The nature and implications of a process conception of rationality based on social learning

Even while acknowledging the autonomy of “laws” specific to economics, theology situates the view of economics as a “means-ends” science of human choices within an unavoidable overarching moral order. After all, economic life is merely part of a much larger personal quest for happiness. Thus, the efficient selection of means for particular ends necessarily takes place within the context of objective standards of economic rights and obligations as part of human nature. The teleological perspectives of theology add much to our understanding of economic life by providing the warrants for these rights and obligations.     

How Does Brand-related User-generated Content Differ across YouTube,Facebook, and Twitter?

This study tests hypotheses regarding differences in brand-related user-generated content (UGC) between Twitter (a microblogging site), Facebook (a social network) and YouTube (a content community). It tests them using data from a content analysis of 600 UGC posts for two retail-apparel brands (Lululemon and American Apparel), which differ in the extent to which they manage social media proactively. Comparisons are drawn across six dimensions of UGC; the dimensions were drawn from a priori reading and an inductive analysis of brand-related UGC. This research provides a general framework for comparing brand-related UGC, and helps us to better understand how particular social media channels and marketing strategies may influence consumer-produced brand communications.     

Professor Dietrich Oppenberg verstorben

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Managing Employee Compensation Risk

Review of Accounting Studies - We analyze a principal-agent model in which the principal (e.g., shareholders) and the agent (e.g., an employee) can personally trade securities tied to the outcome...     

The causes of the economic crisis

The authors are attempting an objective elucidation of the economic crisis in Portugal. They are dealing with the influence of excess investment, with external economic factors such as the energy crisis and the recession in the industrial countries, and with the consequences of the revolutionary process.     

Asset allocation over the life cycle: How much do taxes matter?

We study the welfare effect of tax-optimizing portfolio decisions in a life cycle model with unspanned labor income and realization-based capital gain taxation. For realistic parameterizations of our model, certainty equivalent welfare gains from fully tax-optimized portfolio decisions are less than 2% of present financial wealth and lifetime income compared to a heuristic portfolio policy ignoring the taxation of profits (capital gains, interest and dividend payments). Compared to a heuristic portfolio policy that only ignores the realization-based feature of capital gain taxation and instead assumes mark-to-market taxation, these gains are less than 0.5%. That is, our work provides a justification for ignoring taxes in life cycle portfolio choice problems – a wide-spread assumption in that literature. However, if capital gains are forgiven at death (as in the U.S.), investors with strong bequest motives face substantial welfare costs when not tax-optimizing their portfolio decisions towards the end of the life cycle.     

Returns to Society from Offshore Hard Mineral Resource Development: special Interests Are Seeking to Monopolize Public Land Under the Sea by Doing Away with the 1953 Act

Abstract . A combination of the recently proclaimed extension of the offshore U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone to 200 miles and the growing demand for critical metals has led to increased attention to offshore hard mineral resource development. The U.S. Minerals Management Service began to establish the rules to govern offshore mining under its Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 and its 1978 amendments. However, others—including environmental groups, some mining groups and many coastal states— joined together to generate an alternative law to govern offshore mining. Both approaches seek to promote the public's interest in offshore hard minerals. This article examines the returns to society as a concept and as applied under each of these competing alternatives. It concludes by noting that socially derived criteria point to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act as the socially preferable approach to offshore mining.     

The Power of Networks: Integration and Financial Cooperative Performance

Abstract ** :  The purpose of this paper is to perform a cross‐country survey of the level of integration of systems of financial cooperatives (FC) and its effect on measures of performance. We develop a classification scheme based on a theoretical framework that builds on published work using transaction cost economics (TCE) to explain integration of large numbers of financial cooperatives into networks. We identify three critical levels of increasing integration we call respectively atomized systems, consensual networks and strategic networks. Further, we test some of the propositions that result from the theoretical framework on an international sample of financial cooperative systems. Based on this analysis we can conclude that: (i) Integration is less (more) important in developing (more developed) countries and for very small (large) financial cooperatives as a determinant of efficiency. However, integration tends to reduce volatility of efficiency and performance regardless of development. (ii) Integration appears to help control measure of managers' expense preferences that tend to affect performance of FC. (iii) Despite high costs of running hub‐like organizations in highly integrated system, these systems economize in bounded rationality and operate at lower costs than less integrated systems.     

城市化与畜产品生产预测:健康与环境风险调整法

集约化农业生产所带来的环境影响和健康危害已经使人们逐渐认识到建立可持续农业发展途径的必要性.随着人们收入的增长,城市化的迅速发展成为消费模式转变的最为显见的驱动力.揭示在考虑到可持续发展的风险和不确定性的情况下对未来农业生产规划的预测,和在决策过程中恰当的风险指标,而这些内容的引入将极可能改变与畜产品设备配置和集约化程度相关的未来政策.以中国为例,研究主要目标为:(1)阐明如何将风险指标引入到决策过程中从而避免健康风险带来的负面结果;(2)阐明如何在农业生产规划中明确风险和不确定性,以达到可持续农业发展.     

The influence of immigration and international tourism on the demand for imported food products

The role of immigration and international tourism in food product imports, as two factors which potentially influence the (trans-) formation of tastes in a country, is theoretically and empirically analysed. In using an econometric error-correction specification of an import demand function, the scale of the impact of these two factors is estimated for the case of Germany (annual data from 1967 to 1990). The results show that, while aggregate food import demand from India, Thailand, China and Turkey is inelastic with regard to migration to Germany and international travel activities of Germans to these destinations, the estimated average elasticities for imports of wine, cheese and processed/preserved vegetables from France and Italy are all well above unity, thus suggesting that immigration and international tourism may indeed affect the import demand for certain food products.