Staging of Venture Financing, Investor Opportunism and Patent Law

Abstract:  Stage financing provides a real option that is valuable when facing external uncertainty. However, it may also induce investor hold-up, if the property rights on an invention are not sufficiently protected. As a consequence, the entrepreneur may not work hard. Investor opportunism is less likely to occur, if investors' residual cash-flow-rights are contingent on verifiable 'milestones' in the previous stage. Equity-linked financing also provides high-powered incentives to the investor not to 'steal the idea' because his payoff becomes sensitive to the project value. The paper provides a new explanation for both types of contractual provisions.     

Medien-Priming — Grundlagen, Befunde und Forschungstendenzen

Media priming is the process by which information from the media make disposable units of knowledge cognitively more easily accessible. This increases the chance that they be better applied to subsequent information from the environment than less accessible units. Research on cognitive media effects, though, does not seem to agree on what the bases of media priming are, what the state of knowledge is, and what remains to be studied. This article attempts to do away with these disagreements by (1) describing the (cognitive-)psychological bases of the concept of media priming, (2) by structuring the crucial empirical results with regard to these bases, and, starting with the traditions and also the deficiencies of recent research, by (3) presenting a program for future research.     

Konsonanz 30 Jahre später

Consonant coverage is assumed to be an important prerequisite for media effects to occur. However, empirical evidence for this assumption is largely missing. Focusing on the issue of European integration, this study investigated, in 13 EU member states, whether consonant coverage affected EU citizens’ opinions on the issue. For each country and at the individual level of analysis, the study linked content analyses of the main evening news and the most prestigious newspaper with survey data. Consonant coverage influenced people’s opinions about European integration, while dissonant coverage made no impact. Both EU supporters and EU opponents were susceptible to the effects of consonant coverage, which tentatively suggests that consonant coverage may surmount selective mechanisms. In sum, the study is the first to provide evidence that consonant coverage may indeed enhance media effects.     

Prospects for the international oil market

The OPEC price conference in Geneva on May 25–26, 1981 did not resolve the disagreement among OPEC member countries over official prices. As a result of this stalemate, Saudi Arabia with its intention to moderate prices will in the foreseeable future probably not be prepared to make substantial reductions in its high volume of production with which it puts pressure on prices. What short- and medium-term perspectives for the international oil market arise from this situation?