Das Mindestlohngesetz — Hoffnungen und Befürchtungen

The German government plans to introduce a minimum wage from 2015. This must be understood as a response to the decline in collective bargaining coverage and the marked increase in employment in the low-wage sector. The authors discuss how many workers are affected by this new regulation and whether the minimum wage is too high in relation to the average wage of workers (Kaitz index). They assume that the introduction of a minimum wage in Germany can have a number of effects. It is not possible to forecast all the reactions and behaviour of market participants to handle higher wages and goods prices. Some authors warn that these measures are significant labour market interventions that could have adverse employment effects. They recommend allowing more exemptions from the minimum wage law than intended by the government, especially for young employees and student apprentices. Other authors hope that minimum wages would help to strengthen collective bargaining and stabilise wages. Some authors emphasise that there should be a careful evaluation of the economic effects by scientists.     

Injury rates and risk-factors associated with eventing: a total cohort study of injury events among adult Swedish eventing athletes

The aim of this study was to examine injury events and risk-factors among Swedish adult eventing athletes. A cross-sectional study design with retrospective recording of 1-year sports-specific exposure and injury data was used. The invited study population consisted of all members of the Swedish Equestrian Federation with eventing as their primary discipline (n = 513). The participation rate was 70.0%. The total 1-year injury prevalence was 26.6%; the specific 1-year prevalence of traumatic injury was 19.3% and of overuse injury 10.9%. The incidence of traumatic injury events was 0.54 injury events/1000 eventing hours (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.35-0.73 injury events/1000 eventing hours) for novices and 0.35 injury events/1000 eventing hours for qualified riders (95% CI, 0.21-0.49 injury events/1000 eventing hours). A total of 27.9% of the traumatic injury events led to severe injuries (causing more than 3 weeks absence from riding). Attitude to risk-taking was the only factor predicting an athlete becoming injured (p = 0.023), and qualification level was the only risk factor for additional injuries among injured riders (p = 0.003). Our results suggest that injury prevention programs in eventing should also give attention to overuse injuries and that care should be taken when eventing athletes are licensed into higher qualification groups.     

Service quality in the private banking business

This paper examines the concept of service quality in private banking theoretically and empirically and identifies factors which contribute to service quality. A multidimensional and hierarchical model is developed based on the work of Rust and Oliver (in Service Quality, pp. 1–20, 1994) and Brady and Cronin (in J. Mark. 65(3):34–49, 2001). The model is then empirically tested among private banking providers with the partial least squares method. Furthermore, the developed model is compared to other approaches, including Grönroos (in Eur. J. Mark. 18(4):36–44, 1984). Another model for comparison excludes the indirect effects of Grönroos (in Eur. J. Mark. 18(4):36–44, 1984) and focuses on the direct effects on service quality. We can conclude that the model based on Rust and Oliver (in Service Quality, pp. 1–20, 1994) and Brady and Cronin (in J. Mark. 65(3):34–49, 2001) produces the best results and can best explain service quality in private banking. Finally, an analysis of various provider groups is conducted in order to identify differences between private banking providers in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein and between providers with various minimum investment requirements.     

Experiences of the development and use of scenarios for evaluating Swedish national environmental objectives

The aim of the present paper is to present and evaluate a method for encouraging long-term thinking and considerations of a variety of scenarios in environmental policy processes. The Swedish environmental policy is based on 16 environmental objectives that national authorities are responsible for. They are evaluated annually and also in-depth every fourth year. Here we describe and explore a futures study project for introducing a more long-term thinking in the work with the environmental objectives, tested in the in-depth evaluation 2008. An experience was that it is difficult to design a collective scenario work in a case with a wide variety of objectives and with individuals with different backgrounds. However, this difficulty makes it even more important to incorporate futures studies in authorities work. Scenario work is often subcontracted, leading to a constant lack of futures studies competence and thinking at the authorities. Another experience is that despite the difficulties, experts at the authorities did start thinking more in terms of opportunities with futures studies. A general conclusion from the work was that there is an interest and need for futures studies at the authorities in charge of the environmental objectives. The possibly most important conclusion from this project was that the authorities need to build up their own competences in futures studies.     

Ruin probabilities under general investments and heavy-tailed claims

In this paper, the asymptotic decay of finite time ruin probabilities is studied. An insurance company is considered that faces heavy-tailed claims and makes investments in risky assets whose prices evolve according to quite general semimartingales. In this setting, the ruin problem corresponds to determining hitting probabilities for the solution to a randomly perturbed stochastic integral equation. A large deviation result for the hitting probabilities is derived that holds uniformly over a family of semimartingales. This result gives the asymptotic decay of finite time ruin probabilities under sufficiently conservative investment strategies, including ruin-minimizing strategies. In particular, as long as the insurance company invests sufficiently conservatively, the investment strategy has only a moderate impact on the asymptotics of the ruin probability.     

