The role of family ownership in international entrepreneurship: exploring nonlinear effects

Empirical research on international entrepreneurship is growing, but results on the role of family ownership in this phenomenon are inconsistent. We believe these inconsistencies owe to prior researchers having not yet investigated nonlinear relationships. Drawing on opposing perspectives of stewardship and stagnation, we explore potential benefits and drawbacks of family ownership for international entrepreneurship and explore nonlinear relationships among these two variables. Using a sample of 1,035 US family businesses and applying ordinal regression analysis, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between family ownership and international entrepreneurship: International entrepreneurship is maximized when family ownership stands at moderate levels. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and indicate avenues for future research.     

Ist der Euro jetzt gerettet?

The paper analyses the German Federal Constitutional Court??s ruling on the ESM Treaty and the Fiscal Pact in the framework of the interim measures and provides an outlook on the decision in the main action. The material scope of the judgment and the standards of review are identified as well as the possible effects on the political scope of further euro bailout policy. The current crisis does not allow sufficient time for making the required changes to the EU treaties and to the German constitution. In view of the expected decision on the monetary policy strategy of the ECB, legal and economic aspects are considered, and the role of the central bank is critically reflected.     

Privatisierung der Autobahnen—Soll der Bund sein Tafelsilber verkaufen?

Gegenw?rtig wird der Verkauf des deutschen Autobahnnetzes diskutiert. Mit den Privatisierungserl?sen k?nnte ein erheblicher Teil der Verschuldung des Bundes abgebaut werden. Ist die traditionelle staatliche Bereitstellung noch gerechtfertigt? Wie weit sollte eine Autobahnprivatisierung gehen? Henrik Armbrecht, 30, Dipl.-Volkswirt, Sebastian Badura, 27, Dipl.-Verkehrswirtschaftler, und Torsten Marner, 34, Dipl.-Volkswirt, sind wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter am Institut für Verkehrswissenschaft an der Universit?t Münster.     

Granularity of Services

Service-oriented architectures are widely discussed as a design principle for application and enterprise architectures. Nevertheless, an adequate granularity of services has not yet been researched sufficiently from an economic perspective. The finer the granularity to realize the functions of a process, the higher the number of services is, and the more effort has to be directed towards composing them. In contrast, very coarse-grained services bear the disadvantages of higher implementation costs and lower reuse potential (e.g., in different processes). The aim of the decision model proposed in this paper is to determine an adequate granularity of services from an economical perspective. Thus, degrees of freedom, which often exist for the choice of granularity after a domain analysis, can be leveraged to realize a cost-efficient solution. We illustrate the applicability and practical benefits of the decision model with an example from the context of a financial services provider.     

Breakthrough in agricultural policy,or another policy failure?

Before the European summit in February 1988, EC agricultural policy was being criticized by almost all those affected. Farmers complained about low incomes and the lack of prospects, consumers and taxpayers about the high cost of agricultural support, politicians about spending commitments that could no longer be financed, agricultural economists about the waste of economic resources and trading partners about disruption of the world market. Have the decisions taken at the European summit set the Community on a fundamentally new course?     

Forecasting real estate prices in Germany: the role of consumer confidence

The aim of the paper is to analyse the forecasting ability of various potential predictors for real estate prices in Germany over the short term. In the wake of the financial crisis, real estate prices in Germany started to increase markedly and still did so by the end of 2013. Despite a number of fundamental reasons, e.g. favourable lending conditions and Germany’s rapid return to economic growth, this provoked a discussion on whether consumers have too gloomy expectations regarding real estate prices in future. To capture the role of expectations for predicting real estate prices, in our forecast evaluation, we put special emphasis on various components of consumer confidence. Using single indicator models, we find that households’ perceived financial situations as well as their intended consumption/saving plans serve as valuable real estate price predictors.     

The Narrow and Broad Approaches to Evolutionary Modeling in Economics

Some models in evolutionary economics rely on direct analogies to genetic evolution, assuming a population of firms with routines, technologies, and strategies on which forces of diversity generation and selection act. This narrow conception can build upon previous findings from evolutionary biology. Broader concepts of evolution allow many or just one adaptive entity, instead of necessarily requiring a population. Thus, an institution or a society can also be understood as an evolutionary entity. Both the narrow and broad approaches have been extensively used in the literature, albeit in different literature traditions. I provide an overview of the conception and development of both approaches to evolutionary modeling, and argue that a generalization is needed to realize the full potential of evolutionary modeling.