Vom Samariter zum Unternehmer

Zusammenfassung  Was tun, wenn ein ambulanter Pflegedienst zum Patienten wird? — Ein ambulanter Pflegedienst in der Rechtsform einer GbR erzielte im Zweijahresvergleich von 2006 zu 2007 deutlich schlechtere wirtschaftliche Ergebnisse. Es fehlten 42.950 € Umsatz im Vergleich zum Vorjahr. War hier noch etwas zu retten? *Vorstand – AnbieterVerband qualit?tsorientierter Gesundheitspflegeeinrichtungen AVG     

Distributed Visual Language Environments for Cooperation and Learning: Applications and Intelligent Support

An increasing number of collaborative learning environments is based on shared workspace systems using two-dimensional graph-structured visual representations such as argumentation networks and concept maps. We propose an integrated framework that allows for flexibly specifying a wide range of visual languages and plugging in components for operational semantics, adequate feedback and intelligent support. The generic application CardBoard provides card-based user interaction and collaboration by means of different languages in shared workspaces. To enhance modifiability, the interfaces between the distributed heterogeneous system components, particularly between intelligent components and user interfaces, have been standardised.     

Investitionsförderung im Finanzföderalismus

Capital spending of local governments has shown large disparities for many years. This holds despite economic growth and various forms of federal financial assistance. In 2015, the federal government set up special transfers substituting local investments targeting a group of financially weak communities. This programme might be described as a landmark of German fiscal federalism, strengthening the path of growing interdependencies. What stood out about this programme was that it would explicitly address financially weak communities for the first time. Despite using federal funds, each state was allowed to make the decision on its own. In the end, 13 states came up with a large variety of definitions of financially weak communities, motivated by both factual and political reasons. This article presents and analyses the range of definitions of in-between states.     

Alternative evolutionary theories: A historical survey

Our overview has the objective of making our study relevant to bioeconomists. The need for the ‘alternatives’ to the Synthetic Theory of Evolution in social-economic studies was substantiated, for example, by Colombatto (Journal of Bioeconomics, 5, 1–25, 2003), who maintains that the natural-selection theory is ‘ill suited’ to describing evolutionary processes in economics. He proposed an alternative ‘non-Darwinian’ approach by equating the ‘non-Darwinian’ approach with a definite version of neo-Lamarckism. Yet, as we will show, there is a palette of alternative approaches within and beyond the neo-Lamarckism. We hope to give bioeconomists more choice in their theoretical modeling and constructing of analogies between biology and economics. It will also be shown that in the light of suggested definitions the concept of ‘universal Darwinism’ recently discussed in bioeconomics makes little sense as a generalizing category. In addition, in the concluding part of the paper we demonstrate that the majority of alternative approaches are far from being pigeonholed as archaic and once and for all wiped off the theoretical landscape. On the contrary, in recent years one can observe some revival of interest in the theoretical ‘heresies’.      

The world economy still at risk

Following the prolonged upswing in the world economy during the eighties, the subsequent downturn is proving to be more persistent than expected. It looks as if the USA is now at last on the road to recovery but Japan and Western Europe are still having a tangible dampening effect at the turn of the year. Are there prospects for an improvement in the world economy for 1993?     

The disposition effect: a survey

The disposition effect is a well-recognized behavioral economic phenomenon which has been studied in numerous papers during the last three decades. Besides a literature review of the major theoretical, empirical, and experimental papers, the body of academic literature is subjected to a bibliometric analysis where all papers are taken into account which can be found via the search engine “EBSCOhost” (589 hits). This paper not only extensively describes the state of the art of research on the topic of the disposition effect. The combination of insights from a content analysis as well as a bibliometric analysis serves as a case study on the pattern of diffusion of research hypotheses and research methods. For example, it can be shown that the number of publications per year on the disposition effect remained relatively low subsequent to its discovery and only later started to substantially grow over time. On the other hand, the quality of papers, as approximated by the share of “A” journal articles per year, decreased over time.