Libra — A Differentiated View on Facebook’s Virtual Currency Project

Intereconomics - Libra — a global virtual currency project initiated by Facebook — has been the subject of many controversial discussions since its announcement in June 2019. This paper...     

Beyond "Yes or No" - Extending Access Control in Groupware with Awareness and Negotiation

We present three scenarios concerning access to documents in three real world fields of application, which have in common that they are very difficult to support with classical anticipative access control systems. We show, how - based on a highly configurable notification and negotiation service, which is tightly integrated with a classical access control system - the common permission and denial options can be extended with awareness and negotiation and how this approach supports the three initial access scenarios. We also introduce our implementation of the notification and negotiation service in the PoliTeam project.     

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.     

Trotz HIV-Infektion ein relativ normales Leben führen

Zusammenfassung  Moderne Therapiem?glichkeiten — Wohl kaum ein Gebiet der Medizin hat eine vergleichbar rasantere Entwicklung erlebt als die Erforschung von HIV und der antiretroviralen Therapie. Die Suche nach einem Impfstoff gegen den HI-Virus blieb allerdings erfolglos. Der einzige Schutz ist noch immer die Pr?vention. Denn auch wenn eine HIV-Infektion heute zu einer chronischen Krankheit geworden ist, endet sie noch immer mit einem vorzeitigen Tod.     

Advertising, in-house R&D, and growth

This paper develops a quality-ladder model of endogenous growthto study the interplay between in-house R&D and combativeadvertising expenditure, and its implications for economic growth,firm size, and welfare. The analysis shows that, somewhat surprisingly,higher incentives to engage in advertising, although combative,unambiguously foster innovation activity of firms. This, possibly,leads to faster growth and even higher welfare. These resultsrest on two features of the model which are well-supported byempirical evidence. First, if firms incur higher sunk costsfor marketing, concentration and firm size rise. Second, firmsize and R&D expenditure are positively related as largerfirms are able to spread R&D costs over higher sales. Theanalysis also suggests that R&D subsidies are conduciveto R&D and growth without inducing firms to raise advertisingoutlays.     

Business Alignment: Versicherungsfachwissen als Kernkompetenz der IT

Information technology (IT) of insurance companies refers to the variety of organizational units that are in charge of development, implementation and operation of the specific entrepreneurial IT-applications. Our analyses follow the notion that nowadays information technologies departments face increasing cost pressure and the modern reflex of introducing outsourcing-and offshoring-measures does not necessarily lead to cost reductions. Therefore a closer cooperation of IT departments and other organizational units is crucial and strengthens the improvement of competitiveness of the entire insurance company. Furthermore a method leading to a gradual Business Alignment of IT departments within insurance companies will be introduced.     

Credibility,currency convertibility and the stabilisation of the rouble

The measures taken so far to move towards currency convertibility and combat inflation in Russia and the other CIS countries are based largely on a three-stage programme formulated by the IMF. The following article presents alternatives and compares them with the IMF concept from the point of view of credibility.     

Long-Term Care Insurance and Life Insurance Demand

This article investigates the interaction between life insurance and long-term care insurance markets on the demand side. In the model utility depends on both consumption and bequest, and utility from consumption is contingent on the state of health. While the demand for life insurance increases both with decreasing income and with a rising degree of altruism, the influences of these two parameters on the demand for long-term care insurance are ambiguous. If the utility shock arising from disability declines, both insurance demands will rise.     

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE POSTED WORKERS DIRECTIVE

The consequences of an increase in the minimum wage for foreign workers in the construction sector, implied by the EU Posted Workers Directive, are analyzed. Due to the rising price of construction services, the factor demand for both construction services and capital in the tradeable good sector falls, and the wage rate in this sector declines. While the share of domestic workers increases with respect to both foreign workers and capital in the construction sector, this need not suffice to reduce unemployment. A possible higher level of employment of natives is not sufficient to raise natives’ welfare.     

Why cities should not be subsidized

The paper deals with the question of whether fiscal transfers received by cities can be justified by a higher cost of producing publicly provided goods. In the model, increasing the population density implies both a higher output per capita due to agglomeration economies and a higher cost of the publicly provided good due to congestion. It is shown that introducing fiscal transfers to be paid by the region with the lower population density will generally reduce welfare. This result is obtained since the city is already beyond the level of optimum agglomeration.