Die Mautstatistik: Keine „Wunderwaffe“ für die Konjunkturanalyse

Die seit der Einführung der Lkw-Maut geführte Mautstatistik wird als Konjunkturindikator diskutiert. Die Daten müssten für eine Konjunkturprognose gute Dienste leisten, weil sie kurzfristig zu ermitteln sind und einen offensichtlichen Zusammenhang mit der Konjunktur haben. Der Vergleich mit bereits verwendeten Frühindikatoren führt jedoch zu ernüchternden Ergebnissen.     

Estimating the Duplicated Audience of Media Vehicles in National Advertising Schedules

Abstract

This paper tests and evaluates the best available methods for estimating the duplicated audience of pairs of television programs, pairs of magazines and television-magazine pairs. Previous research in audience duplication estimation is surveyed, and the best existing methods for some situations are found to be inadequate or nonexistent. Improved estimation methods are provided for these cases. In particular, new models are developed for estimating the duplication of audiences of different episodes of a television program, and for estimating duplication of audience within particular target markets. The various models are empirically tested using diary data from a large, national sample.     

Ships for this new ocean

The voyages of Christopher Columbus are invoked by Americans more than any other historical analog to capture the ethos of the manned space program. A better analogy would be Leif Ericksson. He and his fellow Norsemen reached North America five centuries before Columbus by travelling in the most remarkable sailing vessels of their time. Not until Columbus, however, did Europeans have at their disposal a robust maritime technology that would allow them to not only reach the Western hemisphere but also to sail back and forth to Europe reliably. Over the last forty-five years, the United States has developed space launch vehicles that can carry astronauts to near-Earth orbit and even to the moon. It has failed, however, to develop the space ship that can do for the United States what the caravel did for Columbus. The current program to build a new suite of launch vehicles simply recycles old technology. It builds longships, not caravels. To achieve its goals for manned spaceflight, NASA must first build a safe, reliable, and economical launch vehicle.     

Functional‐dynamic public participation in technological decision‐making: site selection processes of nuclear waste repositories

This study employs the ordered lottery selection approach with field experiment to measure risk attitude of two distinct population groups in China – farmers in Wuhan and freelancers in media and advertising in Beijing. A comparative design was used to reveal the cross-population difference in risk attitude and its affecting factors. The results showed that both groups exhibited constant partial risk aversion and decreasing absolute risk aversion, while the farmers were more risk-averse than the freelancers. The farmer and freelancer respondents demonstrated very different sensitivity to the warming-up games types involving ‘gain-only’ or ‘gain-loss’ while extremely risk-averse respondents in the warming-up games possessed the consistent attitudinal behavior in the formal tests. The comparative experiment revealed that gender and income were two statistically significant factors affecting risk attitude and they appeared to be consistent across the two distinct groups. Surprisingly, respondents’ perceived frequency of risk occurrence was not correlated to their risk attitude. Moreover, the factors of leisure and investment behavior were significantly linked to the freelancers’ risk attitude but not the farmers’. The experiment also found a non-linear relationship between risk attitude and education, and receiving college education was found to be a critical switching point that was significantly linked to respondents’ risk choices. While further research is needed to better understand the governing mechanism in risk attitude, perception, and behavior, this paper tried to link the experimental results to the natural disaster insurance practice in China and discussed their implication to the policy design.     

The influence of linear and cyclical temporal representations on risk perception of nuclear waste: an experimental study

Time is an important aspect of the issue of nuclear waste, both from a technical and from a perceptional perspective. Previous studies have investigated the relationship between time and risk perception of nuclear waste, applying the discounting paradigm and therefore limiting time to one very narrow aspect: its duration. However, time is a multifaceted concept and encompasses more than a linear property. The aim of our study is to test the influence of a different aspect of time, namely temporal representations (linear or cyclical) on risk perception of nuclear waste. In an experimental study we demonstrate that both linear and cyclical representations have a reducing effect on risk perception compared to the control condition, where no specific time representation was activated. Examining group differences, we also demonstrate that temporal representations have a differing influence depending on whether participants have a stable belief about nuclear waste or whether they belong to an ambivalent group that does not yet hold a stable belief. Furthermore, we replicate the well-documented gender gap in risk perception. Our results bear potentially interesting implications for risk communication by demonstrating a causal relationship between the graphic representation of time and risk perception of nuclear waste.     

The effect of internal and external technology sourcing on firm performance throughout the technology life cycle

In studies about the impact of technology sourcing on firm performance, the impact of the technology life cycle has thus far received scant attention. This paper investigates this topic from the knowledge-based perspective. Data was gathered from 22 PLD (Programmable Logic Device) manufacturers in the integrated circuit industry between 1986 and 2005, and used to test two hypotheses based on panel analysis: (1) that strategic alliance networks, as a mode of external technology sourcing, have a positive effect on a firm's innovative and market performance early in the technology life cycle, and (2) that internal development as a mode of internal technology sourcing has a positive effect on a firm's innovative and market performance later in the technology life cycle. Although both hypotheses are supported as far as market performance is concerned, neither is supported when it comes to innovative performance.