Die Erwartungen an die neue Bundesregierung

Das Ergebnis der Bundestagswahl ist eine gro?e Koalition zwischen CDU/CSU und SPD. Was erwarten die Arbeitgeber und die Arbeitnehmer von der neuen Bundesregierung? Dr. Dieter Hundt von der Bundesvereinigung der deutschen Arbeitgeberverb?nde und Michael Sommer vom Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund nehmen Stellung.     

Lead users and the adoption and diffusion of new products: Insights from two extreme sports communities

Lead users are proposed as a valuable resource for marketers in terms of the (1) development, (2) adoption, and (3) diffusion of new products. We present the first consumer study to provide evidence that the latter two suggestions are justified. First, we find that lead users demonstrate stronger domain-specific innovativeness than more “ordinary” users. Second, lead users perceive new technologies as less “complex” and might therefore be better prepared to adopt them. Third, we find that lead users demonstrate stronger opinion leadership and weaker opinion seeking tendencies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the marketing of new products.     

The Breakdown of Idiosyncratic Volatility Into Expected and Unexpected Components and Its Effects on Stock Returns in Brazil

Based on studies of idiosyncratic volatility developed in the recent literature, this study analyzes its relation with expected returns through the breakdown of idiosyncratic volatility in the Brazilian stock market and presents evidence of the importance of expected idiosyncratic volatility for asset pricing. We study the impact of the expected and unexpected components of idiosyncratic volatility on the returns of shares listed on the BOVESPA between 2004 and 2011. The results show a strong positive and significant relation between expected idiosyncratic volatility and returns. This evidence is highlighted when we use unexpected idiosyncratic volatility to control for unexpected returns. Additional robustness tests, controlling for size and momentum effects, also have positive and significant coefficients, corroborating previous findings.     

The moral potential of individualism and instrumental reason in accounting research

The dominance of positivism in accounting research is at the root of a deep malaise felt by many scholars. Although the methodological limitations of positivist research, as well as the political and cultural foundations of its hegemony, have regularly been highlighted in the literature, the merits of interdisciplinarity are still denied by the major institutions dominating the field. The present paper argues that the case in favor of academic pluralism is nonetheless worth pursuing, because not only it represents a central feature of the interdisciplinary identity, but also because it provides support to those engaged in a relentless (and sometimes successful) bid for greater openness in accounting research. The paper's main goal is to promote and further this endeavor by moving the line of argument off the beaten track of methodology and domination in order to focus on morality. The largely unexplored terrain of morality can be used as a basis for original arguments supportive of intellectual pluralism that may help to raise awareness of alternative research avenues and possibilities – though it is important not to harbor unrealistic hopes. Drawing on Charles Taylors’ view of modernity, we highlight the richer moral background from which the current stress in the discipline on individualistic values and instrumental reason took its rise. As a result, we provide the accounting mainstream with the perspective of an alternative framework for its research agenda by (re)adopting an ethic of compassion. Merchant's (2008) analysis of the marginalization of interdisciplinary research in North America will be used as a critical basis and starting-point for our argument.     

Unemployment and Catching Up: Europe Vis-à-vis the USA

This paper develops a two-region two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labour market based on efficiency wages. Growth is driven by research done in the (high-tech) tradeables sector. The follower region tends to catch up in terms of labour productivity with the leader region. Differences in unemployment compensation systems can lead to relative convergence, i.e., a steady state with the backward region lagging behind the leader region. The reason for this is that high social welfare compensations generate high unemployment and reduce the amount of labour employed for R&D purposes.     

Extending Lead‐User Theory: Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Lead Userness*

Lead users are found to come up with commercially attractive user innovations and have been shown to be a highly promising source of innovation for new product development tasks. According to lead‐user theory, these users are defined as being ahead of an important market trend and experiencing high benefits from innovating. The present article extends lead‐user theory by exploring the antecedents and consequences of consumers' lead userness in the course of three studies on extreme sports communities. Regarding antecedents, it uncovers that field‐related variables (consumer knowledge and use experience) as well as field‐independent personality variables (locus of control and innovativeness) help explain an individual's lead userness. These variables might therefore be used as a proxy to identify the rare species of lead users. With regard to consequences, it uncovers that lead users demonstrate innovative behavior not only by creating new product ideas but also by adopting new commercial products more heavily and faster than ordinary users. This highlights the idea that lead users might not only be valuable to idea‐generation processes for radically new concepts; instead, they might also be relevant to more general issues in the marketing of new products.     

The consumer's demand for diversity

The consumer's demand for diversity is measured either by the entropy or by the Hirschman-Herfindahl index of the budget shares. This notion, including the income elasticity of the demand for diversity, is applied to per capita consumption data of 30 countries.