Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Private information, trading volume, and stock-return variances

New evidence is provided on the determinants of stock-returnvariances. First, when the Tokyo Stock Exchange is open on Saturday,the weekend variance increases; weekly variance is unaffected,however, despite an increase in weekly volume. Second, the listingof U.S. stocks in Tokyo substantially increases the number oftrading hours, but Tokyo volume is negligible for these U.S.stocks and their 24-hour variance is unaffected. The overallresults are consistent with the predictions of private-information-basedrational trading models, but inconsistent with both the irrationaltrading noise and public-information hypotheses.     

Conflicts and cooperation in the opening-up of new economic resources

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) will meet in March for its ninth session. The size of the resources available for distribution and their allocation by the Conference are surveyed in the following article as are the possibilities of conflict to which they give rise.     

License trade with COMECON states

The present article, which is based on some chapters of the author’s doctorate thesis¹, investigates why the trade in licenses between the Federal Republic of Germany and state-trading countries is at present still negligible. For this purpose the policy of the state-trading countries in regard to licenses is explained, the causes which impede this trade are pointed out and suggestions made for their removal.     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Food Deserts and Real‐Estate‐Led Social Policy

Since the early 2000s in the United States, food deserts—neighborhoods in which households have limited geographic access to full‐service supermarkets or grocery stores— have become conceptually central in public policy research on food security. Analyzing this phenomenon from a ‘policy mobility’ perspective, this article traces the food desert's emergence in policy discourse, locating it within an entrepreneurial social policy paradigm that privileges real estate development over direct economic relief. In the context of property‐led anti‐poverty efforts, the identification and mapping of food deserts catalyzes a logic that leads to subsidy to grocery store development in low‐income areas (or ‘fresh food financing’), while at the same time officials are cutting programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), which directly supplements household food budgets. The article contributes to widening critical discussion of the food desert paradigm and the policy interventions with which it is associated. It calls on urban researchers and practitioners to reframe discussions of food access and nutrition around the shortage of basic income and a need for higher wage floors.     

Rationalisierung und Rationierung im Gesundheitswesen aus ethischer Perspektive

Demographic ageing and technological progress leads to rising health care costs. Under the assumption that the solidarity-based financing of the German Statutory Health Insurance System will reach its limits, the authors discuss how and on which level questions about rationing should be answered. From an ethical point of view, rationing should be based on general and consistent rules at the governance level rather than on case by case decisions by healthcare providers. Moreover, transparency is inevitable to maintain the relationship of trust between physicians and patients and to improve the patient’s wellbeing.