The Economic and Climate Value of Flexibility in Green Energy Markets

Environmental and Resource Economics - This paper examines how enhanced flexibility across space, time, and a regulatory dimension affects the economic costs and CO $$_2$$ emissions of integrating...     

Too much of a good thing? On the growth effects of the EU's regional policy

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states from two pools, the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund. The main goal of the associated transfers is to facilitate convergence of poor regions (in terms of per-capita income) to the EU average. We use data at the NUTS3 level from the last two EU budgetary periods (1994–1999 and 2000–2006) and generalized propensity score estimation to analyze to which extent the goal of fostering growth in the target regions was achieved with the funds provided and whether or not more transfers generated stronger growth effects. We find that, overall, EU transfers enable faster growth in the recipient regions as intended, but we estimate that in 36% of the recipient regions the transfer intensity exceeds the aggregate efficiency maximizing level and in 18% of the regions a reduction of transfers would not even reduce their growth. We conclude that some reallocation of the funds across target regions would lead to higher aggregate growth in the EU and could generate even faster convergence than the current scheme does.     

Zur Relevanz des Controllability-Prinzips für die Unternehmenspraxis

Das Controllability-Prinzip fordert, Akteure nur für das verantwortlich zu machen, was diese auch beeinflussen k?nnen. In empirischen Studien wird jedoch berichtet, dass Unternehmen h?ufig gegen dieses Postulat versto?en und dass somit das Postulat m?glicherweise für Unternehmen nicht relevant ist. Dabei rekurrieren die meisten Studien nicht direkt auf das Postulat, sondern auf davon abgeleitete Handlungsmaximen. Vor diesem Hintergrund konsolidiert der vorliegende Review von 29 empirischen Studien die vielf?ltigen und scheinbar widersprüchlichen Detailerkenntnisse zum Controllability-Prinzip. Es wird deutlich, dass der Versto? gegen eine der Handlungsmaximen nicht mit einem Versto? gegen das Controllability-Prinzip gleichgesetzt werden darf. Das Postulat k?nnte somit sehr wohl für Unternehmen relevant sein. Zum anderen konnte gezeigt werden, dass die Wahrnehmung von Beeinflussbarkeit, Verantwortung und damit die Einhaltung des Prinzips sowohl von individuellen Pers?nlichkeitsmerkmalen als auch von Eigenschaften des Unternehmens (des korporativen Akteurs) abh?ngig ist. Es wird damit auch deutlich, dass erst eine Studie, die sowohl individuelle Pers?nlichkeitsmerkmale als auch Eigenschaften des Unternehmens berücksichtigt, geeignet ist, Aussagen zur Relevanz des Controllability-Prinzips zu liefern.     

Modeling growth options and structural change to reach middle income country status: The case of Ghana

This paper develops a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) model to evaluate sources of accelerated growth and structural transformation. It goes beyond stylized and aggregate general equilibrium models by examining country-specific growth options to reach middle income country (MIC) status. We first examine a set of countries that have successfully transformed their economies to inform model and scenario building. We then simulate potentials and trade-offs of selected sector- and factor-specific growth paths for Ghana. Results show that no individual sector's growth acceleration is sufficient for Ghana to reach MIC status by 2015. Manufacturing growth is constrained by its high dependency on agricultural inputs indicating the need for diversification. Services can support rather than drive economy-wide growth. Agriculture must remain the mainstay of economy-wide growth. While this will delay structural change in sectoral composition, it demonstrates that emphasizing agriculture is a viable option for some countries to reach MIC status.     

Optimal redistricting under geographical constraints: Why “pack and crack” does not work

We show that optimal partisan redistricting with geographical constraints is a computationally intractable (NP-complete) problem. In particular, even when voter's preferences are deterministic, a solution is generally not obtained by concentrating opponent's supporters in “unwinnable” districts (“packing”) and spreading one's own supporters evenly among the other districts in order to produce many slight marginal wins (“cracking”).     

