Chancen und Risiken in den Finanzmärkten

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

I. Allgemeine Wirstchaftslehre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Simulation-Based Comparison of Existent IAS 19 Accounting Options

ABSTRACT

We focus on accounting for unfunded defined benefit pension plans according to IAS 19 and compare the option to recognise any actuarial gain or loss immediately outside profit or loss in a separate statement within equity (‘equity approach’) with the ‘corridor approach’. The objective is to detect systematic differences in long-term pure accounting effects, which can be seen by the different cumulated net-amounts not (yet) recognised in profit or loss. Due to the complexity and the probabilistic elements, human expectations on system behaviour often fail. Therefore, we have performed the first Monte-Carlo-simulation study of the accounting options. The assumptions concerning input data are based on official German statistics and, therefore, are representative at least for Germany and similar countries. As a result, the belief of long-term offsetting of cumulated actuarial gains and losses is not accurate. The former unforeseeable consequences are the following: if we apply the equity approach we identify a tendency for a quasi-permanent cumulated actuarial net-gain (regenerating workforce) or a permanent cumulated actuarial net-loss (degenerating workforce) recognised outside profit or loss. If the corridor approach is applied, a tendency for quasi-permanent cumulated unrecognised net-gains is reported while amortising any corridor excess in the case of a regenerating workforce.     

Patterns and drivers of post-socialist farmland abandonment in Western Ukraine

Farmland abandonment restructures rural landscapes in many regions worldwide in response to gradual industrialization and urbanization. In contrast, the political breakdown in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union triggered rapid and widespread farmland abandonment, but the spatial patterns of abandonment and its drivers are not well understood. Our goal was to map post-socialist farmland abandonment in Western Ukraine using Landsat images from 1986 to 2008, and to identify spatial determinants of abandonment using a combination of best-subsets linear regression models and hierarchical partitioning. Our results suggest that farmland abandonment was widespread in the study region, with abandonment rates of up to 56%. In total, 6600 km² (30%) of the farmland used during socialism was abandoned after 1991. Topography, soil type, and population variables were the most important predictors to explain substantial spatial variation in abandonment rates. However, many of our a priori hypotheses about the direction of variable influence were rejected. Most importantly, abandonment rates were higher in the plains and lower in marginal areas. The growing importance of subsistence farming in the transition period, as well as off-farm income and remittances likely explain these patterns. The breakdown of socialism appears to have resulted in fundamentally different abandonment patterns in the Western Ukraine, where abandonment was a result of the institutional and economic shock, compared to those in Europe's West, where abandonment resulted from long-term socio-economic transformation such as urbanization and industrialization.     

The consequences of land-use change and water demands in Central Mongolia

After two decades of decreasing agricultural activities, in 2008 the Mongolian government started the “Third Campaign of Reclaiming Virgin Lands”, aiming at massive expansion and intensification of the agricultural sector. This policy motivated the study presented here, for which we used an integrated modelling approach to investigate the feedbacks between land-use dynamics, agricultural management and biophysical conditions, with a strong focus on assessing availability of water for irrigation. Our simulation results clearly show that under the current extend of irrigated agriculture in several years water demands exceeded water availability, indicating an overexploitation of water resources, mainly in the period 1995–2006. Consequently, the targeted expansion of agricultural water use will either severely deplete water resources with potential negative effects on other users and the environment, or policies are needed to mitigate or avoid potential adverse effects. As simultaneously Mongolian authorities struggle to implement integrated water resources management (IWRM), the latter might provide monitoring concepts and regulations needed to minimise the potential gap between water demands and availability. In this context, integrated modelling could be a scientific tool to support future land and water management decisions, as researchers already started to integrate views and demands of Mongolian authorities into scenario and model development (identified during stakeholder workshops), and will continue to do so during the coming years of collaborative research.     

How does(n't) Urban Shrinkage get onto the Agenda? Experiences from Leipzig,Liverpool, Genoa and Bytom

This article discusses the question of how urban shrinkage gets onto the agenda of public‐policy agencies. It is based on a comparison of the agenda‐setting histories of four European cities, Liverpool (UK), Leipzig (Germany), Genoa (Italy) and Bytom (Poland), which have all experienced severe population losses but show very different histories with respect to how local governments reacted to them. We use the political‐science concepts of ‘systemic vs. institutional agendas’ and ‘policy windows’ as a conceptual frame to compare these experiences. The article demonstrates that shrinkage is hardly ever responded to in a comprehensive manner but rather that policies are only implemented in a piecemeal way in selected fields. Moreover, it is argued that variations in institutional contexts and political dynamics lead to considerable differences with regard to the chances of making shrinkage a matter of public intervention. Against this background, the article takes issue with the idea that urban shrinkage only needs to be ‘accepted’ by policymakers who would need to overcome their growth‐oriented cultural perceptions, as has been suggested in a number of recent writings, and calls for a more differentiated, context‐sensitive view.