Inflation and Relative Price Variability in a Low Inflation Country: Empirical Evidence for Germany

Abstract. The recent literature on the welfare cost of inflation emphasizes inflation's effect on the variability of relative prices. Expected and unexpected inflation have both been proposed to increase relative price variability (RPV) and, thereby, to distort the information content of nominal prices. This paper presents new evidence on the impact of inflation on RPV in Germany. Our results indicate that the influence of expected inflation disappears if a credible monetary policy stabilizes inflationary expectations on a low level. Yet the significant impact of unexpected inflation suggests that even low inflation rates can lead to welfare losses by raising RPV above its efficient level.     

The development of delinquency during adolescence: a comparison of missing data techniques

Conclusions on the development of delinquent behaviour during the life-course can only be made with longitudinal data, which is regularly gained by repeated interviews of the same respondents. Missing data are a problem for the analysis of delinquent behaviour during the life-course shown with data from an adolescents’ four-wave panel. In this article two alternative techniques to cope with missing data are used: full information maximum likelihood estimation and multiple imputation. Both methods allow one to consider all available data (including adolescents with missing information on some variables) in order to estimate the development of delinquency. We demonstrate that self-reported delinquency is systematically underestimated with listwise deletion (LD) of missing data. Further, LD results in false conclusions on gender and school specific differences of the age–crime relationship. In the final discussion some hints are given for further methods to deal with bias in panel data affected by the missing process.     

Qualitätserwartungen und ethischer Anspruch bei der Lektüre von Blogs und von Tageszeitungen

Besides classical journalistic products, media users increasingly tend to read texts on the internet published by other users, as in weblogs. How do users navigate among these offers, how do they evaluate the quality, and which standards in terms of media ethics do they apply when reading weblogs compared to newspaper articles? Two empirical studies address these questions. In a survey, 702 internet users rated their theoretical expectations in terms of journalistic quality and compliance with ethical standards, comparing weblogs and daily newspapers. In a consecutive 2 × 2 experimental design, 120 participants read a journalistic text with varying source information (weblog/daily newspaper) and varying degree of adherence to ethical standards (ethically questionable/neutral). Participants then rated the quality of the text and its ethical standards. Results indicate that daily newspapers more than blogs are expected to deliver journalistic quality. But when read, texts are evaluated according to their content rather than their source. Ethically questionable texts in newspapers are disapproved as much as ethically questionable blog postings.     

Going Public — Effekte der Börsen-notierung auf das Marketing

Zusammenfassung  Wenn sich Marketingexperten in der Vergangenheit an der Schnittstelle zwischen Marketing und Finance bewegten, standen h?ufig die Effekte bestimmter Marketingmassnahmen auf den B?rsenkurs im Mittelpunkt. Wie sich jedoch die B?rsennotierung und damit eine stringente Orientierung am Shareholder Value auf das Marketingmanagement auswirkt, wurde bislang kaum untersucht. Eine explorative Studie erforscht die wesentlichen Auswirkungen der zunehmenden Shareholder Value-Orientierung auf die spezifischen Bedingungen des Marketings. M.A. Lydia Ebersbach Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Kompetenzzentrum „Marketing Performance Management“ am Institut für Marketing und Handel an der Universit?t St. Gallen Prof. Dr. Sven Reinecke Dozent für Betriebswirtschaftslehre an der Universit?t St. Gallen und Leiter des Kompetenzzentrums „Marketing Performance Management“ am dortigen Institut für Marketing und Handel.     

The Halle Economic Projection Model

In this paper we develop an open economy model explaining the joint determination of output, inflation, interest rates, unemployment and the exchange rate in a multi-country framework. Our model—the Halle Economic Projection Model (HEPM)—is closely related to studies published by Carabenciov et al. (2008a,b,c). Our main contribution is that we model the Euro area countries separately. In doing so, we consider Germany, France, and Italy which represent together about 70% of Euro area GDP. The model combines core equations of the New-Keynesian standard DSGE model with empirically useful ad-hoc equations. We estimate this model using Bayesian techniques and evaluate the forecasting properties. Additionally, we provide an impulse response analysis and historical shock decomposition.     

The development of delinquency during adolescence: a comparison of missing data techniques revisited

Quality & Quantity - Conclusions about the individual development of delinquent behaviours during the life-course are often made by repeatedly interviewing the same respondents (i.e. panel...     

Systemic Cooperative Actions among Competitors: the Case of a Furniture Cluster in Brazil

The purpose of this article is to describe cooperation practices observed in competitors companies in a furniture cluster in Brazil. The literature refers to it as coopetition. The research method was the multiple case study. The main research technique was the semi-structured interviews with practitioners of the cluster. The study created a theoretical framework for cooperative practices in industrial clusters formed by four types of practices: logistics, marketing and sales, formation of the workforce, and innovation and technology. The study investigates these four types of cooperation in five large companies that compete in the same market, the anchor companies of the cluster. The only entirely complied type of collaboration is the formation of the workforce of the cluster. In the other practices, cooperation involving competitors is lower than reported in the literature. The main reason for this low cooperation is excessive rivalry and mutual distrust in the cluster, and competition by differentiation, which partially prevent the gain of scale provided by cooperative actions.