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„Bedeutende Finanzplätze“ oder Finanzzentren sind eng abgegrenzte Orte mit einer beträchtlichen Konzentration wichtiger professioneller Aktivitäten aus dem Finanzdienstleistungsbereich und der entsprechenden Institutionen. Allerdings: „Finance is a footloose industry“: Die Finanzbranche kann abwandern, ein Finanzzentrum kann sich verlagern, möglicherweise auch einfach auflösen. Die Möglichkeit der Auflösung und der Abwanderung stellt eine Bedrohung dar, die in der Zeit der Globalisierung und der rasanten Fortschritte der Transport- und der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik ausgeprägter sein dürfte, als sie je war. Frankfurt ist zweifellos ein „bedeutender Finanzplatz“, und manchen gilt er auch als bedroht. Allein deshalb ist unser Thema wichtig; und auch wenn die Einschätzungen von Bedeutung und Bedrohtheit keineswegs neu sind, ist es doch aktuell. Der Aspekt der Bedrohtheit prägt, wie wir die Frage im Titel verstehen und diskutieren möchten. Was ist ein „bedeutender Finanzplatz“? Selbst wenn man das Attribut „bedeutend“ erst einmal beiseite lässt, ist die Frage keineswegs trivial. Sie zielt ja nicht nur auf eine Begriffsklärung, eine Sprachregelung ab. Hinter dem Begriff steht oft auch eine Vorstellung vom „Wesen“ dessen, was ein Begriff bezeichnet. Also: Was macht einen Finanzplatz aus? Und weiter: Warum gibt es überhaupt Finanzplätze als beträchtliche Konzentrationen von bestimmten wichtigen Aktivitäten und Institutionen? Welche Kräfte führen - oder zumindest führten - zu der räumlichen Konzentration der Aktivitäten und Institutionen, wie wirken diese Kräfte, und wie ändern sie sich gegebenenfalls? Diesen Fragen ist dieser Beitrag im Wesentlichen gewidmet, und sie prägen seinen Aufbau. Im Abschnitt II wird diskutiert, was ein „bedeutender Finanzplatz“ ist oder woran man ihn erkennt und „was er braucht“. Im Abschnitt III gehen wir zuerst auf die Frage nach der in letzter Zeit unter dem Stichwort „the end of geography“ heftig diskutierten Vorstellung einer Auflösung oder Virtualisierung der Finanzplätze ein – nicht weil dies die wichtigere Bedrohung wäre, sondern weil es die grundlegendere Frage darstellt. Dann diskutieren wir den Wettbewerb von Finanzplätzen in Europa. Den Abschluss bilden Überlegungen zu den Perspektiven des Finanzplatzes Frankfurt und der möglichen Förderung seiner Entwicklung.
The Land and Water Development Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, are cooperating in the development of a global irrigation-mapping facility. This report describes an update of the Digital Global Map of Irrigated Areas for the continent of Asia. For this update, an inventory of subnational irrigation statistics for the continent was compiled. The reference year for the statistics is 2000. Adding up the irrigated areas per country as documented in the report gives a total of 188.5 million ha for the entire continent. The total number of subnational units used in the inventory is 4 428. In order to distribute the irrigation statistics per subnational unit, digital spatial data layers and printed maps were used. Irrigation maps were derived from project reports, irrigation subsector studies, and books related to irrigation and drainage. These maps were digitized and compared with satellite images of many regions. In areas without spatial information on irrigated areas, additional information was used to locate areas where irrigation is likely, such as land-cover and land-use maps that indicate agricultural areas or areas with crops that are usually grown under irrigation. Contents 1. Working Report I: Generation of a map of administrative units compatible with statistics used to update the Digital Global Map of Irrigated Areas in Asia 2. Working Report II: The inventory of subnational irrigation statistics for the Asian part of the Digital Global Map of Irrigated Areas 3. Working Report III: Geospatial information used to locate irrigated areas within the subnational units in the Asian part of the Digital Global Map of Irrigated Areas 4. Working Report IV: Update of the Digital Global Map of Irrigated Areas in Asia, Results Maps
Abstract: It is commonplace in the debate on Germany's labor market problems to argue that high unemployment and low wage dispersion are related. This paper analyses the relationship between unemployment and residual wage dispersion for individuals with comparable attributes. In the conventional neoclassical point of view, wages are determined by the marginal product of the workers. Accordingly, increases in union minimum wages result in a decline of residual wage dispersion and higher unemployment. A competing view regards wage dispersion as the outcome of search frictions and the associated monopsony power of the firms. Accordingly, an increase in search frictions causes both higher unemployment and higher wage dispersion. The empirical analysis attempts to discriminate between the two hypotheses for West Germany analyzing the relationship between wage dispersion and both the level of unemployment as well as the transition rates between different labor market states. The findings are not completely consistent with either theory. However, as predicted by search theory, one robust result is that unemployment by cells is not negatively correlated with the within cell wage dispersion.
Natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from a bad reputation. Oil and diamonds, particularly, have been blamed for a number of Africa’s illnesses such as poverty, corruption, dictatorship and war. This paper outlines the different areas and transmission channels of how this so-called “resource curse” is said to materialize. By assessing empirical evidence on sub-Saharan Africa it concludes that the resource curse theory fails to sufficiently explain why and how several countries have not or only partly been affected by the “curse”. Theoretically, the paper argues that whether or not natural resources are detrimental to a country’s socio-economic and political development depends on a number of contextual variables, divided into country-specific conditions and resource-specific conditions (type, degree/level of abundance and dependence, resource revenue management, involved companies etc.). Methodologically, a future research agenda needs to examine the complex interplay of these contextual variables by adding sophisticated comparative research designs, especially “small and medium N” comparisons, to the tool box which has been widely confined to the juxtaposition of “large N” and country case studies.
Fracture numérique de genre en Afrique francophone : une inquiétante réalité ; réseau genre et TIC
(2005)
Ce document présente les principaux résultats de la recherche "Fracture numérique de genre en Afrique francophone : données et indicateurs", réalisée en 2004-2005 par le Réseau genre et TIC, grâce à une subvention du Centre de Recherches pour le Développement International (CRDI, Ottawa, Canada). Le Réseau genre et TIC est une initiative menée conjointement par l’organisation internationale Environnement et Développement du Tiers Monde (ENDA), l’Observatoire des Systèmes d’Information sur les Réseaux et Inforoutes du Sénégal (OSIRIS) et l’Agence sénégalaise de Régulation des Télécommunications (ART). Composé de personnes et d’organisations actives pour la promotion de l’égalité de genre dans le secteur des TIC, sa mission, en concertation avec l’ensemble des acteurs nationaux et partenaires internationaux, est de promouvoir l’égalité de genre dans la société de l’information.
Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey we first document that the recent increase in income inequality in the US has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Much of this divergence is due to different trends in within-group inequality, which has increased significantly for income but little for consumption. We then develop a simple framework that allows us to analytically characterize how within-group income inequality affects consumption inequality in a world in which agents can trade a full set of contingent consumption claims, subject to endogenous constraints emanating from the limited enforcement of intertemporal contracts (as in Kehoe and Levine, 1993). Finally, we quantitatively evaluate, in the context of a calibrated general equilibrium production economy, whether this set-up, or alternatively a standard incomplete markets model (as in Ayiagari 1994), can account for the documented stylized consumption inequality facts from the US data. JEL Klassifikation: E21, D91, D63, D31, G22
This paper studies an overlapping generations model with stochastic production and incomplete markets to assess whether the introduction of an unfunded social security system leads to a Pareto improvement. When returns to capital and wages are imperfectly correlated a system that endows retired households with claims to labor income enhances the sharing of aggregate risk between generations. Our quantitative analysis shows that, abstracting from the capital crowding-out effect, the introduction of social security represents a Pareto improving reform, even when the economy is dynamically effcient. However, the severity of the crowding-out effect in general equilibrium tends to overturn these gains. Klassifikation: E62, H55, H31, D91, D58 . April 2005.
This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets and enhances an equal distribution of economic welfare. These beneficial effects of a progressive tax system have to be traded off against the efficiency loss arising from distorting endogenous labor supply and capital accumulation decisions. Using a utilitarian steady state social welfare criterion we find that the optimal US income tax is well approximated by a flat tax rate of 17:2% and a fixed deduction of about $9,400. The steady state welfare gains from a fundamental tax reform towards this tax system are equivalent to 1:7% higher consumption in each state of the world. An explicit computation of the transition path induced by a reform of the current towards the optimal tax system indicates that a majority of the population currently alive (roughly 62%) would experience welfare gains, suggesting that such fundamental income tax reform is not only desirable, but may also be politically feasible. JEL Klassifikation: E62, H21, H24 .
Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these frequently do not distinguish with sufficient clarity between the ‘root causes’ of a conflict, its aggravating factors and its triggers. Specifically, a correct assessment of conflict prolonging (or sustaining) factors is of vital importance in Africa’s lingering confrontations. Broader approaches (e.g. “structural stability”) offer a better analytical framework than familiar one-dimensional explanations. Moreover, for explaining and dealing with violent conflicts a shift of attention from the nation-state towards the local and sub-regional level is needed.
This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent can walk away from the contract, while the intermediary cannot, i.e. there is one-sided commitment. We consider the extreme scenario that the agents face no costs to walking away, and can sign up with any competing intermediary without any reputational losses. We demonstrate that not only autarky, but also partial and full insurance can obtain, depending on the relative patience of agents and financial intermediaries. Insurance can be provided because in an equilibrium contract an up-front payment e.ectively locks in the agent with an intermediary. We then show that our contract economy is equivalent to a consumption-savings economy with one-period Arrow securities and a short-sale constraint, similar to Bulow and Rogo. (1989). From this equivalence and our characterization of dynamic contracts it immediately follows that without cost of switching financial intermediaries debt contracts are not sustainable, even though a risk allocation superior to autarky can be achieved. JEL Klassifikation: G22, E21, D11, D91.
This work investigates laryngeal and supralaryngeal correlates of the voicing contrast in alveolar obstruent production in German. It further studies laryngealoral co-ordination observed for such productions. Three different positions of the obstruents are taken into account: the stressed, syllable initial position, the post-stressed intervocalic position, and the post-stressed word final position. For the latter the phonological rule of final devoicing applies in German. The different positions are chosen in order to study the following hypotheses:
1. The presence/absence of glottal opening is not a consistent correlate of the voicing contrast in German.
2. Supralaryngeal correlates are also involved in the contrast.
3. Supralaryngeal correlates can compensate for the lack of distinction in laryngeal adjustment.
Including the word final position is motivated by the question whether neutralization in word final position would be complete or whether some articulatory residue of the contrast can be found.
Two experiments are carried out. The first experiment investigates glottal abduction in co-ordination with tongue-palate contact patterns by means of simultaneous recordings of transillumination, fiberoptic films and Electropalatography (EPG). The second experiment focuses on supralaryngeal correlates of alveolar stops studied by means of Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) simultaneously with EPG. Three German native speakers participated in both recordings. Results of this study provide evidence that the first hypothesis holds true for alveolar stops when different positions are taken into account. In fricative production it is also confirmed since voiceless and voiced fricatives are most of the time realised with glottal abduction. Additionally, supralaryngeal correlates are involved in the voicing contrast under two perspectives. First, laryngeal and supralaryngeal movements are well synchronised in voiceless obstruent production, particularly in the stressed position. Second, supralaryngeal correlates occur especially in the post-stressed intervocalic position. Results are discussed with respect to the phonetics-phonology interface, to the role of timing and its possible control, to the interarticulatory co-ordination, and to stress as 'localised hyperarticulation'.
The effects of public policy programmes which aim at internalising spill-overs due to successful innovation are analysed in a sequential double-sided moral hazard double-sided adverse selection framework. The central focus lies in analysing their impact on contract design. We show that in our framework only ex post grants are a robust instrument for implementing the first-best situation, whereas the success of guarantee programmes, ex ante grants and some public-private partnerships depends strongly on the characteristics of the project: in certain cases they not only give no further incentives but even destroy contract mechanisms and so worsen the outcome.
FIFO is the most prominent queueing strategy due to its simplicity and the fact that it only works with local information. Its analysis within the adversarial queueing theory however has shown, that there are networks that are not stable under the FIFO protocol, even at arbitrarily low rate. On the other hand there are networks that are universally stable, i.e., they are stable under every greedy protocol at any rate r < 1. The question as to which networks are stable under the FIFO protocol arises naturally. We offer the first polynomial time algorithm for deciding FIFO stability and simple-path FIFO stability of a directed network, answering an open question posed in [1, 4]. It turns out, that there are networks, that are FIFO stable but not universally stable, hence FIFO is not a worst case protocol in this sense. Our characterization of FIFO stability is constructive and disproves an open characterization in [4].
