Leadership effectiveness and institutional frames

Leadership mechanisms provide a potential means to mitigate social dilemmas, but empirical evidence on the success of such mechanisms is mixed. In this paper, we explore the institutional frame as a relevant factor for the effectiveness of leadership. We compare subjects’ behavior in public-goods experiments that are either framed positively (give-some game) or negatively (take-some game). We observe that leader and follower decisions are sensitive to the institutional frame. Leaders contribute less in the take-some game, and the correlation between leaders’ and followers’ contribution is weaker in the take-some game. Additionally, using a strategy method to elicit followers’ reactions at the individual level, we find evidence for the malleability of followers’ revealed cooperation types. Taken together, the leadership institution is found to be less efficient in the take- than in the give-frame, both in games that are played only once and repeatedly.     

中国经济腾飞中的分级制政策试验

政策试验是指把来自基层的建议和地方积累的经验注入国家政策的一种机制,这常被视为促进制度创新的有力手段和避免因情况不明而导致改革震荡的有效方法。在某些经济领域内,大规模的试验有效地刺激了政策学习和经济扩张,原因是政治精英们从支持新型的私营和跨国企业中获益。与此相反,在有效提供社会公共产品方面,许多政策试验却不了了之,原因是这些试验要求社会主动监督和中央政府严格执法相结合,否则试验发挥不了作用。尽管在不同政治领域内转型试验效果不一,中国以试验为基础的政策制定过程还是对重新定义整个政策框架起到了实质作用。在中国式政策制定过程的核心,我们发现了一个中央和地方互动的机制,我们称其为“分级制试验”,这个发现对经济转型方式的研究是一个明显补充。     

Does the dispersion of unit labor cost dynamics in the EMU imply long-run divergence?

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Länder we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU. However, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are much more pronounced and much more persistent in Europe than in the US or Germany. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency. Hence, asymmetric shocks in the future might take a long time to dissipate.     

Wie viel Europa braucht die Energiewende?

It is often argued that Germany’s energy transition (the so-called “Energiewende”) needs to be “Europeanized”, so as to make the transition process more efficient. In particular, the German system of feed-in tariffs for renewables is criticized for being an obstacle to efficient European energy supply. However, we point out that Germany’s approach is no outlier but rather well embedded in the European context of heterogeneous energy policies. Also, full centralization and harmonization of political decisions on the EU-level may not be desirable in many fields of energy policy beyond climate protection if the full economic costs of energy supply are taken into account. In addition, legal and politico-economic constraints need to be considered. Against this background, we identify priorities for fostering the European dimension of the Member States’ energy policies, such as the coordination of grid extensions and capacity markets.     

On the value relevance of customer satisfaction. Multiple drivers and multiple markets

Existing research implicitly assumes that all factors known to influence customer satisfaction are likewise important for investor behavior. However, if investors do not equally value activities targeting different satisfaction drivers, managers focusing on short-term stock returns might over- or under-emphasize certain satisfaction drivers to the detriment of the long-term success of the firm. Therefore, we extend prior research on the value relevance of customer satisfaction by assessing the relationship between the dynamics of key satisfaction drivers and contemporaneous risk-adjusted stock returns. Moreover, we compare three major markets using a dataset covering nearly the entire set of car brands sold between 2004 and 2008. Our results show that investors react to information related to perceived product quality, whereas, surprisingly, the cost of ownership and dealer service quality are unimportant despite the importance attributed to them in consumer research. Furthermore, we observe that information concerning the U.S. market dominates that of the UK and German markets.