‘… More of Keynes and Less of Milton Friedman!’ 1

This paper gives an account of the scientific work of a pioneer whose heterodox ideas stimulated debate in development economics for more than three decades. It will be shown that his intellectual biography—in particular, his experiences as a victim of National Socialism—provided an important stimulus for his commitment to the problems of the socially underprivileged. This led him to initiate several studies of unemployment in the depressed areas of Great Britain during the Great Depression and the Second World War. Then, starting from the late 1940s, during the years of his affiliation with the UN, he made pathbreaking contributions to the economics of underdevelopment in fields such as the deterioration of terms of trade, the basic needs strategy, and food security. The topics will be discussed both in the context of history of thought and with regard to recent work in development economics.     

The epidemiology of head injuries in Sweden from 1987 to 2000

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the variability in the annual head injury incidence rate in Sweden from 1987 to 2000. It was hypothesized that the annual incidence rate would decrease over time due to a variety of primary preventive strategies that have been introduced in Swedish society. We used the Hospital Discharge Register at the National Board for Health and Welfare and head injury codes 800-804, and 850-854 from ICD9 system and S2.0-S2.9, and S6.0-S6.9 codes from ICD-10 system. We evaluated the patterns of age, gender, external cause of injury (E-code), type of injury, length of hospital stay, and trends over time. Head injuries due to transportation collision were reduced over the 14-year period analysis. Falls persisted as the dominant cause of head injury. Overall, men had 2.1 times the incidence of head injury compared to women. There was a decline in younger ages experiencing a head injury over this interval, while the number of head injuries among elderly people increased over time. Concussion was about three times more frequent than fractures. Hematoma and diffuse or focal contusions had a much lower incidence rate than concussion. Concussions and fractures decreased over time. Diffuse or focal injuries showed a steady rate of occurrence over the study interval while hematoma increased. Although length of hospital stay varied widely from zero to more than 50 days, 73.6% of hospital days were confined to two days or less. The incidence rate is stable over this time frame. While head injuries attributable to transportation accidents decreased, falls made up an increasing proportion of head injuries. Since we observed an increase in head injuries among elderly, primary prevention strategies may need to be targeted at this age group, and at preventing falls.     

Initial internationalization of Chinese privately owned enterprises—the take‐off process

In the first quarter of 2010, China showed the highest quarterly growth (12%) of any country ever. Although privately owned enterprises (POEs) are an important factor behind this immense growth, knowledge about how they have become key exporters is scarce and largely overlooked, especially regarding how they started to go abroad. Two major take‐off processes from the domestic market to the foreign market are studied. The critical importance of the development of the local emerging market behind the possibilities of taking off is stressed, as well as how firms change between indirect and direct export modes. The research is based on an abductive case study research approach, where primary data is collected through interviews in the Yangtze River region. The case study involves six privately owned family firms run by strong and dominating entrepreneurs. Major empirical and theoretical conclusions, including nine propositions, summarize the article and indicate areas for further research. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Organizational design with a budget constraint

In this paper we point out that the presence of the budget constraint substantially affects the relative performance of organizational decision rules. For instance, if there are only two types of projects to decide upon, the hierarchy always performs better than the polyarchy. The same result holds for any distribution of the quality of projects. We also illustrate that optimal mechanisms for variable evaluation costs involve stopping rules which look hierarchical, but avoid costly duplication as in hierarchies or polyarchies. Received: 5 November 1995 / Accepted: 18 September 1997     

Multidimensionale Auswertungen im Controlling

Bei der Einführung neuartiger EDV-Werkzeuge für das Controlling dominieren oft technische Aspekte, obwohl die L?sung betriebswirtschaftlicher Entscheidungsprobleme Ziel der Einführung ist.     

Backdating executive stock options—An ex ante valuation

When backdating executive stock options (ESOs), the exercise price is set in favor of the recipient executive. Relative to a non-backdated benchmark, we find an (ex ante) upper bound for the cost of backdating to shrink from 10% to about 3.7%, as a consequence of the regime change represented by the Sarbanes-Oxley act (SOX).We frame the backdating behavior as a (compound) exotic option, considering both simple and extended models of the underlying ESO—in the latter case we draw on the analytical ESO models of Sircar and Xiong (2007). Post-SOX, we use a Longstaff-Schwartz inspired least squares Monte Carlo approach.