Artificial drainage of agricultural land, for example with ditches or drainage tubes, is used to avoid water logging and to manage high groundwater tables. Among other impacts it influences the nutrient balances by increasing leaching losses and by decreasing denitrification. To simulate terrestrial transport of nitrogen on the global scale, a digital global map of artificially drained agricultural areas was developed. The map depicts the percentage of each 5’ by 5’ grid cell that is equipped for artificial drainage. Information on artificial drainage in countries or sub-national units was mainly derived from international inventories. Distribution to grid cells was based, for most countries, on the "Global Croplands Dataset" of Ramankutty et al. (1998) and the "Digital Global Map of Irrigation Areas" of Siebert et al. (2005). For some European countries the CORINE land cover dataset was used instead of the both datasets mentioned above. Maps with outlines of artificially drained areas were available for 6 countries. The global drainage area on the map is 167 Mio hectares. For only 11 out of the 116 countries with information on artificial drainage areas, sub-national information could be taken into account. Due to this coarse spatial resolution of the data sources, we recommended to use the map of artificially drained areas only for continental to global scale assessments. This documentation describes the dataset, the data sources and the map generation, and it discusses the data uncertainty.
Groundwater recharge is the major limiting factor for the sustainable use of groundwater. To support water management in a globalized world, it is necessary to estimate, in a spatially resolved way, global-scale groundwater recharge. In this report, improved model estimates of diffuse groundwater recharge at the global-scale, with a spatial resolution of 0.5° by 0.5°, are presented. They are based on calculations of the global hydrological model WGHM (WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model) which, for semi-arid and arid areas of the globe, was tuned against independent point estimates of diffuse groundwater recharge. This has led to a decrease of estimated groundwater recharge under semi-arid and arid conditions as compared to the model results before tuning, and the new estimates are more similar to country level data on groundwater recharge. Using the improved model, the impact of climate change on groundwater recharge was simulated, applying two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios as interpreted by two different climate models.
Default risk sharing between banks and markets : the contribution of collateralized debt obligations
(2005)
This paper contributes to the economics of financial institutions risk management by exploring how loan securitization a.ects their default risk, their systematic risk, and their stock prices. In a typical CDO transaction a bank retains through a first loss piece a very high proportion of the expected default losses, and transfers only the extreme losses to other market participants. The size of the first loss piece is largely driven by the average default probability of the securitized assets. If the bank sells loans in a true sale transaction, it may use the proceeds to to expand its loan business, thereby incurring more systematic risk. We find an increase of the banks' betas, but no significant stock price e.ect around the announcement of a CDO issue. Our results suggest a role for supervisory requirements in stabilizing the financial system, related to transparency of tranche allocation, and to regulatory treatment of senior tranches. JEL Klassifikation: D82, G21, D74 .
This special issue of the ZAS Papers in Linguistics contains a collection of papers of the French-German Thematic Summerschool on "Cognitive and physical models of speech production, and speech perception and of their interaction".
Organized by Susanne Fuchs (ZAS Berlin), Jonathan Harrington (IPdS Kiel), Pascal Perrier (ICP Grenoble) and Bernd Pompino-Marschall (HUB and ZAS Berlin) and funded by the German-French University in Saarbrücken this summerschool was held from September 19th till 24th 2004 at the coast of the Baltic Sea at the Heimvolkshochschule Lubmin (Germany) with 45 participants from Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Canada. The scientific program of this summerschool that is reprinted at the end of this volume included 11 key-note presentations by invited speakers, 21 oral presentations and a poster session (8 presentations). The names and addresses of all participants are also given in the back matter of this volume.
All participants was offered the opportunity to publish an extended version of their presentation in the ZAS Papers in Linguistics. All submitted papers underwent a review and an editing procedure by external experts and the organizers of the summerschool. As it is the case in a summerschool, papers present either works in progress, or works at a more advanced stage, or tutorials. They are ordered alphabetically by their first author's name, fortunately resulting in the fact that this special issue starts out with the paper that won the award as best pre-doctoral presentation, i.e. Sophie Dupont, Jérôme Aubin and Lucie Ménard with "A study of the McGurk effect in 4 and 5-year-old French Canadian children".
