The United Germany in The Single European Market

Dr Hermann von Richthofen, German Ambassador in London 1988–1993, now German Ambassador to NATO, spoke at the second LSE Business Performance Lecture on 29 January 1992 about the radical changes taking place in Europe. In particular, the Ambassador stressed that Germany's integration is an inseparable part of Europe's integration and will provide opportunities not only for Germany but also for the rest of Europe.     

The crisis of development aid

Measured in per cent of their Gross National Product (GNP), western industrialised countries currently spend far less on development aid than they did ten years ago. This is partly due to the very limited usefulness of the prevailing concept of development aid.     

Social engineering in the third world

Success in economic development is normally measured in terms of growth rates in gross national product, with little attention given to the accompanying increase in employment. However, growth can be more or less labor absorbing depending upon the technology introduced during industrialization. In this article the author states the case for intermediate technology along with examples of its application.     

Die politische Ökonomie wachsender Ungleichverteilung der Einkommen

In dealing with growing income inequality, economists and social scientists have ignored the interdependencies between economic performance, voter turnout and people’s psychological damages and social deprivations. This article emphasises the role of demography for the bargaining power of trade unions and employer associations. It demonstrates the concomitance of full employment and shrinking income inequality and, correspondingly high unemployment and growing income inequality. Due to the decrease in the size of the labour force in Germany since 2005, the gap between higher and lower incomes will soon become smaller, and many economic and social problems can be solved.     

Utilizing the firm's resources: How TMT heterogeneity and resulting faultlines affect TMT tasks

While theory and evidence show that firms' competitive actions mediate the resource‐performance relationship, details of top managements' roles in shaping resource utilization choices have been underemphasized. We address this oversight by integrating top management team heterogeneity and any resulting faultline strength with the resource‐action‐performance model to investigate how TMT composition differentially affects the model's two linkages. Specifically, we argue that TMT heterogeneity positively affects the resource‐action linkage, yet negatively affects the action‐performance linkage. Moreover, when heterogeneity begets strong faultlines, all such positive effect is lost. Supportive evidence from the in‐vitro medical diagnostic substance manufacturing industry allows us to discuss how our findings contribute to upper echelons theory, as well as the emerging stream on resource utilization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agriculture and climate change in global scenarios: why don't the models agree

Agriculture is unique among economic sectors in the nature of impacts from climate change. The production activity that transforms inputs into agricultural outputs involves direct use of weather inputs (temperature, solar radiation available to the plant, and precipitation). Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have reported substantial differences in outcomes such as prices, production, and trade arising from differences in model inputs and model specification. This article presents climate change results and underlying determinants from a model comparison exercise with 10 of the leading global economic models that include significant representation of agriculture. By harmonizing key drivers that include climate change effects, differences in model outcomes were reduced. The particular choice of climate change drivers for this comparison activity results in large and negative productivity effects. All models respond with higher prices. Producer behavior differs by model with some emphasizing area response and others yield response. Demand response is least important. The differences reflect both differences in model specification and perspectives on the future. The results from this study highlight the need to more fully compare the deep model parameters, to generate a call for a combination of econometric and validation studies to narrow the degree of uncertainty and variability in these parameters and to move to Monte Carlo type simulations to better map the contours of economic uncertainty.     

城市物流平台:IT解决方案和技术平台

城市物流主要由两部分组成:城市物流运营系统和城市物流平台。城市物流平台提供了整体的IT解决方案和技术设备以支持城市物流运营。本文阐述了IT解决方案如何支持城市物流运营的各个方面,从而使得城市物流各技术层面和其在城市物流平台中的作用更加高效和经济。城市物流平台也通过采用最新的节能技术来实现可持续性发展。     

Convergence in the EU

The EU has long viewed economic and institutional convergence as important goals, but the results thus far have been decidedly mixed, and there remain several open questions: How exactly should convergence be defined? How much convergence is necessary? What steps can be taken to improve convergence in the EU, and how can success be defined? Finally, how much convergence can be achieved by improving the economic performance in underperforming regions, and how can convergence in the form of harmonisation towards lower welfare levels be avoided?     

Dealing with internal inconsistency in double-bounded dichotomous choice: an application to community-based health insurance

Contingent valuation method is commonly used in the field of health economics in an attempt to help policy makers in their policy-making decision process. The use of the double-bounded dichotomous choice format results in a substantial gain in statistical efficiency over the single-bounded dichotomous choice format. Yet, there is internal inconsistency with a downward mean shifting in the second responses. Using data from a community-based health insurance survey, this paper aims at testing whether double certainty calibration reduces internal inconsistency in a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey. Results suggest that double calibration significantly reduces internal inconsistency while maintaining the efficiency gain arising from the double-bounded format.