Standort Deutschland – abgeschlagen im Wettbewerb um Hochqualifizierte?

Die Zuwanderung von hochqualifizierten Arbeitskr?ften wird von Unternehmern, Politikern und Wissenschaftlern gewünscht. Welche Position nimmt Deutschland im internationalen Wettbewerb um die „hellsten K?pfe“ ein? Welche Steuerungswirkungen hatte die deutsche Zuwanderungspolitik in der Vergangenheit? Wie wirkt die gegenw?rtige Politik auf die Arbeitsmigration?     

Ein Filter für die Geldpolitik

Nach der Finanzkrise sind Ma?nahmen gefragt, die dazu beitragen k?nnen, ?hnliche Krisen zu verhindern. Rolf Eggert — ehemaliger Landeszentralbankpr?sident — schl?gt hier eine dynamische Anpassung der Mindestreserveanforderungen an die Lücke zwischen den Eigenkapitalrenditen in der Finanz- und der Realwirtschaft vor.     

Multifunctionality of agriculture: an inquiry into the complementarity between landscape preservation and food security

Without support, the levels of agricultural public goods suchas food security and landscape preservation would fall shortof demand in high-cost countries. However, as demonstrated byNorway as a case study, the current level of support is disproportionatefrom a public goods perspective, and the policy instrumentsare badly targeted at the public goods in question. Becauseagricultural land is a major component of both food securityand landscape preservation, giving rise to a high degree ofcost complementarity between the public goods, it would be moreefficient to support land-extensive production techniques thanproduction per se.     

Hired hooves: Transactions in a south Indian village factor market

Bullocks are an important resource in Indian agriculture where they are used as draft animals. Previous research suggests that farmers who do not own bullocks, or own bullocks in insufficient numbers relative to their land holdings, adjust bullock-land ratios through transactions in the land market, rather than by hiring bullock services. The reasons given for this behaviour are that there are 'inhibited' or 'missing' village markets for bullock services. Results from a survey of the activities and transactions of six bullock contractors during an entire cropping period show that village markets for bullock services exist continuously and are far from being inhibited. Close monitoring of the bullock contractors' transactions supplied rich evidence of the manifold contractual arrangements used in this village market for bullock services.     

The long road to regional cooperation

Cooperation measures conducive to increased integration between developing countries are considered to be necessary from the point of view of development theory as well as beneficial. Such measures are also in general welcomed, and on occasion even supported, by the governments of the industrialised countries. Organizations for the promotion of cooperation and integration of neighbouring countries have been brought into being in almost all regions of the Third World.     

MEASUREMENT OF TOTAL FACTOR INPUT, TECHNICAL CHANGE AND OUTPUT BY INDUSTRY IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY 1958–1968

This paper deals with some results of an extended investigation which was carried out by the German Institute of Economic Research, Berlin, and the Ifo-Institute, Munich, and financed by the Stiftung Volkswagenwerk. For 29 sectors of manufacturing Cobb-Douglas production functions have been calculated, based on quarterly figures 1958–1968 of value added, input of hours worked, input of utilized capital stock (net of scrappage), and of potential value added, potential labor input and total capital stock. The income distribution is used as production elasticities. For each of the 29 sectors 12 time series of quarterly indices of total factor input and technical change have been computed, using utilized data (variation 1-6) and capacity data (variation 7-12). Two different time series of α are used, taking quarterly interpolated data (variation 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11) and the geometric mean 1958–1968 (variation 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12). Moreover three different parameters of homogeneity are introduced, taking r= 1 (variation 1, 2, 7, 8), r= 1.1 (variation 3, 4, 9, 10) and r= 1.25 (variation 5, 6, 11, 12). Seven of the 29 sectors show a very high sensitivity of the rate of technical change due to the assumed r, six sectors a rather high sensitivity. Ten of the 29 sectors show a rather small sensitivity of technical change due to the assumed r, six sectors a very small or even negative sensitivity, i.e. an increasing r creates an increasing technical change. These results can be explained by taking account of the fact that total factor input in many branches increased very slowly or even decreased (labor input alone decreased in nearly all branches). A hierarchy of technical change has been calculated; this hierarchy is difficult to explain, because fast growing industries as well as industries with a small or a negative growth rate of output rank in both the leading and the last group of technical change. Very high rates of output result in high rates of technical change (chemicals, mineral oil refining, plastics manufactures), but some industries with a rather small growth of output (shipbuilding, fine ceramics, steel drawing, and cold rolling mills) show a high rate of technical change too.     

Risk minimization in stochastic volatility models: model risk and empirical performance

In this paper the performance of locally risk-minimizing delta hedge strategies for European options in stochastic volatility models is studied from an experimental as well as from an empirical perspective. These hedge strategies are derived for a large class of diffusion-type stochastic volatility models, and they are as easy to implement as usual delta hedges. Our simulation results on model risk show that these risk-minimizing hedges are robust with respect to uncertainty and misconceptions about the underlying data generating process. The empirical study, which includes the US sub-prime crisis period, documents that in equity markets risk-minimizing delta hedges consistently outperform usual delta hedges by approximately halving the standard deviation of the profit-and-loss ratio.