The development of accounting machines in French banks from the 1920s to the 1960s

French banks faced severe organisational problems in the 1910s and 1920s when the scale of their operations grew dramatically as a result of the broadening of the customer base among personal investors and of the boom in discount activities, both of which required increased levels of bookkeeping. In the meanwhile, due to inflation and trade-union pressure, wages had increased. This led to French banks adopting a strategy of sharing information with German banks, which already seem to have developed the process of mechanising bookkeeping operations. Knowledge exchanges were set up with German (and Belgian) bankers so as to accelerate the transfer of organisation (re-engineering) skills and data-processing. Banks in the Alsace region were pioneers in this movement; but several big banks did not wait long before introducing a policy of investing in machines and new platforms for tackling dataprocessing. The 1920s and the 1930s thus represent a key stage in the transformation of French banks into actual service 'organisations'.     

Franz Redl † (1921–1965)

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Franz Redl (1921–1965)

     

Neural Correlates of Impulsive Buying Tendencies during Perception of Product Packaging

Research has shown that people differ in their susceptibility to impulsive buying. The appeal of product packaging has the potential to trigger impulsive buying even for consumers with no intention to make a purchase. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether individual differences in consumers’ impulsive buying tendencies affect unconscious neural responses during the perception of product packaging. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied to measure neural responses to the perception of product packages in participants with different impulsive buying tendencies. The results of the study support and expand prior research in impulsive and reflective information processing and behavior. First, attractive versus neutral packages evoked more intensive activity changes in brain regions associated with an impulsive system. Second, attractive and unattractive versus neutral packages led to less intensive activity changes in regions associated with a reflective system. Third, attractive packages activated regions associated with reward, whereas unattractive packages activated regions associated with negative emotions. The results suggest that there is indeed a corresponding relationship between stronger impulsive buying tendencies and activity in brain areas associated with impulsive and reflective processes.     

Long‐Run Impact of Biofuels on Food Prices

About 40 percent of US corn is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. In this paper, we use a Ricardian model with differential land quality to show that world food prices could rise by about 32 percent by 2022. About half of this increase is from the biofuel mandate and the rest is a result of demand‐side effects in the form of population growth and income‐induced changes in dietary preferences, from cereals to meat and dairy products. However, aggregate world carbon emissions would increase, because of significant land conversion to farming and leakage from lower oil prices.     

The synchronization of wage dynamics across EMU members. A test of the endogeneity hypothesis

We test the hypothesis of an endogenous currency area for the labor market of the Euro area: has the introduction of a common currency caused wage dynamics to become more synchronized and to be able to cushion for asymmetric shocks? Trade intensity, sector specialization and financial integration are tested for being the driving forces for the endogenous synchronization of wage dynamics. We use regression techniques with instrument variables, and find evidence of persistent asymmetries in nominal wage formation, despite a single currency and monetary policy. We explain the result with more specialization following financial integration, and with still existing differences in wage formation and labor market institutions. We conclude that the euro zone is not endogenous with respect to wage formation. Rather, there are incentives for beggar-thy-neighbor policies in the Euro area.     

Recent evidence on the relationship between money growth and budget deficits

This paper examines the recent evidence on the extent to which the Federal Reserve accommodates Treasury financing activities by effectively monetizing newly issued debt. Various lag and lead formulations are used to determine the timing of FED actions. Results suggest that validation has been significant over the 1960–1980 period, and that, especially in recent periods, the FOMC has responded to capital market pressure which appears in advance of impending debt issues. Finally, we find in the limited number of observations available since October 1979 that there has been no substantive “break” in this accommodative policy despite the Fed's alleged emphasis on monetary aggregates.     

Growth patterns of the European venture capital industry

Although the European venture capital industry has become nearly as important as its American counterpart, little research has been done to describe its nature and importance. This study gives in the first place an overview of the importance of the venture capital industry in the major European countries. Thereafter, we look for funding and investment patterns in the different European countries. We hypothesize that there is a difference between countries in which the venture capital industry is just emerging, and those where the venture capital industry is since long established.The data are mainly, but not solely, taken from the yearly statistics of the European Venture Capital Association (EVCA) and cover the period 1984–1989. The characteristics we look at are: (1) the sources of the funds flowing into the industry, broken down with respect to investor type and geographical location of the investor; and (2) the investments, broken down with respect to investment stage (using the EVCA definitions of the different stages), geographical location, degree of syndication, and industrial sector of the investee companies. In Europe as a whole, the most important group of investors are the banks (28%), the pension funds (17%), and the insurance companies (12%). Banks dominate the Swiss industry (48%); corporate investors dominate the German, Swedish, and Portuguese industries, whereas these are nearly completely absent in Denmark (2%), Ireland (4%), and the United Kingdom (5%). Eighty percent of all venture capital funds are raised domestically, 7% in another European country, and the remaining 13% in a non-European country.Almost half of the European investments (44%) are made in the expansion stage; management buy-outs (MBOs) account for another 36%. Only 14% is invested in seed or start-up companies, much less than the 30% in the U.S. Half of the venture capital investments in the United Kingdom are buy-outs. The highest start-up investment activity takes place in Austria and Spain. On average, more than half (54%) of the invested amount in Europe is syndicated, but only 6% internationally, while 10% is invested internationally.We also search for similarities and dissimilarities in the characteristics of the sources of funds and of the investments. The hypothesis is that a growth pattern can be distinguished, determining the maturity of the venture capital industry in a particular country. The characteristics that we think would discriminate most among the different industry stages are the importance of government agencies, pension funds, and insurance companies (sources of funds); of start-up, later stages, or MBO investments; and the percentage of international and syndicated investments. Cluster analyses show that there is a growth pattern, but it is less clear than expected. Characteristics of mature industries are a bigger size, relative to the gross national product of the country, the presence of pension funds and insurance companies as investors in the industry, the syndication of the deals, and the absence of the government as an investor, in the 1980s, investments in management buy-outs are mainly done by the mature industries. No pattern can be distinguished for the investments in early or later stages.The major implication from this study is the fact that the European venture capital industry cannot be approached as a single, undifferentiated industry. Each country has its own structures, institutions, and policies, which make the venture capital industries in the different countries have unique characteristics. Moreover, the European venture capital industry has different characteristics than the American industry; this has to be taken into account when comparing both industries.     

The simulation of planning decisions

An approach to the simulation of planning decisions is presented in which techniques based on control systems analysis are used. Planning decisions are defined to be those taken by officially instituted bodies subsequent to the adoption of an official plan and in order to implement it. These decisions are in response to applications for action from the public. These decisions are assumed to be adequately represented by the mean and standard deviations of the distribution of time delays involved. These two parameters are in turn posited to be influenced by feedback, feedforward and comparison with a standard plan effects. These influences are subsumed in a Monitoring functional block, which is modelled by a set of multiple linear regression equations. The decision-making or Regulation functional block is represented by Laplace functions which makes it convenient for computer simulation. Input functions are derived from the hypothesis to be tested or theoretical considerations. The advantages of the method appear to lie in its concise form and ease of manipulation even though the system simulated is an adaptive control system. Computer simulation models are notorious for their unwieldy size (number of equations) which in turn makes intervention and manipulation of parameters impractical. The proposed model attempts to alleviate this problem by simplifying the procedure involved.