Die Geldnachfrage in Österreich

Ohne ZusammenfassungDiese Arbeit wurde als Forschungsprojekt am Institut für höhere Studien, Wien, verfaßt. Die Verfasser danken Dr. H. Otruba, Assistent am Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften der Universität Wien, für eine kritische Durchsicht des Manuskripts und für wertvolle Kommentare.     

Gerechte Löhne und Arbeitslosengelder

Aufgrund der hohen Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland wird von Seiten der Unternehmer sowie vieler Ökonomen eine Senkung der Löhne bzw. eine Ausweitung der Arbeitszeit gefordert. Doch welcher Anteil der Löhne am erwirtschafteten Nettoertrag wird von den Tarifparteien als fair angesehen? Wie hoch sollte unter Fairnessgesichtspunkten die Sozialhilfe bzw. das Arbeitslosengeld II sein, und welchen Anteil sollte das Arbeitslosengeld I als Teil des früheren Gehalts erreichen?Prof. Dr. Fritz Helmedag, 51, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Mikroökonomik, an der Technischen Universität Chemnitz.     

Combining time-series and econometric forecast of tourism activity

It has always been difficult to model the travel industry because tourism involves such a diverse set of activities. However, various regional decision makers have become increasingly interested in predicting the flows of visitors through their market. Accurate forecasts of the number of tourists' arrivals, their length of stay, and their expenditures improve planning and inventory control. Stochastic time-series models have compared favorably with econometric models at the aggregate level while some naive automatic forecasting tools have fared well in comparison when predicting industry-level behavior. Several approaches have been developed to improve forecast accuracy. This paper presents parsimonious methods of improving accuracy by combining various forecasting techniques. The Box-Jenkins stochastic time-series method is combined with a traditional econometric technique to forecast airline visitors to the State of Florida.     

Coal not becoming superfluous

The rapid change in the European energy sector has mainly affected the coal. It is more and more threatened to lose its importance. The importance of exploitation and transport means increasing competitivenes of non-European suppliers, and technical progress enables the economical use of new power categories. For the adjustment of coal demand to the present and future one, many-sided politico-economical measures and programmes are imperative. INTERECONOMICS had the occasion to talk with Dr Hellwig, Vice President of the Commission of the European Communities, about these questions.     

Kapitalprivatisierung der Deutschen Bahn AG

Die geplante materielle Privatisierung der Deutschen Bahn AG kann als logischer Schritt der formalen Bahnprivatisierung vom 1.1.1994 angesehen werden. Welche Privatisierungsmodelle werden gegenw?rtig diskutiert? Sollte die Deutsche Bahn AG mit oder ohne ihr Betriebsnetz an die B?rse gehen? Ist die Deutsche Bahn AG überhaupt b?rsenf?hig?     

The Optimal Decentralisation of Government Activity: Normative Recommendations for the European Constitution

This article surveys the research on the efficient assignment of policy tasks to different levels of government and applies the results on the delimitation of competencies within the EU. A precise derivation of an optimal degree of decentralisation is not possible on purely theoretical grounds, it has to be determined case-by-case. Systematic evidence on direct relationships between economic performance and fiscal decentralisation is both scarce and ambiguous. Comparing the actual and prospective delimitation of EU-competencies with the normative recommendations, remarkable discrepancies arise in the fields of agriculture and defence. The establishment of a flexible assignment scheme is an undeniable necessity in order to guarantee reversibility and to cope efficiently with changing conditions. In this respect, the European Convention has delivered insufficient results in its final draft Treaty as of July 2003.     

Sequential decisions under uncertainty and the maximum theorem

For sequential decision problems in which the decision-maker observes a process of state variables and chooses an adapted process of action variables, the paper defines a topology on the space of measures of processes of state variables which ensures the applicability of Berge's maximum theorem to the decision-maker's optimal behavior. The topology controls for the information available to the decision-maker at each decision date. The paper also discusses the implications of the analysis for the dynamic-programming approach to sequential decision-making under uncertainty, and for equilibrium existence proof strategies in sequential-market models and games.     

Structural funds, EU enlargement, and the redistribution of FDI in Europe

The EU enlargements of 2004 led to a redirection of Structural and Cohesion Funds expenditures from EU-15 to new EU members as did those of 2007. This redistribution of funds makes the accession countries even more attractive as a location of FDI. Using a logistic regressions approach, this paper shows that a reallocation of structural funds as outlined in Agenda (For a stronger and wider union, COM(97) 2000 final, 2000) and successive revisions of the financial perspectives for an enlarged union leads to a redistribution of FDI by approximately 4−8 percentage points from the current EU members to the accession countries (2004 scenario) and 7−10 percentage points (2007 scenario), respectively.