Volatility in Oilseeds and Vegetable Oils Markets: Drivers and Spillovers

Food price volatility has re‐emerged as an important topic of political discussion since the food price crisis of 2007–2008. Different volatility drivers have been identified for different markets in the theoretical and empirical literature. However, there is no comprehensive analysis that considers a large number of potential drivers and investigates their joint effects in a dynamic model of interrelated markets. Our study provides such a volatility analysis for the oilseeds and vegetable oils markets. We use a common GARCH approach and a VAR model to identify volatility drivers and spillover effects. Our results show that exchange rate volatility is very important. However, the hotly debated financialisation of commodity markets is not found to be volatility increasing in our monthly data. Impulse response functions show strong spillover effects. Because many volatility drivers found to be important in other markets have no significant effect in our study, our results suggest that volatility drivers are market specific. This implies that any volatility‐reducing policies need to be designed for the market in question.     

Nicht-keynesianische Effekte der Fiskalpolitik—eine Übersicht

Keynesianisch orientierte Wirtschaftswissenschaftler gehen davon aus, dass fiskalische Impulse das durch eine schwache Binnennachfrage bedingte niedrige Wirtschaftswachstum anregen k?nnen. Sind jedoch auch negative Einkommenseffekte m?glich? Welche nicht-keynesianischen Effekte der Fiskalpolitik sind aus den g?ngigen und aus den neuen Makromodellen abzuleiten? Wie wirken sich verzerrende Steuern, der Verschuldungsgrad und das Ausma? der Fiskalpolitik aus? Prof. Dr. Wim K?sters, 64, lehrt Theoretische Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Fakult?t für Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, Inka Schoewe, 31, Dipl.-?konomin, und Tobias Zimmermann, 29, Dipl.-?konom, sind dort wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter.     

Quality of Leadership and Workplace Bullying: The Mediating Role of Social Community at Work in a Two-Year Follow-Up Study

The theoretical and empirical link between leadership and workplace bullying needs further elaboration. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between quality of leadership and the occurrence of workplace bullying 2 years later. Furthermore, we aim to examine a possible mechanism from leadership to bullying using social community at work as mediator. Using survey data that were collected at two different points in time (2006–2008) among 1664 workers from 60 Danish workplaces, we examined the total, direct and indirect effects between quality of leadership and workplace bullying. Our results indicate that quality of leadership plays a role in establishing working conditions that lead to workplace bullying. Furthermore, social community at work fully mediates the effect of poor quality of leadership on workplace bullying. This longitudinal study adds to previous cross-sectional studies on the substantial role played by leaders in the bullying process. Within the leadership–bullying relationship, social community at work acts as a full mediator, adding a significant contribution to the discussion of mechanisms involved in the bullying process. Plausible explanations of this mechanism and practical implications are discussed.     

How Friedman’s View on Individual Freedom Relates to Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory

This article explores the concept of blame in organizations. Existing work suggests that ‘no-blame’ approaches (or cultures) may be conducive to organizational learning and may foster innovation. However, both the apparently strong public appetite for blaming, and research into no-blame approaches, suggest that wider application of ‘no-blame’ in organizations may not be straightforward. The article explores the contribution of the rich philosophical literature on blame to this debate, and considers the implications of philosophical ideas for the no-blame idea. In doing so, it identifies conceptual and practical issues, sheds light on why the benefits of ‘no-blame’ may be difficult to realize, and offers the basis for an alternative approach. The article also contributes by providing foundations for future research, and identifies some fruitful lines of enquiry.