Origin and consequences of the debt crisis and ways of solving it

In the 1970s Latin America accounted for a high, and constantly increasing, proportion of the total public foreign debt of all developing countries, reaching a share of 35% by the end of the decade. In comparison, Latin America's share of the total GDP of the developing countries is around 20%. The following article explains the specific causes of the debt crisis in Latin America and suggests some ways of overcoming it.     

Ist die Energiewende sozial gerecht?

The transition of the German energy system towards renewable energy carriers triggers considerable costs for private households. Costs are passed through to households by a surcharge per kilowatt hour. This effectively leads to high cost burdens for poorer households relative to wealthier ones. The authors discuss the issue from the perspective of social justice and argue that costs are distributed in an unfair manner. In the light of the rising costs of renewable energy promotion, affordability of energy among the poorest should receive increasing attention. Measures of fuel poverty and deprivation with respect to energy could serve as adequate ex-post indicators of non-affordability and should be considered in Germany.     

Energy Informatics

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.     

Entrepreneurial capacities as antecedents of business performance in Brazilian firms

We investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial capacities and firm performance. More specifically, we investigate the effects of radical innovation and learning orientation on business performance. We test the effects of entrepreneurial orientation on learning orientation and radical innovation. The results suggest that radical product innovation and companies' orientation to learn have a positive effect on organizational performance. Additionally, we find that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences a firm's capability to learn and innovate. Our findings also show a direct effect of learning orientation on radical innovation, which means that companies with a higher proclivity to learn are more likely to create products and processes, representing a major departure from the state of current knowledge. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Component leasing on the World Wide Web

MMM is an infrastructure for managing the deployment and use of distributed application services on the WWW. MMM propagates a paradigm that enables the leasing of software components, as opposed to the classical software licensing model. Applications reside and execute on the software provider's platforms, but are managed through the MMM infrastructure. Users interact with the application services through a standard Internet browser, not requiring any additional software. The MMM user interface offers users a virtual file space, application service composition functions, execution support, and visualization features. The MMM implementation is based on standard Web technologies, such as HTML, XML, and MetaHTML, distributed object computing frameworks, such as CORBA, and database technology, such as ODBC. In this paper we give a technical account of the MMM architecture and discuss its primary features. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Verbraucherpolitische Konzeptionen und Programme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Zusammenfassung Die Notwendigkeit einer expliziten Verbraucherpolitik ist in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den letzten Jahren zunehmend anerkannt worden. Dies dokumentiert sich zum einen in einigen Ansätzen zur Institutionalisierung der Verbraucherpolitik, zum anderen in einer programmatischen Diskussion, an der inzwischen die wichtigsten gesellschaftlich relevanten Gruppen teilnehmen. Analysiert und vergleicht man die verbraucherpolitischen Vorhaben amtlicher Stellen sowie die von Arbeitgeberverbänden, Gewerkschaften und politischen Parteien entwickelten Konzeptionen, so zeigt sich ein uniformes Denkschema, das dem Paradigma Markt und Wettbewerb verhaftet ist. Unterschiede offenbaren sich lediglich in den jeweils präferierten Maßnahmen. Alle Konzeptionen folgen — wenn auch mit unterschiedlicher Gewichtung — den beiden handlungsanleitenden Argumentationsschemata »Ergänzung der Wettbewerbspolitik durch Verbraucherschutz und -information« sowie »Gegenmachtbildung und Interessenvertretung«. Der Gedanke an direktere Kommunikationsformen sowie an eine frühzeitige Einflußnahme der Konsumenten auf das Güterangebot findet sich in keinem der Programme.

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Conceptions of consumer policy in the Federal Republic of Germany

The necessity for an explicit public consumer policy has found increased acceptance during the last couple of years. This is reflected both in attempts to institutionalize consumer policy and in a programmatic discussion in which many relevant social groups are participating. The analysis of consumer oriented plans and models of governmental agencies, employers' associations, trade unions, and political parties reveals uniform thought, rooted in the paradigm of market and competition. Differences can be detected only in the recommended measures. Basically all concepts fall under one of the following categories of argumentation: Competition policy needs completion by consumer protection and consumer information or There is a need for consumer countervailing power and consumer lobbyism. The existing plans are characterized by mere auxiliary means to stimulate consumers' reactions. The considerations of a direct communication between producers and consumers and of an early influence by consumers on manufacturers' product decisions are, however, not included in any of the programmes.

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Christine Czerwonka und Günter Schöppe sind Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter am Institut für Markt und Plan der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 6000 Frankfurt/Main, Senckenberganlage 31.     

Latin America’s external indebtedness

Latin America’s foreign debts have been mounting fast in the last ten years. The following article shows that it would nevertheless be wrong to suggest that Latin America has generally run up excessive debts.     

Young Consumers' Evaluation of School Meals

ABSTRACT

This study determines the impact service quality on customer satisfaction in the school meal context. The empirical analysis reveals three dimensions of service quality (quality of food, atmosphere, and customer service), which have a high impact on customer satisfaction. A low level of satisfaction was identified but with differences between the various schools. Understanding the antecedents of pupils' satisfaction is important to policy makers, schools, and school meals providers. Due to the increasing importance of school meal programs and their high impact on nutritional status on young people, a high service quality in school meal programs is inevitable.