Ecology-Driven Real Options: An Investment Framework for Incorporating Uncertainties in the Context of the Natural Environment

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We derive six areas of ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints.     

A Model for Partnering with Not-for-Profits to Develop Socially Responsible Businesses in a Global Environment

Responsible risk management is central to banking ethics. With the 1999 publication of the Basel Committee’s proposal, Basel II, for a New Capital Accord to replace the 1988 agreement, Basel I, an attempt has been made to address the problem of correlating banks’ risk management with their capital requirements. The Basel II framework, finalised in June 2004, is designed to improve risk management by using models based on past performance to help set the amount of capital banks are required to hold by regulators, with the purpose of improving the efficiency of capital allocation. The objectives of this study are to investigate how banks generally, but particularly those located in China, could improve their risk management systems and what the implications of these new regulations are for them. Three relevant propositions were formulated, namely, Basel II will improve risk management; Basel II will improve capital allocation efficiency; and compliance with advanced risk management systems is biased in favour of the large banks. Evidence was assembled with which to evaluate these three propositions by gathering relevant primary data by means of a representative survey of Chinese banking executives involved in risk management. The findings strongly support the first two of the above propositions and partly support the third proposition.     

Participation in Green Consumer Policies: Deliberative Democracy under Wrong Conditions?

In policy debates about reducing environmental and social harms, political consumerism is often called for by actors from a broad political spectrum. This paper examines traits of deliberative democracy in cases where instruments of political consumerism (eco-labelling, certificates and standards) are developed. The empirical cases are processes surrounding eco-labelled, standardised forestry, food and electricity in Sweden. In green forestry certification, deliberative processes have taken place close to deliberative democracy ideals. Yet, these processes have been made possible because of equal power levels, although power, according to deliberative theory, should be irrelevant. In organic food labelling, a smothering consensus climate has enabled deliberation, although such a policy condition is at odds with certain deliberative democracy ideals. In electricity labelling, its deliberative processes were embraced by everyone, although the problem scope was narrowly defined, whilst fundamental problems were not addressed. If deliberative democracy researchers become involved in critical frame reflection in consumer-oriented policy making, changes can be made that help reduce environmental harms and strengthen public engagement in political consumerism.     

Racial segregation in the public schools and adult labor market outcomes: the case of black Americans

Residential segregation has played a central role in theories of minority entrepreneurship and in the diversification of the U.S. labor market. Racial diversity in public accommodations, including schools, has been an issue of continuous public policy debate at least since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy versus Ferguson decision (1896). This study applies theory from the literature on social capital to an examination of the role of racial segregation in the public schools of blacks during childhood on their adult likelihood to become self-employed and their level of occupational status. The model results indicate that, after controlling for a number of individual, household and metropolitan-area factors, lower rates of segregation during public schooling results in higher likelihood of wage-salary employment and self-employment among a cohort of black Americans that attended public schools during the 1960s.     

The Impact of the Implementation of Technology Education on In-Service Teacher Education in South Africa (Impact of Technology Education in the RSA)

In this article the impact of technology education, as a new learning area (subject) in the curriculum, on in-service teacher education in South Africa is described in order to ascertain the extent of the impact. The research on which this article is based draws on a variety of experiences and observations in the field at grassroots level (in particular an outreach project in rural communities). The envisaged impact of technology education on South African schools, communities, teacher educators and teachers, the range of in-service teacher education that is required, and the impacts in urban and rural areas are discussed. Finally a number of concluding remarks are made about the extent of the impact of the inclusion of technology education in the new National Curriculum Statement and whether the situation has changed since the implementation of a pilot technology education project in 1998. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The case against a common fiscal boost in Europe

Policymakers in the EU member states are currently shaping rescue packages to prevent the financial crisis hitting their economies with unmitigated force. Each government is responding to the emerging problems with a country-specific set of measures. Given the global nature of the crisis, would coordinated action at the European level not be a better approach? Was the German government — much-criticised for its initial reluctance to adopt massive fiscal stimulation measures — right after all to exploit the option value of waiting in a situation of high uncertainty?     

Verlust der Zahnprothese – wer zahlt?

Haftung für Patienteneigentum - Im Krankenhaus oder Pflegeheim ist es unver meidbar, dass auch einmal pers?nliche Gegenst?nde von Patienten verloren gehen. Doch wer haftet eigentlich für verschwundene Zahnprothesen, Brillen und Co.?     

Mehrwertsteuererhöhung: Keine nachhaltige Konsolidierung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Information value and efficiency measurement for risk-averse firms

This paper has three goals. First, we demonstrate that standard arguments and methods from production and duality analysis can be used to provide a comprehensive and general treatment of the value of information for a risk-averse firm with expected-utility (linear-in-probabilities) preferences and a general stochastic technology. Second, we place bounds on the value of information for a risk-averse firm and relate these bounds to characteristics of the technology and the producer’s preferences. The third and final goal is to derive the implications that information differences can have for measured efficiency differences and to relate the bounds on the value of information to those measured differences.