Little Firms and Big Patents: A Model of Small‐Firm Patent Signaling

Patent strategies of small technology‐intensive firms are difficult to explain with standard incentive arguments based on intellectual property rights. This paper develops a rationale for patent filing as a disclosure strategy. We develop a two‐sender signaling game to study patenting incentives of two technology start‐ups to file in a large‐scale patent system with the goal to attract a user firm. Both start‐ups may decide to invest in costly modification of their patent application before filing. The paper identifies a separating equilibrium in which the high‐quality inventor files and so separates from its technology competitor. Of particular interest is the study of pooling and semi‐separating equilibria, as well as the impact of subsidies. We find that a higher quality of a country's inventions, reflected in the possible innovative steps and thus in higher expected profits for foreign user firms, may increase the chance of the relatively lower‐quality inventor to enter international technology markets.     

The inflation game

We study a game where households buy consumption goods to preempt inflation. This game features a unique equilibrium with high (low) inflation, whenever money supply is high (low). For intermediate levels of money supply, there exist multiple stable equilibria where inflation is either high or low. Equilibria with moderate inflation, however, do not exist, and can thus not be targeted by central banks. That is, depending on agents' equilibrium play, money supply is always either too high or too low for moderate inflation. Finally, we find that inflation rates of durable goods, such as houses, cars, luxury watches, or furniture, are useful leading indicators for changes in overall inflation.     

Öffentliche Meinung als Online-Diskurs – ein neuer empirischer Zugang

The paper introduces a new empirical approach for measuring public opinion in the Internet: In a first step, all web pages containing relevant messages dealing with a specific issue are retrieved with a search engine. The pages are then content-analyzed in a second step. To answer the theoretical question of which kind of public opinion is registered by applying this method, the two basic paradigms of public opinion, which have hardly ever been connected so far, are discussed: public opinion as discourse and public opinion as measured by surveys. For the first time, both paradigms can be empirically compared by using a survey on the one hand, and the search engine based content analysis of web pages on the other. We conducted such a comparison for the issue of a smoking ban in restaurants, which was heavily discussed in Germany in 2007. The results reveal some fascinating parallels between both data sets and some differences, which are quite well in line with the theoretical assumptions. The paper finishes with some considerations on the theoretical and empirical capabilities of the approach.     

It’s not how old you are but how you are old: A review on aging and consumer behavior

The paper presents a review of 128 studies on the behavior of older consumers published in the last 35 years (from 1980 to 2014) in 35 peer-reviewed journals. The purpose of the procedure is twofold: First, we aim to summarize results on age-related changes in consumer research. Second, by doing so, we evaluate the relative importance of age-related factors (chronological, biological, psychological, and social age as wells as life events and life circumstances) in research on older consumers. Results of the review show that research on older consumers is still dominated by investigations using chronological age. Influences of other aspects of the aging process, although recommended by previous research reviews and providing valuable insights, are still playing a minor role in the investigation of consumer behavior. Research with alternative age measures is still in an early, exploratory stage and future studies should include specific aspects as well as multitheoretical models of aging.     

The growth of Arabian airlines from a German perspective – A study of the impacts of new air services to Asia

Airlines from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman have gained significant market shares in international air transport. Traditionally travellers have chosen hubs like Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London or Paris as transfer points for trips to Asia. With the inauguration of non-stop services to places like Abu Dhabi, Doha or Dubai, new choices for air travellers have emerged. We analyse data derived from German air transport statistics on the effects of passenger flows between the airports of Düsseldorf and Hamburg to Asian destinations. They suggest that services introduced by Emirates stimulated passenger demand for Asian destinations, while incumbent hubs do not lose transfer passengers. Regarding travel times and connection quality of routings between secondary airports in Germany and Asian destinations, comparing routings of Emirates Airlines and Lufthansa suggests that due to geographic and scheduling constraints, services via Arabia do not constitute a perfect substitute for time-sensitive passengers.     

Digitalisierung im Gesundheitswesen — zwischen Datenschutz und moderner Medizinversorgung

The digital transformation of the healthcare branch is important and unstoppable. The enormous possibility of digitalisation to redesign and enhance processes has been shown in other branches. Digital technologies offer the similarly large potential to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare services. However, in terms of digitalisation, the German health system lags behind other European countries. But given a lack of available evidence, the effects of the digitalisation of the healthcare system cannot be reliably evaluated. Digital access to patient data necessitates constructive error cultures in organisations in order to limit defensive medicine. And digital access to health information necessitates individual competence in searching and using this information for participatory decision-making. As with all technological progress, information security is very important in order to gain citizens’ confidence in a digital healthcare system. Thus, it is necessary to simultaneously pursue both enhanced privacy standards and state-of-the-art medical technology.