Returns to Retail Banking and Payments

The present paper examines the fundamental relationship between the country-level infrastructure of the retail payment market and overall bank performance. Using data from across 27 European markets over the period 2000–07, the results confirm that the performance of banks in countries with more developed retail payment service markets is better. This relationship is stronger in countries with a relatively high adoption of retail payment transaction technologies. Retail payment transaction technology itself can also improve bank performance, and evidence shows that heterogeneity in retail payment instruments is associated with enhanced bank performance. Similarly, higher usage of electronic retail payment instruments seems to stimulate banking business. We also show that retail payment services have a more significant impact on savings and cooperative bank performance, although they have a positive influence on the performance of commercial banks as well. Additionally, the findings reveal that the impact of retail services on bank performance is more pronounced through fee income, although their impact through interest income is also positive. Finally, an effective payment service market is found to be associated with higher bank stability. Our findings are robust to different regression specifications.     

Deutschlands Exportüberschuss auf dem Weg zu neuen Höchstständen — eine Projektion bis 2017

The economic and fi nancial crisis in 2009 triggered a stronger collapse in German exports compared to imports, with the high external surplus falling considerably. By now, global trade has recovered. The authors have calculated trends in German foreign trade, using a gravitation model. Based on IMF forecasts of global economic performance, the projections show that Germany’s export surplus looks set to reach new highs in the medium term.     

Im Controlling stehen die Zeichen auf Empirie und Internationalisierung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

中国制造企业服务市场细分的实证研究

随着中国经济的快速发展,中国制造产生了对机器设备需求的巨大市场,而服务业务的潜在发展空间促使设备供应商或专业服务提供商更加关注对服务业务的市场研究.本文针对中国机器及设备用户的服务需求情况进行了系统的中国制造企业服务市场细分的实证调查及研究.本文的调查采用用户访谈、座谈及大面积问卷发放的方式进行,数据分析上采用探索性因子分析和聚类分析,分析结果对中国制造企业的服务需求按其特征分为五类,比较突出的服务需求特点是表现出较强的价格敏感度.     

Response to haar's comment— and the beat goes on: Corporate downsizing in the twenty‐first century

Corporate downsizing continues to be a major strategy used by organizations to cope with a dynamic and turbulent global marketplace. A fundamental assumption made by executives is that this strategy improves the financial health of the corporation. De Meuse, Vanderheiden, and Bergmann (1994) examined several indices of financial performance over a five‐year period and found that firms employing downsizing experienced a deterioration in financial performance rather than an improvement. Haar (1999) questioned the findings of this study, asserting that if a company's risk level would have been included in the analysis, their results could have been different. In the present investigation, risk was incorporated in the original analysis. Again, the findings strongly indicate that downsizing was not an effective corporate strategy for enhancing the financial performance of corporations. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Assessing the impacts of EU's common agricultural policy on regional convergence: sub-national evidence from Germany

This article assesses the relationship between transfers arising from EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and convergence in both farmers’ revenues and interpersonal income redistribution using a sample of 26 regions in the state of Hesse, Germany, over the period 1979 to 2004 and 1991 to 2004, respectively. We thereby combine the concept of sigma convergence with Shorrock's inequality decomposition in order to determine the driving forces in distributional dynamics of farmers’ revenues. Additionally, we apply alternative methodologies to investigate how per capita incomes have evolved over time. Explicitly comparing the situations with and without transfers, our results indicate that the CAP tends to smooth differences in farmers’ revenues across regions, but does not impede a strong divergence through time. The latter is mainly driven by increasing structural differences between the regions, while disparities in intensity turn out to be less important. The empirical analysis also shows that CAP transfers reduce income inequality within society as a whole. However, this impact proved to be negligible in explaining distributional dynamics and growth of per capita incomes.     

Moving on from nascent entrepreneurship: measuring cross-national differences in the transition to new business ownership

Nascent entrepreneurship and new business ownership are subsequent stages in the entrepreneurial process. We illustrate how information from the largest internationally harmonized database on entrepreneurship, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project, can be used to approximate the entrepreneurial process. We make a methodological contribution by computing the ratio of new business ownership to nascent entrepreneurship in a way that reflects the transition from nascent to new business ownership and provides cross-nationally comparable information on the efficiency of the entrepreneurial process for 48 countries. We report evidence for the validity of the transition ratio by benchmarking it against transition rates obtained from longitudinal studies and by correlating it with commonly used entrepreneurship indicators and macro-level economic indices. The transition ratio enables future cross-national research on the entrepreneurial process by providing a reliable and valid indicator for one key transition in this process.