Wettbewerbspolitik in der digitalen Wirtschaft

Digital content and services providers like Alphabet (formerly Google) or Facebook have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives and are among the highest valued firms in the economy as a whole. Most digital markets are characterized by direct and indirect network effects and therefore also by so-called two-sided platforms. To date it is not clear to how much market power these firms actually possess, which is a prerequisite for a possible policy intervention. The authors discuss measuring market power within the existing European legal framework and propose new legal rules in the field of digital markets. As the limitations of current instruments such as the SSNIP test point out, new approaches for the analysis of markets in the context of Internet-based platforms are necessary. The authors prefer modifying competition law to sector-specific regulations of internet-based businesses. They also discuss the implications that the use of big data has on competition policy. The author Günter Knieps focusses on the network evolution of the future all-IP Internet, which should neither be disturbed by regulatory technology policy nor by network neutrality regulation.     

Equity market integration in the Asia Pacific region: Evidence from discount factors

The paper investigates stock market integration among 10 economies in the Asia Pacific region over the period April to May 2006 based on a recently developed technique that relies on estimating expected discount rates; see [Flood and Rose, 2005a] and [Flood and Rose, 2005b]. The results show a limited but varying degree of stock market integration among the 10 economies. Membership in a formal economic organization does not seem to affect the degree of integration.     

Aufschwung verliert an Fahrt – Weltwirtschaftliches Klima wird rauer

The economic upturn in Germany is entering its sixth year but is losing momentum due to both demand and supply side factors. On the one hand, Germany’s key sales markets have weakened in line with the slowdown in world trade. On the other hand, a growing number of firms face production side bottlenecks, especially in terms of labour and sourcing intermediate goods. This coincides with problems in the automotive industry related to the introduction of the new World Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP), which has affected gross domestic product (GDP) growth due to the branch’s economic weight. These adjustment problems, however, should be overcome over the course of the winter. Fiscal stimuli will also take effect as of the beginning of 2019. After 1.7 % growth this year, GDP will increase at rates of 1.9 % in 2019 and 1.8 % in 2020.     

Fixed effects models with time invariant variables: a theoretical note

This paper demonstrates the equivalence between a consistent two-stage GLS estimator and the pooled OLS estimator of the coefficients on time invariant covariates in an unbalanced FE panel. In general the estimated standard errors differ between these two procedures.     

Broadening the market orientation: An added focus on internal customers

Though the marketing concept is the cornerstone of the marketing discipline, businesses typically describe only limited success in implementing it. An examination of the core pillars of the marketing concept points to limitations in the first pillar, the customer focus. This pillar is directed at the external customer, the person purchasing the firm's products and services with no attention to the internal customer, the employee. Whereas much attention has been directed to human resource practices in total quality management, marketers have overlooked its importance. This article describes an exploratory study based on in-depth interviews with corporate executives from a broad range of American organizations, which phenomenologically assesses the characteristics of the marketing concept and the employee activities that foster its implementation.     

Financial innovation and the long-run demand for money in the United Kingdom and in West-Germany

Financial Innovation and the Long-Run Demand for Money in the United Kingdom and in West Germany. — This paper uses a cointegration model to compare the long-run demand for broad money in the UK and (West) Germany during the period 1963Q1–1990Q2. In the long-run demand function for Germany, real M3 is determined in classical manner by real income and a single opportunity cost variable. By contrast, the UK demand function requires in addition an explicit own rate on money as well as a risk variable. The income elasticity is also very high. These differences reflect the more rapid pace of financial innovation in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s.     

Dual labour markets and nominal rigidity

The conventional menu cost framework performs poorly with realisticlabour supply elasticities: the menu costs required for pricerigidity are very high and the welfare consequences of monetarydisturbances are negligible. We show that the presence of duallabour markets greatly improves the performance of the frameworkboth by reducing the minimum effective menu costs and by boostingthe welfare consequences. In addition, the introduction of duallabour markets provides an explanation of procyclical productivityand the shrinking of wage differentials during booms, in linewith stylized facts on business cycles.     

A Phase-wise Development Approach to Business Excellence: Towards an Innovative,Stakeholder-oriented Assessment Tool for Organizational Excellence and CSR

The European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF) is, among other concepts, based on a phase-wise development approach as described by Clare Graves' Levels of Existence Theory. As much as corporate sustainability has a sequence of adequate interpretations, aligned with each development level, also the notion of business excellence can be defined at multiple levels, as this paper demonstrates. Furthermore, the authors analyze the current EFQM Excellence Model for particular biases towards various development levels and suggest a new and innovative two-step approach to assessing organizational performance with respect to organizational excellence (OE) and corporate sustainability. According to the organization's ambition, the assessment is either limited to a shareholder approach, mainly focusing at optimal usage of resources, or it also includes an additional assessment format based on the stakeholder approach, with specific reference to the organization's performance on the financial, social and ecological bottom line. This paper demonstrates the need and feasibility of an EFQM-Based assessment tool with a combined focus on corporate sustainability and OE.