European migration policy

The author analyzes the economic consequences of immigration for the European Community. The primary focus is on labor migration. Possible conclusions regarding migration policy are examined.     

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993: what does it mean for your organization?

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires that employers with 50 or more employees located within a 75-mile radius of a worksite be granted 12 weeks of unpaid leave. This article summarizes the arguments for and against mandated leave, describes the main tenets of FMLA and suggests how employers can implement FMLA leave in a manner favorable to both the employer and the employees.     

Assessing causal economic explanations

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in causal realismin the methodology of economics. Some of this literature reflectsa strong scepticism about the existence of sharp event-regularitiesor ‘laws’ in the economic realm and, accordingly,about the prospects for the covering-law approach to explanationthat dominates modern economic theory. This paper outlines analternative, causal, approach to economic explanation and attemptsto answer an important question often asked about it: how shouldcausal economic explanations be assessed?     

Development of a Service Guarantee Model

Much has been written about service guarantees and their various proposed benefits. Following the literature, many writers regard a guarantee as a tool to jump-start quality improvements and/or see in them the ultimate way to gain a competitive edge. The objective of this paper is to consolidate our understanding of the working of guarantees. Based on a literature review and an exploratory study, a set of explicit propositions on the impacts of service guarantees was advanced. These propositions were then integrated into a single conceptual model. The model shows the impacts of well-designed guarantees on operations and service quality, consumer behavior, and finally on business performance.     

International Business Cycles and Exchange Rates

Models of international real business cycles are not able to account for the high volatility of exports, imports, the trade balance, and the terms of trade. By introducing exogenous exchange rate movements in addition to standard technological shocks, the model presented here comes much closer to replicating the relatively high volatility observed in the data while also improving other moments.     

Gestaltungsformen der Bilanzierung von Versicherungsverträgen: ein kritischer Vergleich von Deferral / Matching- und Asset / Liability-Ansätzen

On 31 of March 2004 the IASB issued the IFRS 4 (Insurance Contracts), which is a stepping stone to the second phase of its project on insurance contracts. The new standard deals with limited improvements to accounting practices for insurance contracts, without requiring major changes that may need to be revised in phase II. In the second phase of the project a recognition and measurement model is expected to be finalised which differs significantly from the traditional approach to accounting for insurance contracts. It will be an asset / liability-approach that requires an entity to identify and measure directly the rights and obligations arising from insurance contracts. The resulting assets and liabilities should be measured at their fair value. In contrast to the asset / liability-approach, the traditional approach to accounting for insurance contracts, referred to as deferral / mat-ching-approach, emphasises the measurement of income. Both approaches and their corresponding implications on the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement are analysed in detail.