Kundenportale in der Energiebranche: Bestandsaufnahme und Entwicklungspotenziale

Since the energy market had been liberalized, the competition between utilities has increased. In order to win new and hold existing customers, it seems necessary to develop new services and products that closely meet the needs of the customers. An online-portal can be such a service, as it will serve as a central interface between utility and customer when the personal contact diminishes due to a decreasing local focus of the utility and the omission of the meter reading at the customer’s house caused by Smart Metering. In this article, the major criteria for the development of such a portal will be introduced. A market survey shows which criteria are already considered and which design criteria are not taken into account yet. This article focuses psychological concepts that motivate customers to use the portal regularly and save energy. We conclude that there is much room for improvement with regard to the criteria that are meant to illustrate the energy consumption and with regard to the provision of psychological incentives.     

Wealth and Income Inequality in Europe

While it has long been apparent that global levels of wealth and income inequality have been steadily increasing since the 1970s, the issue received scant attention in Europe until the recent fi nancial crisis and the resulting Great Recession illuminated for the general public just how great the chasm between the very rich and everybody else had grown. This realisation was coupled with an increased focus on inequality among economists and other academics, leading to a fresh drive for policy ideas to remedy the alarming trend. This Forum comprises a diverse range of viewpoints on the recent history and dynamics of inequality within Europe, each striving to defi ne the root causes in the various countries being examined. The defi nition of these causes, of course, can inform the direction of policies aimed at alleviating the growing inequality in many European countries and thereby curtail one of the major political and social issues of our time.     

New Tools in Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions

This article introduces a large new cross-country database,the Database of Political Institutions. It covers 177 countriesover 21 years, 1975–95. The article presents the intuition,construction, and definitions of the different variables. Amongthe novel variables introduced are several measures of checksand balances, tenure and stability, identification of partyaffiliation with government or opposition, and fragmentationof opposition and government parties in the legislature.     

A New Database on the Structure and Development of the Financial Sector

This article introduces a new database of indicators of financialstructure and financial development across countries and overtime. The database is unique in that it combines a wide varietyof indicators that measure the size, activity, and efficiencyof financial intermediaries and markets. It improves on previousefforts by presenting data on the public share of commercialbanks, introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbankfinancial institutions, and constructing measures of the sizeof bond and primary equity markets.     

When arm's length is too far: Relationship banking over the credit cycle

We conduct face-to-face interviews with bank chief executive officers to classify 397 banks across 21 countries as relationship or transaction lenders. We then use the geographic coordinates of these banks’ branches and of 14,100 businesses to analyze how the lending techniques of banks near firms are related to credit constraints at two contrasting points of the credit cycle. We find that while relationship lending is not associated with credit constraints during a credit boom, it alleviates such constraints during a downturn. This positive role of relationship lending is stronger for small and opaque firms and in regions with a more severe economic downturn. Moreover, relationship lending mitigates the impact of a downturn on firm growth and does not constitute evergreening of loans.     

Identifying Fraud in Online Auctions: A Case Study

According to the FBI (IC3, 2011), losses as a result of auto‐auction fraud exceeded $8.2 million dollars in 2011. How can one detect deception in online auction transactions? The authors use a comprehensive case to teach students about deception detection processes, detection cues, and the e‐commerce environment. Students are challenged to make a professional judgment about whether the transaction under consideration is an attempt to deceive. The case is based on a real‐life situation and provides a valuable exercise for business students, educating them in the reality of online auction markets and developing their critical thinking skills. The case may be used with undergraduate accounting majors in Accounting Information Systems classes and with graduate students in an e‐commerce course either as an in‐class assignment or as a term project. Students provided favorable responses as to the value of the case.     

Tarifpartnerschaft — ein altes,aber gefährdetes Bündnis?

100 years ago, in November 1918, the Stinnes Legien Agreement was drawn up between various employers’ associations and trade unions. It included collective bargaining autonomy and collective agreements, the eight-hour work day and work councils. It soon failed, but served as a model for the legal regulation of collective bargaining relations after the Second World War. In the meantime, however, collective bargaining has declined significantly. Many employers are members of their associations without a collective agreement. At the same time, union memberships are declining. In view of increasingly precarious forms of employment, the government apparently needs to implement stronger regulations on collective bargaining relations again, such as the Minimum Wage Act. Finally, a look back: In 1918, editorial member Alfred Schmidt-Essen commented on the agreement from a current perspective. We document the article.     

Technology adoption in autocratic economies: The role of fiscal capacity

What determines technology in autocratic regimes? In this paper, I assume that a rent-extracting regime can adopt technology from the global technology frontier, tax-paying citizens can oust the regime, and technology can decrease the ousting cost. I show that a lack of fiscal capacity can increase technology by preventing the ousting constraint from binding. Consistent with this prediction, tax collections and total factor productivity are negatively related in autocratic regimes. Extensions show that natural resources can divorce fiscal revenues from technology, which can encourage technology blocking. However, if technology adoption is socially costly, autocratic regimes can adopt too much technology.     

Cheaper by the bundle: The interaction of frictions and option exercise in variable annuities

Typical Variable Annuity products combine complex baseline contracts at substantial fees with optional guarantees. We argue this product design aligns with the benefits of bundling to the provider, to the extent that the baseline option features can reduce total replication value. This is possible due to market frictions, and particularly taxation rules, affecting policyholder exercise behavior. We demonstrate the relevance of this mechanism in the context of popular withdrawal guarantees, both theoretically and empirically. Specifically, we show that in the presence of personal taxes, adding on a common death benefit at baseline may decrease the total contract value to the provider.