Reform of European Merger Policy

The paper highlights the main drivers for merger policy reform in the European Union, including the consequences of the recent appeal court reverses. It discusses some of the substantive and procedural issues that the reform package should address, and outlines the reforms in progress. The author concludes that much of the reform package will be beneficial, but some important opportunities have been missed in this inevitably patchwork process.     

经济一路上涨并非好事

美国经济在千年之后并没有充分地去火就又重新进入繁荣，对下一轮经济增长不是好事，次级贷危机就是个预警信号。     

Von Dinosauriern, Haifischen und Heuschrecken

Ohne Zusammenfassung Dr. Christina Holtz-Bacha ist Professorin für Kommunikationswissenschaft an der Universit?t Erlangen-Nürnberg.     

Big elephants in small ponds: Do large traders make financial markets more aggressive?

Market participants often suspect that large traders have a disproportionate effect on financial markets, increasing the aggressiveness of market responses. Prior studies have shown that the impact of a large trader on a currency crisis depends positively on his “size” and informational position. By contrast, this article highlights the role that market sentiment has on the impact of a large trader. If the market believes that fundamentals are weak, then the probability of a crisis depends positively on the trader's size but negatively on the precision of his information, with these effects reversed in a generally optimistic market. A large player, therefore, need not make market responses more aggressive.     

The rise of defensive engineering: how personal liability considerations impact decision-making

Abstract

Based on a survey of Australian engineers (n = 275) this paper examines the impact of personal liability considerations on engineering decision-making. Almost all respondents who make high-stakes decisions saw questions of liability as having both positive (90%) and negative (87%) impacts. Our analysis shows that awareness of personal liability acts to focus the attention of many engineers on the moral dimension of their work. However, it also encourages more expensive decision-making, inhibition of innovation and professional paralysis. We argue that while personal legal liability is a legitimate way to focus engineers’ attention on the potential impact of their work, a problem arises when decision-makers are held responsible for disasters over which they had little control. The focus then shifts to ‘defensive engineering’ practices that are aimed at limiting individual liability rather than disaster prevention. Legal processes that are seen to unfairly allocate blame do not encourage practices that support future disaster prevention.     

亚洲直面通胀挑战

亚洲终于觉醒,开始直面通胀挑战。最近,亚洲各中央银行纷纷上调利率,或采取其他措施抑制物价上涨,启动新一轮的货币紧缩。尤其是印度,该国已采取前所未有的强硬措施并大幅上调利率。亚洲通胀高企源于多种原因。首先,该地区2010年经济发展强劲,经济放缓程度远低于西方国家。旺盛的国内需求令经销商和生产商得以将增加的成本转嫁给消费者,并通过提高价格,维持或提升利润率。尽管这样存     

HR managers’ talent philosophies: prevalence and relationships with perceived talent management practices

Abstract

HR managers have different beliefs about the nature, value, and instrumentality of talent—referred to as ‘talent philosophies’. In line with cognitive psychology, we reason that talent philosophies are similar to mental models that influence how HR managers interpret and use talent management (TM) practices within their organizations. In this article, we explore the prevalence of four different talent philosophies (exclusive/stable; exclusive/developable; inclusive/stable; inclusive/developable) in a sample of 321?HR managers. We then explore how talent philosophies relate to organizational context (i.e. size, ownership form, multinational orientation) as well as to HR managers’ perceptions of their organization’s TM practices. Cluster analysis corroborated the presence of the four talent philosophies in our dataset. All four talent philosophies were represented almost equally often in the overall dataset. Organizational size was found to be related to talent philosophies, such that HR managers who worked in smaller organizations were more likely to hold an inclusive talent philosophy. We also found support for the relationship between talent philosophies and perceptions of the exclusiveness or inclusiveness of the organization’s definition of talent, and its degree of workforce differentiation. Contrary to expectations, results did not support a link between talent philosophies and perceived talent identification criteria.