AIDS treatment and intrahousehold resource allocation: Children's nutrition and schooling in Kenya

The provision of antiretroviral medications is a central component of the response to HIV/AIDS and consumes substantial public resources from around the world, but little is known about this intervention's impact on the welfare of children in treated persons' households. Using longitudinal survey data from Kenya, we examine the relationship between the provision of treatment to adults and the schooling and nutrition outcomes of children in their households. Weekly hours of school attendance increase by over 20% within 6 months after treatment is initiated for the adult patient. We find some weak evidence that young children's short-term nutritional status also improves. These results suggest how intrahousehold allocations of time and resources may be altered in response to health improvements of adults.     

Notenbankbilanzanalyse: Ein neues Werkzeug der Geldpolitik in der Subprime-Krise

Im Verlauf der Subprime-Krise verschlechterte sich die Notenbankbilanz der FED substanziell. Sind die herk?mmlichen Analyseinstrumente der Geldpolitik vor diesem Hintergrund noch ausreichend? Oder erfordern die aktuellen geldpolitischen Entwicklungen neue Analysemethoden in Form einer Notenbankbilanzanalyse? Müssen Betrachtungen der Geldqualit?t die Beobachtung der Geldmenge sowie der Notenbankzinssetzung erg?nzen?     

Exploring the effects of leaders’ individualized consideration in extreme contexts

Abstract

Role clarity and trust in leadership are two crucial factors supporting soldiers in coping with uncertainty and imperfect knowledge. The present study examined the effects of leaders’ individualized consideration on both factors in a sample composed of 161 paratroopers from a parachute division of the NATO Airborne Forces. Conditional process modeling revealed that (1) leaders showing individualized consideration increase followers’ role clarity and, in parallel, develop a trusting relationship with them; (2) critical upward communication and perceived workload mediated and moderated these relationships, respectively. The implications of these findings for safety research and their practical applications are outlined.     

Das Web als Fenster zum Kunden - Neue Regeln für neue Insights

Mit dem Paradigmenwechsel im Internet hin zu partizipativ angelegten Internetangeboten ergeben sich neue Chancen für eine bedürfnisgerichtete Marktforschung. Die Analyse der intrinsisch motivierten Beitr?ge von Verbrauchern in Blogs und Communities erlaubt einen neuen Zugang zu den tats?chlichen Episoden und Ritualen im t?glichen Leben der Kunden. So ergibt sich die M?glichkeit einer „netnografischen“ Identifikation von latenten Bedürfnissen. Eine systematische Herangehensweise liefert authentische Customer Insights.     

Imputed Rent and Income Inequality: A Decomposition Analysis for Great Britain, West Germany and the U.S.

This article deals with income advantages derived from owner-occupied housing and their impact on the personal income distribution. Using micro-data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we find distinct cross-national differences in terms of the prevalence and extent of imputed rent. Results from inequality decomposition analyses show this overall impact to be the net effect of two conflicting changes: On the one hand there is increasing income inequality between the groups of owneroccupiers and renters, respectively, and, on the other hand, we find inequality to be decreasing within the group of those owner-occupiers who own outright. When focussing on imputed rent as a means of old-age provision, our results for all three countries show an income advantage for, as well as a poverty reducing effect among the elderly. The empirical findings support the claim for the need of an improved harmonization of this non-cash income component especially for the purpose of cross-national comparative research.     

Smoothing the payoff for efficient computation of Basket option prices

We consider the problem of pricing basket options in a multivariate Black–Scholes or Variance-Gamma model. From a numerical point of view, pricing such options corresponds to moderate and high-dimensional numerical integration problems with non-smooth integrands. Due to this lack of regularity, higher order numerical integration techniques may not be directly available, requiring the use of methods like Monte Carlo specifically designed to work for non-regular problems. We propose to use the inherent smoothing property of the density of the underlying in the above models to mollify the payoff function by means of an exact conditional expectation. The resulting conditional expectation is unbiased and yields a smooth integrand, which is amenable to the efficient use of adaptive sparse-grid cubature. Numerical examples indicate that the high-order method may perform orders of magnitude faster than Monte Carlo or Quasi Monte Carlo methods in dimensions up to 35.     

Money Illusion and Housing Frenzies

A reduction in inflation can fuel run-ups in housing pricesif people suffer from money illusion. For example, investorswho decide whether to rent or buy a house by simply comparingmonthly rent and mortgage payments do not take into accountthe fact that inflation lowers future real mortgage costs. Wedecompose the price–rent ratio into a rational component—meantto capture the "proxy effect" and risk premia—and an impliedmispricing. We find that inflation and nominalinterest ratesexplain a large share of the time series variation of the mispricing,and that the tilt effect is very unlikely to rationalize thisfinding.     

A tale of two Ginis in the US, 1921–2012

Following a methodology by Jantzen and Volpert (2012), we use IRS Adjusted Gross Income data for the US (1921–2012) to estimate two Gini indices representing inequality at the bottom and the top of the income distribution, and to calculate the overall Gini as a function of the parameters underlying the two indices. A steady increase in the overall Gini since the Second World War actually hides two different periods of distributional changes. First, the increase in inequality from the mid 1940s to the late 1970s is driven by rising inequality at the bottom of the income distribution that more than offsets a decrease in inequality at the top. The implication is that middle-income earners gained relative to high-incomes, and especially relative to low-income earners. Second, the rise in the Gini after 1981 is driven by rising inequality at the top. Third, top-driven inequality follows a U-shaped trajectory consistent with Piketty and Saez (2003, 2006). Fourth, the welfare effects of the different distributional changes behind increasing inequality can be evaluated in light of the Lorenz-dominance criterion by Atkinson (1970): we argue that the rise in inequality since 1981 is much more likely to be associated with a social welfare loss net of compensating growth.     

Untersuchung verschiedener Handelsstrategien für Wind- und Solarenergie unter Berücksichtigung der EEG 2012 Novellierung

The new EEG 2012 law opens up for more parties to participate in the trading of wind and solar power, because of the bonus system that now compensates everybody for all market relevant costs, not only the Transmission System Operators. Therefore it can be expected, that the trading of renewable energies by private parties will increase. One of the central questions to be answered is how efficient does a balance responsible party have to be to stay competitive also with a small pool. The quantification of balance costs for different trading strategies is however complex and non-trivial. We propose a methodology in this study that accounts for this fact. Additionally, we analyse and show the requirements and the monetary value of Intra-Day trading for the handling of wind and solar power. The trading strategies proposed in this article make use of an uncertainty band around the forecasts used in the Intra-Day, in order to avoid double trading and thereby reducing the total balancing volume and the associated costs.