The purpose of this dissertation is to defend the idea that the empirical responsibilities of binding theory can be handled in a more psychologically and historically realistic way when assigned to the field of pragmatics. In particular, I wish to show that Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993), the stochastic OT and Gradual Learning Algorithm of Boersma (1998), the Recoverability of OT of Wilson (2001) and Buchwald et al. (2002), and the bidirectional OT of Blutner (2000b) and Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm of Jäger (2003a) can all participate in a formal framework in which one can formally spell out and justify the idea that the distributional behavior of bound pronouns and reflexivs is a pragmatic phenomenon.
In this paper we evaluate the employment effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. Job creation schemes are a major element of active labour market policy in Germany and are targeted at long-term unemployed and other hard-to-place individuals. Access to very informative administrative data of the Federal Employment Agency justifies the application of a matching estimator and allows to account for individual (group-specific) and regional effect heterogeneity. We extend previous studies in four directions. First, we are able to evaluate the effects on regular (unsubsidised) employment. Second, we observe the outcome of participants and non-participants for nearly three years after programme start and can therefore analyse mid- and long-term effects. Third, we test the sensitivity of the results with respect to various decisions which have to be made during implementation of the matching estimator, e.g. choosing the matching algorithm or estimating the propensity score. Finally, we check if a possible occurrence of 'unobserved heterogeneity' distorts our interpretation. The overall results are rather discouraging, since the employment effects are negative or insignificant for most of the analysed groups. One notable exception are long-term unemployed individuals who benefit from participation. Hence, one policy implication is to address programmes to this problem group more tightly. JEL Classification: J68, H43, C13
Previous empirical studies of job creation schemes in Germany have shown that the average effects for the participating individuals are negative. However, we find that this is not true for all strata of the population. Identifying individual characteristics that are responsible for the effect heterogeneity and using this information for a better allocation of individuals therefore bears some scope for improving programme efficiency. We present several stratification strategies and discuss the occurring effect heterogeneity. Our findings show that job creation schemes do neither harm nor improve the labour market chances for most of the groups. Exceptions are long-term unemployed men in West and long-term unemployed women in East and West Germany who benefit from participation in terms of higher employment rates. JEL: C13 , J68 , H43
This article presents an overview of the contemporary German insurance market, its structure, players, and development trends. First, brief information about the history of the insurance industry in Germany is provided. Second, the contemporary market is analyzed in terms of its legal and economic structure, with statistics on the number of companies, insurance density and penetration, the role of insurers in the capital markets, premiums split, and main market players and their market shares. Furthermore, the three biggest insurance lines—life, health, and property and casualty—are considered in more detail, such as product range, country specifics, and insurance and investment results. A section on regulation outlines its implementation in the insurance sector, offering information on the underlying legislative basis, supervisory body, technical procedures, expected developments, and sources of more detailed information.
Sharing of substructures like subterms and subcontexts in terms is a common method for space-efficient representation of terms, which allows for example to represent exponentially large terms in polynomial space, or to represent terms with iterated substructures in a compact form. We present singleton tree grammars as a general formalism for the treatment of sharing in terms. Singleton tree grammars (STG) are recursion-free context-free tree grammars without alternatives for non-terminals and at most unary second-order nonterminals. STGs generalize Plandowski's singleton context free grammars to terms (trees). We show that the test, whether two different nonterminals in an STG generate the same term can be done in polynomial time, which implies that the equality test of terms with shared terms and contexts, where composition of contexts is permitted, can be done in polynomial time in the size of the representation. This will allow polynomial-time algorithms for terms exploiting sharing. We hope that this technique will lead to improved upper complexity bounds for variants of second order unification algorithms, in particular for variants of context unification and bounded second order unification.
Static analysis of different non-strict functional programming languages makes use of set constants like Top, Inf, and Bot denoting all expressions, all lists without a last Nil as tail, and all non-terminating programs, respectively. We use a set language that permits union, constructors and recursive definition of set constants with a greatest fixpoint semantics. This paper proves decidability, in particular EXPTIMEcompleteness, of subset relationship of co-inductively defined sets by using algorithms and results from tree automata. This shows decidability of the test for set inclusion, which is required by certain strictness analysis algorithms in lazy functional programming languages.
