Deindustrialisierung: Eine neue „britische Krankheit“?

In vielen EU-L?ndern ist ein Rückgang der Besch?ftigung im gewerblichen Bereich zu beobachten. Besonders ausgepr?gt ist die „Deindustrialisierung“ jedoch in Gro?britannien—bei gleichzeitiger Ausweitung des Dienstleistungsbereichs. Welches sind die Ursachen dieser Entwicklung? Ist dieser Prozess als neue „britische Krankheit“ zu bezeichnen oder Ausdruck einer relativ dynamischen und flexiblen Wirtschaft? Ist in Deutschland eine ?hnliche Entwicklung zu erwarten? Die Autoren vertreten hier ihre pers?nliche Meinung und nicht notwendigerweise die der Deutschen Bundesbank.     

Healthcare rationing and patient rights

All modern healthcare systems face growing gaps between funding and treatment possibilities. Societal expectations call for decisions on whether to relax or accept resource constraints and how to deal with the respective consequences. The following article compares the different ways in which the healthcare systems in the USA, Germany and the UK have dealt with these problems to date.     

Exploring globalization and marketing performance at the 2012 Global Marketing Conference at Seoul

This special issue of the Journal of Business Research features sixteen articles selected from papers presented during the third Global Marketing Conference held in Seoul, July 19–22, 2012, hosted by Korean Scholars of Marketing Science, European Marketing Academy, Japan Society of Marketing and Distribution, International Textile and Apparel Association, and Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. The articles offer readers an interesting mix of topics and methods in complex and global marketing environments. They offer marketing practitioners new ideas and approaches for dealing effectively with the increasingly challenging marketing world and provide marketing researchers insights that may inspire future research.     

Optimal hedge ratios and alternative hedging strategies in the presence of cointegrated time-varying risks

This paper utilizes the inter-temporal relationship between the FTSE-100 stock index and its futures price level between 1992 and 1999 to examine the characteristics of several minimum variance hedge ratios and the performances of several alternative hedging strategies for dynamic portfolio management in the presence of cointegrated time-varying risks. Earlier studies neglected the importance of cointegration between the two variables which resulted in biased estimates. These studies, in general, also assume that the hedging period is the same as the estimation time interval. This paper also looks at several key issues when the holding period is longer than the estimation period, such as the construction of optimal minimum variance hedge ratios, and the trade-off between transaction costs and risk reduction.     

Overtime Work and Overtime Compensation in Germany

Sharing the available stock of work more fairly is a popular concern in the public policy debate. One policy proposal is to reduce overtime work in order to allow the employment of more people. This paper suggests that such a concept faces major problems. Using Germany as a case study, it is shown that the group of workers with the highest risks of becoming unemployed, namely the unskilled, also exhibit low levels of overtime work. Those who work overtime, namely the skilled, face excess demand on the labour market. Since skilled and unskilled workers are largely complements in production, a general reduction in overtime will lead to less production and hence also to a decline in the level of unskilled employment. The paper provides empirical support for this line of argument. It is also shown that paid overtime work has lost relative importance over time.     

Globalization and terrorism

This paper has multiple objectives. I set out linkages of a causal model to portray how globalization influences international terrorist strategies. I also point to methodological and theoretical shortcomings in the literature with respect to the levels of disaggregation at which issues are analyzed, and I evaluate the opportunity–cost argument for assessing international terrorism. The paper and conclusions present perspectives on developments of terrorism in the context of globalization, including the relationship of terror to immigration.     

The Gamification of Advertising: Analysis and Research Directions of In-Game Advertising,Advergames, and Advertising in Social Network Games

The study presents a framework for the analysis of advertising in digital games. It reviews literature on in-game advertising, advergames and advertising in social network games. The framework distinguishes between stimulus characteristics of the game as well as of the advertising that lead to psychological responses toward the game and the brand and to actual behavior toward the game and the brand. It takes into consideration individual factors of the player and social factors surrounding the player. In addition, theoretical models of advertising perception in digital games and issues regarding regulation are addressed. Directions for future research in the area of advertising in digital games are provided.     

Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations

Innovation as the driving force behind the economic growth of high-income countries has almost exclusively been researched for the private enterprise sector. Nonproft organizations as a growing sector also have to be assessed for their contribution. They are first grouped by their different outputs (proximity to public versus private good provision). Next, for each output group fields of activities are identified, which exhibit differences in management regimes and incentive structure. This leads to hypotheses (and some empirical evidence) on innovative behavior and on barriers to innovation. The result: Their potential for contributing is far from being fully used.     

Target costing,co-ordination and strategic cost management

During the last years issues of strategic management accounting have received widespread attention in the accounting literature. Yet the conceptual foundation of most proposals is not clear. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of one of the most prominent approaches of strategic management accounting, i.e. target costing. We analyse three distinct characteristics of this strategic management accounting tool, namely its market orientation, its use as co-ordination instrument and its interaction with other factors affecting long-term cost structure in the form of strategic learning. The analysis shows that the more ‘strategic’ dimensions are added to the problem of cost management, the less valid are ‘strategic’ management accounting proposals in terms of the usual way target costing is employed.