The impact of redistributive policies on inequality in OECD countries

Due to behavioural effects triggered by redistributional interventions, it is still an open question whether government policies are able to effectively reduce income inequality. We contribute to this research question by using different country-level data sources to study inequality trends in OECD countries since 1980. We first investigate the development of inequality over time before analysing the question of whether governments can effectively reduce inequality. Different identification strategies, using fixed effects and instrumental variables models, provide some evidence that governments are capable of reducing income inequality despite countervailing behavioural responses. The effect is stronger for social expenditure policies than for progressive taxation.     

Gambling in contests

This paper presents a strategic model of risk-taking behavior in contests. Formally, we analyze an n-player winner-take-all contest in which each player decides when to stop a privately observed Brownian motion with drift. A player whose process reaches zero has to stop. The player with the highest stopping point wins. Unlike the explicit cost for a higher stopping time in a war of attrition, here, higher stopping times are riskier, because players can go bankrupt. We derive a closed-form solution of a Nash equilibrium outcome. In equilibrium, highest expected losses occur at an intermediate negative value of the drift.     

Droht eine Immobilienpreisblase in Deutschland?

Since 2009, real estate prices in Germany have been rising rapidly after a period of stagnation during the Great Recession. This raises the question of whether the recent price increases are fundamentally driven or rather an indication of a real estate bubble in Germany. To tackle this question, we take a look at several real estate demand-side indicators. As real estate bubbles sometimes form in certain sub-segments of the real estate market only, the authors also conduct a disaggregate analysis by looking at different real estate types in Germany’s most important metropolitan areas. In what follows, we investigate the relation of real estate prices and rents and test for explosive behaviour of the price-generating processes. Our findings suggest that the recent upswing in the German real estate market seems to be based on fundamental factors. Except for the sub-segment of flats in some of the metropolitan areas, there is no evidence for price increases being unsustainable.     

African Perspectives on China–Africa: Modelling Popular Perceptions and their Economic and Political Determinants

China's recent political and economic inroads into Africa have generated much interest in the current literature, with scholars and policymakers endeavouring to assess the merits and risks implicit in this renewed engagement. Absent from the literature, however, are systematic analyses of African perceptions of these rapidly growing China–Africa links, and what determines these perceptions. This article fills this void by examining not only African attitudes towards China's African presence, but also investigating the considerations that inform these views. Using multi-level modelling techniques, this article estimates the effects of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI), Sino-African trade and notions of democracy and human rights on African attitudes towards “China-in-Africa”. The results suggest that Africans' views of China are nearly equivalent to those that they hold vis-à-vis Western countries. The perceived impact of imports from China has a negative effect. However, this effect is counter-balanced by perceptions of China's impact on poverty alleviation—in line with its greater focus on economic, social and cultural, as opposed to civic and political human rights—in particular through FDI. Among those who value civic and political human rights, in contrast, attitudes towards China are less favourable. This finding is echoed with respect to democratic governance, though the effect is less stable. The results are derived from Afrobarometer data covering 20 African countries.     

The impact of stakeholder orientation on sustainability and cost prevalence in supplier selection decisions

The stakeholder approach has taken a prominent role in the discussion of sustainability measures at varying strategic levels and corporate functions. Literature on sustainability suggests that firms have to cope with enhanced pressure from different stakeholder groups regarding their upstream supply management practices. At the same time purchasing managers face the trade-off between sustainability and cost prevalence in selecting new suppliers. Thus, it is of major concern for companies in general and purchasing organizations in particular to know and understand how purchasing managers react to the influence of specific stakeholder groups when it comes to supplier selection decisions. Following this notion we formulate six sets of hypotheses linking the adoption of ethical business culture to the prevalence of sustainability and cost criteria in supplier selection decisions to be tested in a path analytical model.Based on the results of an empirical study conducted with purchasing managers from multi-national firms located in Germany, this paper makes two major contributions: first, it sheds light on direct effects of shareholder, public, and customer orientation on the evaluation of the outlined-trade off; second, it investigates the indirect effects by introducing the formalization of ethical culture as a mediating variable to assess the impact of the three kinds of shareholder orientation on the propensity to select suppliers based on their performance in terms of social and environmental criteria as well as cost performance.     

Turning Agents into Psychological Principals: Aligning Interests of Non‐Owners through Psychological Ownership

Principals who delegate tasks to agents face the perennial challenge of overcoming agency problems. We investigate whether feelings of ownership among senior managers in the absence of formal ownership can align agents' interests with those of principals, thus turning agents into psychological principals. Using a moderated mediation model, we find that psychological ownership is positively related to company performance through the mediating effect of individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour. We also find that the effect of psychological ownership on individual‐level entrepreneurial behaviour and, ultimately, company performance is weaker for high levels of monitoring compared to low levels. These findings offer important contributions to agency, psychological ownership, and entrepreneurship literatures.     

What is sustainable agriculture? Empirical evidence of diverging views in Switzerland and New Zealand

Public debates on sustainable agriculture tend to be shaped by dominant political stakeholders with a particular political agenda. They simultaneously contribute and respond to the formation of public opinion. In this paper, we investigate to what extent stakeholder attitudes and interests help explain national conceptions of sustainable agriculture and how these conceptions diverge between countries with different agricultural policies.For that purpose, we conducted two stakeholder perception surveys in Switzerland and New Zealand. The data analysis revealed that there are significant differences in perception between the two countries. While Swiss respondents felt that Swiss agriculture is already quite sustainable and that international trade and new technologies are likely to render it less sustainable, New Zealand respondents generally thought that economic and technological change is necessary to make agriculture more sustainable. The conservative Swiss attitude is in accordance with the country's defensive agricultural policy while the more progressive New Zealand attitude is clearly linked to its need to reconcile agricultural sustainability with national competitiveness.     

Notenbankbilanzanalyse: Ein neues Werkzeug der Geldpolitik in der Subprime-Krise

Im Verlauf der Subprime-Krise verschlechterte sich die Notenbankbilanz der FED substanziell. Sind die herk?mmlichen Analyseinstrumente der Geldpolitik vor diesem Hintergrund noch ausreichend? Oder erfordern die aktuellen geldpolitischen Entwicklungen neue Analysemethoden in Form einer Notenbankbilanzanalyse? Müssen Betrachtungen der Geldqualit?t die Beobachtung der Geldmenge sowie der Notenbankzinssetzung erg?nzen?