Dynamic portfolio optimization across hidden market regimes

Regime-based asset allocation has been shown to add value over rebalancing to static weights and, in particular, reduce potential drawdowns by reacting to changes in market conditions. The predominant approach in previous studies has been to specify in advance a static decision rule for changing the allocation based on the state of financial markets or the economy. In this article, model predictive control (MPC) is used to dynamically optimize a portfolio based on forecasts of the mean and variance of financial returns from a hidden Markov model with time-varying parameters. There are computational advantages to using MPC when estimates of future returns are updated every time a new observation becomes available, since the optimal control actions are reconsidered anyway. MPC outperforms a static decision rule for changing the allocation and realizes both a higher return and a significantly lower risk than a buy-and-hold investment in various major stock market indices. This is after accounting for transaction costs, with a one-day delay in the implementation of allocation changes, and with zero-interest cash as the only alternative to the stock indices. Imposing a trading penalty that reduces the number of trades is found to increase the robustness of the approach.     

Designing <Emphasis Type="Italic">interaction</Emphasis>: How do interaction design students address interaction?

Interaction design is usually described as being concerned with interactions with and through artifacts but independent of a specific implementation. Design work has been characterized as a conversation between the designer and the situation and this conversation poses a particular challenge for interaction design as interactions can be elusive and difficult to describe. Moreover, current trends in interaction design introduce physical materials to a higher degree resulting in even more complex design situations. There is a lack of knowledge about how interaction designers, and especially students, address the very phenomenon of interaction. This study contributes by describing how interaction design students attempt to address aspects of interaction and by presenting an in-depth analysis in the context of an interactionary-type design exercise. The quantitative and qualitative findings showed that (1) the design students brought up aspects of interactivity and dynamics through talk and gestures but (2) a comprehensive design idea about interaction did not guide the design work and they were to a little degree engaged in planning sequences of interactions or interaction on a longer time scale, (3) using physical materials disrupted interaction design, and, (4) there was a lack of continuity when addressing interaction compared to how proposals about artifacts were pursued. As interaction is the core of interaction design, the findings are discussed in terms of how the immaterial design materials may “talk back” to designers. Practical strategies for how the observed phenomena could be constructively addressed within interaction design education are suggested.     

Commodity taxes and welfare under endogenous market conduct

We consider consumption taxes in a model of endogenous Cournot versus Bertrand competition. It is argued that when the choice of unit versus ad valorem taxes affects longer-term decisions beyond the customary price or quantity decisions, the mix of the two taxes co-determines market conduct. This gives ad valorem taxes an anti-competitive effect that harms ad valorem taxes’ efficiency in comparison with unit taxes. We show that a mix of the taxes—or a unit tax alone if we compare one or the other of the taxes—is sometimes welfare superior on account of consumer-price and tax revenue effects. A practical implication of our findings is that pass-through rates are only sometimes useful guides for policy. In fact, we show when the proper response to demand for higher revenue is a higher unit tax rate and a lower ad valorem tax rate.     

Urban Citizenship and Right to the City: The Fragmentation of Claims

In this symposium, we explore how urban citizenship is about expressing, if not producing, difference, and how fragmentation of claims affects urban citizenship and right to the city movements with their universal, all‐inclusive ideals. Investigating social movements, political participation and conflicting diversities in public space in Tel Aviv and Berlin, we see a trend towards a diversification of interests, a weakening of movements, and even a competition over rights and resources rather than a development of mutual support and solidarities among various groups on the pathway to a livable city. This tension, we argue, deserves attention. Radical urban scholarship and politics need to better understand the historical and place‐specific contexts that structure the formation of citizenship claims and the courses that citizenship struggles take. Celebrations of urban citizenship as a more contextualized, community oriented, and bottom‐up framework (in comparison to national citizenship) should therefore be complemented by a careful investigation of their fragmented and fragmenting practices.     

A Case Study of the Dual Labor Market Hypothesis

This paper is about corporations and the principles by which they are guided. The focus is on conceptualization of control issues, and changes in such conceptualizations over time. Among individuals who are in a position to affect the overall direction of corporations, there are broadly shared views of the overall orientation that should be adopted. Such “conceptions of control” are a response to important contingencies in the firm's institutional environment. In the United States the most broadly shared conception of control currently is a particularly narrow one, focusing on financial measures of performance. This has not always been the case: conceptions of control are subject to evolutionary change over time. The paper traces such changes, evaluates the current situation and its relation to shareholders, and speculates as to the possibility of a future change in a more socially conscious direction.