Ideologie vor Eigennutz?

The case study regards the question whether economic self-interests of publishers have a significant influence on the reporting of their own newspapers with regard to crucial topics touching those interests. The conflict about the minimum wage in the mailing business is scrutinized. The newspapers engaged in the mailing business are compared with those of independent newspapers without these interests. Because the political inclination of a newspaper, even beyond the self-interests of its publisher, affects the reporting of a conflict, newspapers with different political views are chosen among economically involved and uninvolved media companies. The study is based on the “public task” of press and researches, using a quantifying analysis of contents, relevance and plurality of conflict reports. The results show that in this case the basic political orientation of a newspaper had a significant influence on the portrayal of the conflict. An additional influence with regard to the economic self-interests could not be proven significantly. Ideology seems to be more important than self-interest. However in this case political orientation and economic self-interests harmonized. Therefore it is still relevant to study the role of economic interests for the realization of the “public task”.     

Inflation and output dynamics in a model with labor market search and capital accumulation

In a sticky-price model with labor market search and habit persistence, Walsh (2005) shows that inertia in the interest rate policy helps to reconcile the inflation and output persistence with empirical observations for the US economy. We show that this finding is sensitive with regard to the introduction of capital formation. While we are able to replicate the findings for the inflation inertia in a model with capital adjustment costs and variable capacity utilization, the output response to an interest shock is found to be too large and no longer hump-shaped in this case. In addition we find that the response of output to a technology shock can only be reconciled with empirical findings if either the adjustment of the utilization rate is very costly or there is only a modest amount of nominal rigidity in the economy.     

„Zahnblick“ kann Wunder wirken

Mundpflege im ambulanten Bereich - Zahnschmerzen oder Probleme im Mund geh?ren zu den unangenehmen Erfahrungen. Welche pflegerischen Interventionen stehen zur Verfügung, um diese Probleme zu beheben? Und: Wann muss der Zahnarzt eingeschaltet werden?     

Downward wage rigidity and job mobility

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we study whether being individually affected by downward wage rigidity has an effect on layoffs, quits and intra-firm mobility. Within a structural empirical model we estimate the individual extent of wage rigidity. This is expressed by the wage sweep-up, which measures by how much individual wage growth increases through the effect of downward wage rigidity when compared to a counterfactual labour market with flexible wage setting. We find robust negative effects of wage sweep-up on quits and layoffs and some evidence for a positive association of wage sweep-up and promotion opportunities. This is consistent with a core-periphery view of the labour force, where a core work force is protected from layoffs and wage cuts and at the same time enjoys good promotion opportunities. On the other side a peripheral work force provides a buffer for adjustment and suffers from both flexible wages, more insecure jobs and less internal promotion opportunities.      

Multimarket contact and sales growth: evidence from insurance

Research on pricing, profits, and firm survival has shown that multimarket contact causes mutual forbearance against competition, but has not considered the consequences of imperfect observability of competitive moves. Here, predictions are developed to explain how mutual forbearance occurs—but sometimes fails—in markets with imperfect observability. Mutual forbearance means that firms do not seek to take market share from each other through price cuts or nonprice competition, and thus that sales grow at uniform rates. Firms defect from mutual forbearance, and hence have higher sales growth, if the potential rewards are high and the likelihood of being discovered is low. This theory is tested on a panel of firms operating in the Norwegian general insurance industry. The evidence suggests that sales growth is most rapid in firms that do not meet many multimarket competitors in a given market and firms that are economically troubled. Growing or highly concentrated markets have higher heterogeneity of growth rates. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The WTO Compatibility of the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and the ACP Countries

The economic partnership agreements (EPAs) to be negotiated between the European Union and six different ACP regions under the Cotonou Agreement are intended to be in conformity with WTO rules, i.e. satisfy GATT Article XXIV and GATS Article V. To what extent is this realistic? What would be the effects on the ACP countries?

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This article summarises the following study: A. Borrmann, H. Gro?mann, and G. Koopmann: The WTO Compatibility of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the ACP States, Study on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Eschborn 2005, http://www.gtz.de/de/dokumente/enwto-epa-acp-2005.pdf.