Rechnet sich ein kleiner Nordstaat?

Für eine umfassende Reform der bundesstaatlichen Ordnung wird h?ufig auch eine Neugliederung des Bundesgebietes für erforderlich gehalten. Was spricht aus der Sicht einzelner L?nder dafür oder dagegen, von sich aus eine Neugliederung anzustreben? Welche Effekte sind zu erwarten, wenn sich Schleswig-Holstein und Hamburg zu einem kleinen Nordstaat zusammentun würden. Dr. Konrad Lammers, 58, ist Leiter der Abteilung Europ?ische Integration im Hamburgischen Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA).     

Supplier Portfolio Management for IT Services Considering Diversification Effects

By means of service-oriented architectures the IT support of processes can be designed as a portfolio of individual IT services provided by different suppliers. The processes are designed based on selection decisions between IT services that potentially have to be included. Many companies formulate a multitude of requirements for investments in IT services at ever shorter intervals. However, the scope of the desired investments usually exceeds the available budget. Thus, companies face the challenge of allocating the limited budget to investments in the most promising combination of IT services. This is hardly possible without methodical support. In addition, the allocation is often done intuitively and subject to the decision-makers’ affinity with IT. Therefore, this paper develops a quantitative, multi-period procedure model for the purpose of maximizing the enterprise value in accordance with value based management, which considers the dependencies of the periodical selection decisions. In the following, a decision logic for the heuristic solution to the selection problem is presented and its application is demonstrated by means of an illustrative case example.     

EC Agricultural reform ad infinitum?

After protracted negotiations, the EC Ministers of Agriculture agreed on a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on July 1st. Will this reform solve the fundamental problems plaguing the common agricultural market? Is it compatible with the GATT?     

Are All Professional Investors Sophisticated?

Abstract. Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive as to whether professional investors show more sophisticated behavior than individual investors. Therefore, we study two important groups of professional investors and compare them with laymen by means of a survey covering about 500 investors. We find that some professionals, i.e. institutional investors, behave in a more sophisticated manner than laymen, whereas the less researched investment advisors seem to do even worse. Our survey approach complements available evidence due to its design: it compares professionals with (qualified) interested laymen, it covers six measures of sophisticated behavior, uses several control variables and strictly compares investment decisions in the private domain.