Wie geht es mit dem Brexit weiter?

The UK’s 2016 EU referendum may account for great income losses in the UK. Gabriel Felbermayr et al. use a “new” quantitative trade model to assess various Brexit scenarios. The results broadly show that all EU member states lose, and the relative losses in the UK are about five times those of the average remaining EU country. These findings have important implications for the EU’s negotiation strategy. The outcome depends largely on the decisions about trade relations. Michael Hüther thinks that the UK is heading for an extremely hard Brexit and that it already shows. Therefore, the UK government should work out a consistent industrial policy and make up its mind about its preferences on its future economic relationship with its neighbours. In light of the currently very close and mutually welfare-enhancing business relations between the EU27 and the UK, one of the central tasks and challenges of the Brexit negotiations is undoubtedly the creation of a new supportive post-supranational legal framework governing these economic transactions in the future. Andreas Grimmel argues that the EU’s crises are largely the result of a certain mode of integration that is based on actors’ interests rather than on a comprehensive constitutional framework.     

The analysis of customer density,tenant placement and coupling inside a shopping centre with GIS

The spatial arrangement of tenants is currently one of the main topics in shopping centre research. This paper shows how a Geographic Information System (GIS) can be used to analyse the tenant structure. Given the recommendations in the literature, the analysis may help to improve the situation within a certain shopping centre. Therefore, we introduce the variable clumping method and kernel density estimation into shopping centre research in order to analyse retail category concentrations, customer flows and coupling in a shopping centre. Applying these techniques to a German shopping centre showed that spatial concentration can be observed within the retail categories of food, health & body and fashion and that the pass ratio declines according to the distance from the central point of the shopping centre. Also, shops in the same retail category have higher coupling than those of different categories, and unexpectedly spatially separated shops have a slightly higher coupling than non-spatially separated ones. Overall, the use of GIS improves the quality and the speed of spatially based analysis, and thus should be used more frequently in scientific shopping centre research and shopping centre management.     

Price shock transmission: evidence from the wheat‐bread market value chain in Ethiopia

This study assesses the degree of vertical price transmission along the wheat‐bread value chain in Ethiopia. This is pursued by applying a vector error correction model and an impulse response analysis using monthly price data for the period 2000–2015. Our analysis considers transmission of price shocks across different market levels, including from the international and domestic wheat grain markets at the upstream to the domestic wheat bread market at the downstream of the value chain. The empirical findings indicate that significant cointegration exists across prices of the different market stages. There is a transmission from international prices to domestic prices at downstream markets, in particular to flour and bread prices. Prices at upstream markets are largely influenced by the domestic wholesale market. In general, the speed of adjustment is quite slow with a half‐life of about one year for restoring the equilibrium price relationship. As price margins between the different market stages in the value chain have substantially decreased in the last 15 years, higher transmission, and thus exposure to international market shocks, can be expected in the future. The results also show that causal relationships exist between prices at different market stages—with the wholesale market identified as the key market level where prices and price expectations are formed.     

Budgeting in Times of Economic Crisis

This article examines how corporate reliance on budgets is affected by major changes in the economic environment. We combine survey and archival data from the economic crisis that began in 2008. The results indicate that budgeting became more important for planning and resource allocation but less important for performance evaluation in companies affected more strongly by the 2008 economic crisis. Additional evidence from interviews and data gathered in a focus group further illustrate these results and show the changes organizations have introduced to respond to the economic crisis. Taken together, and contrary to more general conclusions from the literature such as an overall increase or decrease in the importance of budgeting, we find that companies emphasize certain budgeting functions over others during economic crises.     

Where Firm‐Level Innovation and Industrial Policy Meet: Consensus Roadmaps for Low‐Carbon Powertrain Technologies

Environmental mandates, energy security concerns, and societal demands place considerable pressure on automotive manufacturers to develop novel powertrain technologies that reduce energy consumption, and in turn, carbon emissions. The economic case for these novel technologies is far from clear, however, and firms often turn to the respective national governments for R&D aid and demand‐side subsidies. Government on the other hand often feels unable to back any single technology for competition regulatory reasons, while at the same time being presented with conflicting messages from industry where to focus its support. This paper reports on an initiative by the U.K. Government that led to the establishment of a permanent forum for government‐industry exchange, the Automotive Council U.K., in which the author has participated from the outset. In the course of the Council's work, two “consensus roadmaps” have been developed jointly by industry and the U.K. Government to guide national efforts in the transition for both passenger car and commercial vehicle powertrain technologies toward low‐carbon alternatives. This paper discusses the key technological development stages and projections outlined in these technology roadmaps and comments on the general determinants of an effective interaction between government and industry in the light of a technological discontinuity.     

You Reap What You Sow: How MBA Programs Undermine Ethics

This paper argues that the MBA, probably the most successful academic program of the last 50 years, negatively affects the theory and practice of management with regard to ethics through its pedagogy, structure, and its underlying epistemic assumptions. In particular I seek to demonstrate how the syllabus, the pedagogy and the epistemological assumptions of MBA programs together make managers/leaders unable and unwilling to deal with ethics. I also argue that while the what (content) and the how (pedagogy) play a very important role, it was only the emergence of a radical philosophical underpinning (the why) that has put management education on a negative trajectory. The paper thus examines MBA education from a meta-level perspective, connecting the pedagogical model with epistemological beliefs.     

Customer Referral Reward–Brand–Fit: A Schema Congruity Perspective

Customer referral programs (CRPs) are widely applied as an effective means to stimulate word‐of‐mouth. While previous research mainly focuses on CRPs’ impact of acquiring new customers, this study introduces referral programs as a strategic brand management tool. In doing so, this article emphasizes what has been largely neglected by scholars: A “recommenders‐perspective.” Guided by two competing theoretical perspectives, this article proposes that the perceived congruity between a reward and the recommended brand is an essential driver of referral program performance outcomes. The results show that rewards that conform to the image of the recommended brand yield more favorable reward attractiveness perceptions. Furthermore, the authors show that reward attractiveness perceptions inevitably affect the brand customers are asked to recommend in exchange for receiving this reward. The research reported here extends the literature on judgmental evaluations resulting from schema‐based processing and provides novel insights into the design of CRPs.     

Reuters Sentiment and Stock Returns

Sentiment from more than 3.6 million Reuters news articles is tested in a vector autoregression model framework on its ability to forecast returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index. We show that Reuters sentiment can explain and predict changes in stock returns better than macroeconomic factors. We further find that negative Reuters sentiment has more predictive power than positive Reuters sentiment. Trading strategies with Reuters sentiment achieve significant outperformance with high success rates as well as high Sharpe ratios.