The Precautionary Principle as a Framework for a Sustainable Information Society

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies.     

Wie die deutsche Einheit die Länder im Finanzausgleich belastet hat

In Germany there is a political consensus that the economic and fiscal burden of the German reunification should be shared by all three jurisdictional levels of the federal system. According to existing law, the burden-sharing between the state and local authorities has to be confined to the excess burden which follows from the financing of the German Unity Fund as well as the integration of the eastern German states into the fiscal equalisation system. State and local authorities are in conflict with each other regarding an appropriate economic estimate of the excess burden to be caused by the fiscal equalisation system. Against this background, the paper estimates the average excess burden of the western German states as a whole as well as individual excess burdens of selected German states for the time period 1995 to 2009 by applying a multivariate data analysis.     

Opportunity or threat? Finnish hunters’ attitudes to hunting tourism

This article examines elements of the social sustainability of hunting tourism development by scrutinising Finnish hunters’ opinions on three possible scenarios related to hunting tourism: the threat of an exclusion of local hunters, the threat of rising rents of hunting land and the threat to Finnish hunting customs and practice due to increasing numbers of foreign hunting tourists. Hunters’ positions on these three issues are mapped and the determinants of their attitudes are analysed using unique national survey data on Finnish hunters and their attitudes (N= 1193). The results show a clear ambivalence to hunting tourism among hunters. While a majority of hunters tend to view hunting tourism as a threat, a large minority relate to it more positively. These attitudinal patterns can be explained only partly by socioeconomic factors, whereas factors pertaining to hunting experience and hunting profile play a somewhat more prominent role in understanding the legitimacy that hunting tourism enjoys in the eyes of hunters in Finland. Age, rural residence and participation in wildlife management are also found important for some issues. The ambiguities revealed could pose major problems for social sustainability and hunting tourism management and development.     

Trust, contract and economic cooperation

After providing a brief overview of the standard economic analysisof incomplete contracts in terms of property rights, transactioncosts and self-enforcing implicit contracts, the author showswhy, in the orthodox view, trust is not a pertinent categoryto their negotiation or effectiveness. Drawing on various empiricalstudies which he has undertaken in the area of industrial relations,the author develops an alternative approach to the study ofincomplete contracts in which the concept of trust is central.In this alternative vision, boundedly rational agents with limitedforesight form provisional judgements about the trustworthinessof their trading partners based on the success of their pastencounters. A consequence of this alternative understandingof incomplete contracts is that there is no guarantee that cooperationwill succeed, even when the circumstances appear to promisemutual gain. The author argues, however, that by establishingan appropriate set of procedural rules to guide their responseto the unanticipated, agents can promote the kinds of mutuallearning that contribute to the build-up of trust and that increasethe likelihood of successful cooperation.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Extended Dividend,Cash Flow,and Residual Income Valuation Models: Accounting for Deviations from Ideal Conditions*

Previous empirical studies derive the standard equity valuation models (i.e., DDM, RIM, and DCF model) while assuming that ideal conditions, such as infinite payoffs and clean surplus accounting, exist. Because these conditions are rarely met, we extend the standard models by following the fundamental principle of financial statement articulation. We then empirically test the extended models by employing two sets of forecasts: (1) the analyst forecasts provided by Value Line, and (2) the forecasts generated by cross‐sectional regression models. The main result is that our extended models yield considerably smaller valuation errors. Moreover, by constructing these models, we obtain identical value estimates across the extended models. By reestablishing empirical equivalence under nonideal conditions, our approach provides a benchmark that enables us to quantify the errors caused by individual deviations from ideal conditions and thus to analyze the robustness of the standard models. Finally, by providing a level playing field for the different valuation models, our findings have implications for other empirical approaches, for example, estimating the implied cost of capital.     

Efficient Grid Extension for Strongly Fluctuating Energy Sources

The statistical distribution function of the yield of a source of strongly varying output is usually presented as a ‘power-duration-curve’. We show that the decisive economic curve representing the marginal benefit of such fluctuating sources like wind energy can be derived directly from this distribution function. This may allow to determine the optimum investment in renewable energy systems. As one application we determine the economic optimum limit power of high voltage lines devoted to long distance transmission of wind energy as the intersection of the marginal-benefit-curve of the energy produced and the marginal-cost-curve of the transmission line.     

How cost-effective are result-oriented agri-environmental measures?—An empirical analysis in Germany

Agri-environmental measures (AEM) are the central area-based measures of the second pillar of the Common European Agricultural Policy. Cost-effectiveness of AEMs has to be improved. In this paper a newly designed AEM called result-oriented incentive is empirically analysed for the first time concerning its impacts on environmental effects and cost.