Privatization of public enterprises

In this paper the following results of a transition from public to private ownership are obtained: The manager of a public firm engages in less effort than is efficient; in a privatized firm the manager's effort is chosen efficiently. The reward to the manager of a public firm is more differentiated than efficient. In the case of an unfavourable economic environment the reward is higher than efficient. On the other hand, the manager in a privatized firm is always rewarded efficiently. It is irrelevant whether the public manager is incompletely informed about the particular mix of government's multiple objectives as long as the government chooses the incentive-compatible reward for the manager.

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Zusammenfassung Wird ein Unternehmen vom öffentlichen ins private Eigentum übergeführt, so gilt folgendes: Im öffentlichen Unternehmen sind das Ausmaß der Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen sowie der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers niedriger als im Kostenminimum. Im privatisierten Unternehmen werden dagegen der Arbeitseinsatz des Managers und die Forschungs- und Entwicklungsinvestitionen in kostenminimierendem Umfang gewählt. In der öffentlichen Unternehmung führt Informationsasymmetrie zu einer stärkeren Spreizung der Managerentlohnung als im privatisierten Unternehmen. In privatisierten Unternehmen ist die Managerentlohnung so niedrig, daß der Manager nur seinen Reservationsnutzen erhält.

     

Current EC-US economic conflicts

The danger of serious disagreements on the agricultural question and a trade war developing between the EC and the USA may never have been as great as it is today: on the one hand, the EC has less and less leeway for its foreign trade policy because the problems in financing its agricultural policy are still unsolved and, on the other hand, no major concessions can be expected of the Reagan administration in an election year. Yet agriculture is only one of a series of fields of economic activity where Euro-American collisions are continually occurring.     

Expectations and interest rates on mortgage loans

We examine the role of expectations for interest rates on mortgage loans. Our empirical results, based on cointegration tests, indicate a violation of the expectations hypothesis on the German loan market. In contrast to the capital market, a failure of the expectations hypothesis on the loan market cannot be attributed to the market segmentation hypothesis. Using a simple two-period model, we can show that the deviation from the expectations hypothesis is stronger than on the capital market and such that it confirms the common practice of choosing between loans with variable or fixed interest rates.An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of theVerein für Socialpolitik 1994. We are grateful to Jürgen Wolters and an anonymous referee for their useful comments and suggestions.     

Statistical Inference,Learning and Models in Big Data

The need for new methods to deal with big data is a common theme in most scientific fields, although its definition tends to vary with the context. Statistical ideas are an essential part of this, and as a partial response, a thematic program on statistical inference, learning and models in big data was held in 2015 in Canada, under the general direction of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, with major funding from, and most activities located at, the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. This paper gives an overview of the topics covered, describing challenges and strategies that seem common to many different areas of application and including some examples of applications to make these challenges and strategies more concrete.     

Social Inequality and the Sociology of Life Style: Material and Cultural Aspects of Social Stratification

The rising importance of dimensions such as age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, political attitudes, and multiple choices to organize the notion of "life course" has made the older class concept appear obsolete to the research sociologist. My thesis is that the current expanding discussions of life styles are not necessarily a substitute but a valuable supplement to social stratification theory. Life style research can contribute to the question of the relevance of the class concept. The result of my investigation shows that life style research, when connected to the writings of Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber, can enrich research in the social sciences.     

Reinventing the Countryside: German Second-home Owners in Southern Sweden

During the 1990s, second-home tourism experienced renewed interest in the industrialised world. German tourists, who discovered the nearby Swedish countryside, contributed to the new second-home tourism patterns. During a five-year period from 1991 to 1996 the number of German second-home owners in Sweden increased from 1500 to more than 5500. This paper focuses on German second-home owners and their lives in the Swedish countryside. The main objective of the paper is to analyze the German second-home owners' experiences of encounters with the Swedish countryside and its inhabitants. The analysis is based on an interview survey with 91 German second-home owners in Småland, an important region for German second-home ownership in Sweden. It is argued that the German second-home owners employ a conservative and local strategy regarding their lives in the countryside. However, contrary to their expectations, they meet a post-productive countryside and thus fail to integrate. Instead, they create a parallel society and become engaged in preserving the countryside.     

Inflation,price dispersion and market integration through the lens of a monetary search model

Monetary search theory implies that the real effects of inflation via its impact on price dispersion depend on the level of search costs and, thus, on the level of market integration. For less integrated markets, the inflation–price dispersion nexus is predicted to be asymmetrically V-shaped which results in an optimal inflation rate above zero. For highly integrated markets with low search costs, however, the impact of inflation on price dispersion should only be small. Using price data of the European Union member states, this paper tests and confirms these predictions of monetary search theory.     

Currency risk cover — an enquiry among German firms

Intereconomics - The attitude of German exporters and importers to currency risks under a system of floating exchange rates has, for the first time, been the subject of an empirical study by the...