The Bank for International Settlements Capital Adequacy ‘Rules': Implications for Banks Operating in the UK

In December 1987 the Basle Committee of Supervisors, operating under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), published guideline proposals for the approach to be taken by supervisors in the Group of Ten (G10) countries to the measurement and assessment of the capital adequacy of ‘internationally-active’ banks operating within their national boundaries. With some minor adjustments, these proposals were duly confirmed in July 1988 following extensive consultations with national supervisory bodies. The implications of these ‘rules', as interpreted and implemented by the Bank of England, for the capital requirements imposed on banks operating in the UK are assessed.     

Dynamische Preissetzung — Wer profitiert?

In the context of digitalisation, recent approaches for automatic price adjustment are gaining importance. However, these approaches can affect consumer behaviour in a way which is disadvantageous for consumers, businesses and the state as a whole. In September 2016, consumer researchers met at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf in order to discuss the impact of dynamic pricing from the viewpoint of their research fields. As the articles make clear, the researchers found that dynamic pricing based on competitors’ prices is common, while personalised prices are extremely rare. The question arises as to what extent consumers consider dynamic prices unfair. The experts disagree about the necessity of a stricter legal regulatory framework. Furthermore, digital technology can be used to help consumers find their way through the complex online world. Ultimately, the question of who profits–the consumer or the trader–has not been settled. The discussants conclude that there is need for further research in many different research fields.     

Wealth Effects of Rare Earth Prices and China’s Rare Earth Elements Policy

This article identifies power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom as neglected but significant elements for understanding the ethics of social entrepreneurship. While the ethics of social entrepreneurship is typically conceptualized in conjunction with innate properties or moral commitments of the individual, we problematize this view based on its presupposition of an essentialist conception of the authentic subject. We offer, based on Foucault’s ethical oeuvre, a practice-based alternative which sees ethics as being exercised through a critical and creative dealing with the limits imposed by power, notably as they pertain to the conditioning of the neoliberal subject. To this end, we first draw on prior research which looks at how practitioners of social enterprises engage with government policies that demand that they should act and think more like prototypical entrepreneurs. Instead of simply endorsing the kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity implied in prevailing policies, our results indicate that practitioners are mostly reluctant to identify themselves with the invocation of governmental power, often rejecting the subjectivity offered to them by discourse. Conceiving these acts of resistance as emblematic of how social entrepreneurs practice ethics by retaining a skeptical attitude toward attempts that seek to determine who they should be and how they should live, we introduce three vignettes that illustrate how practices of freedom relate to critique, the care for others, and reflected choice. We conclude that a practice-based approach of ethics can advance our understanding of how social entrepreneurs actively produce conditions of freedom for themselves as well as for others without supposing a ‘true self’ or a utopian space of liberty beyond power.     

How to Coordinate Value Generation in Service Networks

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks implies new economic and organizational challenges. As coordination mechanisms, auctions have proven to perform quite well in situations where intangible and heterogeneous goods are traded. Nevertheless, traditional approaches in the area of multidimensional combinatorial auctions are not quite suitable to enable the trade of composite services. A flawless service execution and therefore the requester’s valuation highly depends on the accurate sequence of the functional parts of the composition, meaning that in contrary to service bundles, composite services only generate value through a valid order of their components. The authors present an abstract model as a formalization of service value networks. The model comprehends a graph-based mechanism implementation to allocate multidimensional service offers within the network, to impose penalties for non-performance and to determine prices for complex services. The mechanism and the bidding language support various types of QoS attributes and their (semantic) aggregation. It is analytically shown that this variant is incentive compatible with respect to all dimensions of the service offer (quality and price). Based on these results, the authors numerically analyze strategic behavior of participating service providers regarding possible collusion strategies.     

Beyond listening: the distinct effects of proactive versus responsive customer orientation on the reduction of uncertainties at the fuzzy front end of innovation

The extent to which the intensity of R&D employees' interaction with market-oriented employees, proactive customer orientation, and responsive customer orientation affect the ability to reduce product-related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end of innovation was analyzed. They investigated 160 product innovation projects in various high-tech industries and identified proactive customer orientation as an important moderator of the link between R&D employees' interaction with market-oriented employees and the reduction of product-related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end. They also found that responsive customer orientation diminishes the ability to reduce product-related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.