PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN SERVICE INDUSTRIES: ARE THE TRANSATLANTIC DIFFERENCES MEASUREMENT‐DRIVEN?

Since the mid-nineties, U.S. labor productivity outgrows its European counterpart by a wide margin. van Ark et al. (2003 ) have found three service industries where productivity growth has accelerated in the U.S., but not in Europe, to account for most of the difference. These three industries are wholesale and retail trade, and trade in financial securities. However, since measurement methods differ on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe's shortfall in productivity growth could be a statistical artifact. This paper tries to answer the question whether this is indeed the case by quantifying the extent to which the U.S. growth rates in trade and banking are pulled upward by measurement methods that are unusual in Europe. In addition, some observations are offered on whether the recent upswing in productivity growth in the U.S. services sector has cured "Baumol's Cost Disease."     

Profit Sharing, Capital Formation and the NAIRU

This paper reconsiders the impact of different remuneration systems on aggregate employment. Contrary to common wisdom on this topic, we show that the switch from a fixed wage economy to a share economy results in lower aggregate unemployment. An additional innovation of this paper is the endogeneity of the capital stock decision of the firm, which enables us to assess and reject the common "disincentive-to-invest" criticism of a share economy.     

洛桑国际管理学院——下属企业也应良好治理

六条人命,几十人药物不良反应,一种叫"欣弗"的药,让安徽华源生物药业有限公司,及其与之有关联的上海华源股份有限公司、中国华源集团悉数出现在人们的视野里。安徽华源的"问题欣弗",也给那些"航母级"的企业提了醒:下属企业同样需要公司治理。     

Biological implicit measures in HRM and OB: A question of how not if

Scholars in the disciplines of human resource management (HRM) and organizational behavior (OB) have primarily focused on explicit processes and measures in their research, but much of human feeling and behavior is triggered through implicit processing outside of conscious awareness. In this article, we discuss how explicit and implicit processes interact to shape work emotions, attitudes, and behaviors, and we suggest that scholars should incorporate biological measures for assessing implicit as well as explicit processes into their research designs. We provide guidance for such endeavors by describing how several biological implicit measures can be used in HRM and OB research. These measures include cortisol measurement, skin conductance, event related potential (ERP), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).     

On the economics of the longevity risk transfer market

We present a model of a longevity risk transfer market with different market players (primary insurers, reinsurers, and capital market investors) and investigate how market dynamics and the market players' roles evolve with progressing market saturation. We find that reinsurers' appetite for longevity risk is the key driver in the early stage of market development. Since diversification benefits with other businesses decrease with every transaction, the reinsurance market is intrinsically antimonopolistic. With the increasing saturation of the reinsurance sector as a whole, its competitiveness shrinks leading to rising expected risk-adjusted returns for capital market investors. We show that in a saturated market, reinsurers should assume the entire longevity risk from primary insurers, diversify it within their business mix, and subsequently pass on only specific (nondiversifiable) components of the longevity risk to the capital markets. Our findings provide valuable suggestions on how to make the best use of the market's limited risk absorption capacity.     

Bootstrapping the chain-ladder method for several correlated run-off portfolios

The prediction of the outstanding loss liabilities for a non-life run-off portfolio as well as the quantification of the prediction error is one of the most important actuarial tasks in non-life insurance. In this paper we consider this prediction problem in a multivariate context. More precisely, we derive the predictive distribution of the claims reserves simultaneously for several correlated run-off portfolios in the framework of the Chain-ladder claims reserving method for several correlated run-off portfolios.     

Bereitstellung von Regelleistung durch Elektrofahrzeuge: Modellrechnungen für Deutschland im Jahr 2035

The German government has set ambitious goals for both the expansion of renewable energy supply and electromobility. According to its Energiewende policy, electricity supply from fluctuating renewables is supposed to further increase considerably. This will tend to require a greater provision of balancing reserves. At the same time, supply from conventional dispatchable plants, which used to provide the bulk of reserves, will decrease. Against this background, this article analyzes the scope for an assumed fleet of 4.4 million electric vehicles to supply balancing reserves in 2035. Examining two different future power plant scenarios, it explores the potentials of reserve provision with and without the option of feeding electricity from vehicle batteries back to the grid. Results from an extended open-source power system simulation model show that the assumed vehicle fleet can efficiently provide a substantial share of reserve requirements, also in case the vehicle-to-grid option is not available. Arbitrage on wholesale markets, on the other hand, is negligible under basic assumptions. Likewise, total system cost savings are minor when compared to a pure cost-optimal loading of vehicle batteries. Under alternative assumptions on the future power plant portfolio as well as on battery degradation costs, however, wholesale arbitrage, reserve provision, and system cost savings can be substantial.     

„Die Methoden des Controllings werden in China akzeptiert und wissbegierig aufgenommen.“

Praxis / ArtikelInterview Titelthema

„Die Methoden des Controllings werden in China akzeptiert und wissbegierig aufgenommen.“ Interview mit Bernd Pichler, Dipl.-Kfm., MBA (GSBA Z), Managing Director Commercialder Volkswagen (China) Import Co., Ltd.