Extending working hours: why not work 42 h rather than 38?—a CGE analysis for Germany

Faced with a record level of unemployment, the present debate in Germany is to extend the weekly hours of work. In this paper the employment effects of an economy-wide increase in weekly hours are quantified on the basis of a computable general equilibrium model for different specifications of the wage setting rule and the use of additional policy-induced public income. The simulation results back the argument of the opponents of longer working time that not more jobs will be created. However, when the higher tax revenues from GDP growth are used to reduce social security contributions, then the claim of the proponents that more jobs will be created can be supported.     

A utopian view of R&D functions

Technology management research appears to have a much longer history than is commonly assumed. In this short paper attention is drawn to some of Francis Bacon's writings which appeared in the early seventeenth century, and which contain ideas on laboratory organization that still have relevance today. In fact, it is only recently that the same broadness of laboratory functions described in the earlier text has been re–discovered.     

Robert W. McChesney: Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Transparenz im Journalismus

The transparency that journalists and newsrooms can produce for their audience has long been regarded as a rather marginal criterion for journalistic quality. But new transparency models??due to the interactivity, immediacy, archiving capacity and the absent limitation of space in the internet??offer greater potentials than classical instruments in print and broadcasting. In comments, web videos, blogs, twitter feeds and social networks, journalists discuss with users and publicly account for editorial decisions. Transparency is fashionable in the digital public sphere; its evaluation, however, is not clear, but ambiguous and complex. This paper conceptualizes (self-)transparency and qualitatively classifies the available instruments in a three-dimensional matrix model. This is to facilitate the analysis of problematic areas and potential conflicts: Newsrooms demonstrating open self-reflection dismiss the ideal of ??objective journalism??. Yet, transparency is not only an ethical demand, but is also supposed to strengthen trust in journalistic products because it permits quality evaluations by the audience. An experiment shows, for the first time, that self-transparency has an effect on trust in some aspects but not as a basic principle. Analysing this interdependency, we have to distinguish between transparency of process and of product as well as between different media.     

Government influence on energy prices

There is now widespread agreement that, in the interest of energy conservation and substitution of oil, consumer prices for energy should reflect world market prices while taking account of longer-term trends. Are the energy policies of the major industrialised countries in conformity with this demand?     

Key countries in the Third World

Present classifications of the developing countries are of limited usefulness as a basis for determining development policy priorities in the industrialised countries, argue our authors. They define a group of “key countries” which are of strategical importance for the world economy and outline the development risks facing these countries.¹ They suggest that the OECD countries would be better advised to follow a policy of cooperation with these key countries rather than the “man mind thyself” policies which are presently gaining in popularity.