approach we address this issue by running a series of simulations to find out how to allocate pension contributions between both pillars in an optimal way. Our study contributes to the existing literature as follows. First, we do not perform the assessment of the predetermined regulatory solutions, but we look for an optimal one. Moreover, we allow our optimal rule to be time-varying, if necessary, which would be a true novelty in this research area. Second, we do not base our estimates on historical trends; rather, we apply the long-term economy’s projection to account for the society’s ageing impact, which is a crucially important factor for the solvency of the pension system. Adapting some of the simulation assumptions to fit the Polish case, our results confirm that current regulations underestimate the role of the capital pillar and the optimal allocation between both pillars should be time-varying.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

Attitude Sophistication and Effective Teaching in Economics

Little attention has been given to the measurement of changes in attitudes and beliefs resulting from instruction in economics. This deficiency is met by Mann and Fusfeld who relate attitude changes to growth in students' knowledge (cognition) and to characteristics of both students and instructors. The findings from this research suggest a conflict among the goals of instruction. They also imply greater persistence of changes in attitude than of changes in knowledge.     

Countering Service Information Challenges in the Internet of Services

Business Webs apply the idea of value networks to the WWW. The underlying delivery platform is commonly referred to as the Internet of Services and will certainly have to deal with a great variety and amount of information about services along several service information dimensions. As soon as brokerage, discovery, or community feedback parts are decentralized, there emerge a number of service information challenges (modeling the information in a holistic way, documentation, interlinkage, tool interoperability, distributed querying, inconsistent information, and cooperation of different stakeholders). In this paper, we propose to counter such service information challenges by two artifacts. First, we contribute a Service Ontology based on a sound and rigid foundational ontology. The Service Ontology provides a holistic and consistent way of capturing service information. We apply the recommendations of the W3C Semantic Web Activity whose recent standardization has already opened new possibilities for tool interoperability, interlinkage of information, and distributed querying on the web. However, building and prescribing an ontology in standardized languages is not enough to address all service information challenges. Therefore, as a second contribution, we provide a method around the ontology including a governance framework, guidelines for applying the W3C Semantic Web recommendations, a lifecycle-spanning tool chain, and different levels of applicability. We label our method Semantic Business Web approach, since we build on W3C Semantic Web standards, use and extend them in the Business Web setting. Both artifacts are constructed in an interdisciplinary way by experts participating in the German lighthouse project THESEUS/TEXO. The project’s scenario also serves as a proof of concept evaluation of the artifacts.     

Optimized Software Licensing – Combining License Types in a License Portfolio

Although software licenses usually range among the most expensive items within the IT budget, they still lack the necessary attention by many companies. Therefore, most companies inadequately have implemented their software asset management neglecting further potential for cost reduction, which can be obtained by optimizing the use of different license types. This paper shows how possible savings can be realized by combining different types of licenses in a license portfolio. The model presented is based on the most common license types considering different user groups as well as their behavior. Additionally to cost risks, the risk of service quality is also taken into consideration. The following examples illustrate the model’s high relevance and show how it can be applied in practice. Accepted after two revisions by Prof. Dr. Hasenkamp. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Gull D, Wehrmann A (2009) Optimierte Softwarelizenzierung – Kombinierte Lizenztypen im Lizenzportfolio. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/11576-009-0182-x.     

与德里达关于消化力的局限的对话

90年代早期,在准备《如黄鼠狼吞蛋:一篇关于忧郁及同类相食的文章》一书时我们与晚年的德里达有过一些书信往来。那时他正研究在诠释学与德国唯心论中他所谓的同类相食的比喻。他很感激我们提供给他的一些诺瓦利斯残篇。     

Separating the Hawks from the Doves: Evidence from continuous time laboratory games

Human players in our laboratory experiment received flow payoffs over 120 seconds each period from a standard Hawk–Dove bimatrix game played in continuous time. Play converged closely to the symmetric mixed Nash equilibrium under a one-population matching protocol. When the same players were matched in a two-population protocol with the same bimatrix, they showed clear movement towards an asymmetric (and very inequitable) pure Nash equilibrium of the game. These findings support distinctive predictions of evolutionary game theory.     

Explaining the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns in Japan: Factors or Characteristics?

Japanese stock returns are even more closely related to their book-to-market ratios than are their U.S. counterparts, and thus provide a good setting for testing whether the return premia associated with these characteristics arise because the characteristics are proxies for covariance with priced factors. Our tests, which replicate the Daniel and Titman (1997) tests on a Japanese sample, reject the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, but fail to reject the characteristic model.     

中国银行业是否从对外开放中获益

实证数据表明,由于外国投资者的进入,中国银行业的盈利能力和系统效率都得到了改善。在各种外资参与方式中,包括拥有中资银行的小额股权(这与新兴市场的典型做法并不相同),战略投资者的效果看起来最为卓著。纯粹的财务投资人对银行业绩的影响微乎其微。同时研究还发现,私人投资者比公共投资者更有影响力,无论公共投资者是国际组织还是主权财富基金。     

Toward Transparency: New Approaches and Their Application to Financial Markets

The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s not only highlightedthe welfare consequences of transparency in the financial sectorbut also linked this relatively narrow problem to the broadercontext of transparency in governance. It has been observedthat objections to transparency, often on flimsy pretexts, arecommon even in industrialized countries. This article arguesthat transparency is indispensable to the financial sector anddescribes its desirable characteristics: access, timeliness,relevance, and quality. The authors emphasize the need to weighthe costs and benefits of a more transparent regulatory policy,and they explore the connection between information imperfections,macroeconomic policy, and questions of risk. The article arguesfor developing institutional infrastructure, standards, andaccounting practices that promote transparency, implementingincentives for disclosure and establishing regulations to minimizethe perverse incentives generated by safety net arrangements,such as deposit insurance. Because institutional developmentis gradual, the authors contend that relatively simple regulations,such as limits on credit expansion, may be the most reasonableoption for developing countries. They show that transparencyhas absolute limits because of the lack of adequate enforcementand argue that adequate enforcement may be predicated on broaderreforms in the public sector.