Analyse der Marktaussichten von Biogasanlagen

Without guaranteed compensation, granted by the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz/EEG), biogas plants compete with all other plant types on the market for electrical energy. However, exchange-based electricity products do not currently permit an economically viable operation of biogas plants owing to their cost situation.     

The International Competitiveness of Germany and other European Economies: The Assessment of the Global Competitiveness Report

The Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum examines the relative competitiveness of economies on a broad basis of microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators. The following discussion uses the results of the Global Competitiveness Report 2004–2005 and investigates how the relative competitiveness of Germany and other European countries has developed over the recent past.     

中美生物技术合作

I see a big growth potential for the US and Chinese biotechnology partnerships for the next years. US biotechnology sector is generating already more than $50 billion dollars. Chinese bio-technology will grow in the next 20 years to more than 11 billion yuan (US 1.33 billion) annually.     

Corporate Governance and Expected Stock Returns: Evidence from Germany

Recent empirical work shows evidence for higher valuation of firms in countries with a better legal environment. We investigate whether differences in the quality of firm‐level corporate governance also help to explain firm performance in a cross‐section of companies within a single jurisdiction. Constructing a broad corporate governance rating (CGR) for German public firms, we document a positive relationship between governance practices and firm valuation. There is also evidence that expected stock returns are negatively correlated with firm‐level corporate governance, if dividend yields are used as proxies for the cost of capital. An investment strategy that bought high‐CGR firms and shorted low‐CGR firms earned abnormal returns of around 12% on an annual basis during the sample period.     

A comprehensive look at luxury brand marketing research from 2000 to 2016: a bibliometric study and content analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine how scholarly research on luxury brand marketing has evolved in the twenty-first century. This literature review focuses on 242 articles related to luxury marketing. The contributions of these articles are thoroughly analyzed, combining qualitative interpretations with bibliometric citation analysis that uses a social network of referrals. This study identifies the most influential universities, research outlets, and scholars in the recent evolution of luxury marketing research. The study also identifies current and future research streams, geographic scope, and underlying research methodologies, and it reveals the most frequently used theories and prominent constructs in luxury marketing research. There are few studies that have examined the literature review of the luxury marketing discipline. No previous research has investigated luxury branding by means of a bibliometric analysis and qualitative assessment within such a large scope. Building on the results of this analysis, researchers can target their studies precisely and, thus, increase the contributions of their empirical research.

     

Introduction to Special Issue on Energy Finance

Decisions in Economics and Finance -     

The time-to-maturity pattern of futures price sensitivity to news

This paper examines the effect time-to-maturity has on how sensitive futures prices are to news flows. Unscheduled daily news flows that relate to the underlying asset of a futures contract are related to the daily realized volatility of futures to calculate a price-news sensitivity ratio. The observed pattern follows an inverted U-shape relationship and has a bearing on whether the maturity effect will be noticeable in a futures contract. This paper also shows that by examining the peak-to-maturity of the price sensitivity to news pattern, it is possible to better identify which contracts are more likely to yield higher volatility.     

Bounds analysis of competing risks: a non-parametric evaluation of the effect of unemployment benefits on migration

By reexamining the effect of unemployment benefits on reemployment probabilities we make two contributions to the literature: first, we estimate separate effects for reemployment in the local or a distant region. Second, we address the problem of incomplete duration within a competing risks model. Our results confirm that missing data problems at first preclude any meaningful result even though we have access to daily individual data on 50 % of the male workforce in Germany. When we impose additional assumptions, we obtain evidence that the treatment effect depends on the household context, the treatment intensity and the destination state.