This paper proves correctness of Nöcker's method of strictness analysis, implemented in the Clean compiler, which is an effective way for strictness analysis in lazy functional languages based on their operational semantics. We improve upon the work of Clark, Hankin and Hunt did on the correctness of the abstract reduction rules. Our method fully considers the cycle detection rules, which are the main strength of Nöcker's strictness analysis. Our algorithm SAL is a reformulation of Nöcker's strictness analysis algorithm in a higher-order call-by-need lambda-calculus with case, constructors, letrec, and seq, extended by set constants like Top or Inf, denoting sets of expressions. It is also possible to define new set constants by recursive equations with a greatest fixpoint semantics. The operational semantics is a small-step semantics. Equality of expressions is defined by a contextual semantics that observes termination of expressions. Basically, SAL is a non-termination checker. The proof of its correctness and hence of Nöcker's strictness analysis is based mainly on an exact analysis of the lengths of normal order reduction sequences. The main measure being the number of 'essential' reductions in a normal order reduction sequence. Our tools and results provide new insights into call-by-need lambda-calculi, the role of sharing in functional programming languages, and into strictness analysis in general. The correctness result provides a foundation for Nöcker's strictness analysis in Clean, and also for its use in Haskell.
This study investigates supralaryngeal mechanisms of the two way voicing contrast among German velar stops and the three way contrast among Korean velar stops, both in intervocalic position. Articulatory data won via electromagnetic articulography of three Korean speakers and acoustic recordings of three Korean and three German speakers are analysed. It was found that in both languages the voicing contrast is created by more than one mechanism. However, one can say that for Korean velar stops in intervocalic position stop closure duration is the most important parameter. For German it is closure voicing. The results support the phonological description proposed by Kohler (1984).
Innovations are a key factor to ensure the competitiveness of establishments as well as to enhance the growth and wealth of nations. But more than any other economic activity, decisions about innovations are plagued by failures of the market mechanism. As a response, public instruments have been implemented to stimulate private innovation activities. The effectiveness of these measures, however, is ambiguous and calls for an empirical evaluation. In this paper we make use of the IAB Establishment Panel and apply various microeconometric methods to estimate the effect of public measures on innovation activities of German establishments. We find that neglecting sample selection due to observable as well as to unobservable characteristics leads to an overestimation of the treatment effect and that there are considerable differences with regard to size class and betweenWest and East German establishments.
Das Recht der sog. eigenkapitalersetzenden Gesellschafterdarlehen ist in der jüngeren Vergangenheit zunehmend Gegenstand der Kritik geworden. Mit dem nachfolgenden Beitrag wird auf der Grundlage einer kritischen Analyse der lex lata ein Vorschlag für eine Vereinfachung der Regeln über die Gesellschafterfremdfinanzierung in der Krise entwickelt.
Despite a lot of re-structuring and many innovations in recent years, the securities transaction industry in the European Union is still a highly inefficient and inconsistently configured system for cross-border transactions. This paper analyzes the functions performed, the institutions involved and the parameters concerned that shape market and ownership structure in the industry. Of particular interest are microeconomic incentives of the main players that can be in contradiction to social welfare. We develop a framework and analyze three consistent systems for the securities transaction industry in the EU that offer superior efficiency than the current, inefficient arrangement. Some policy advice is given to select the 'best' system for the Single European Financial Market.
Wider participation in stockholding is often presumed to reduce wealth inequality. We measure and decompose changes in US wealth inequality between 1989 and 2001, a period of considerable spread of equity culture. Inequality in equity wealth is found to be important for net wealth inequality, despite equity's limited share. Our findings show that reduced wealth inequality is not a necessary outcome of the spread of equity culture. We estimate contributions of stockholder characteristics to levels and inequality in equity holdings, and we distinguish changes in configuration of the stockholder pool from changes in the influence of given characteristics. Our estimates imply that both the 1989 and the 2001 stockholder pools would have produced higher equity holdings in 1998 than were actually observed for 1998 stockholders. This arises from differences both in optimal holdings and in financial attitudes and practices, suggesting a dilution effect of the boom followed by a cleansing effect of the downturn. Cumulative gains and losses in stockholding are shown to be significantly influenced by length of household investment horizon and portfolio breadth but, controlling for those, use of professional advice is either insignificant or counterproductive. JEL Classification: E21, G11
Credit card debt puzzles
(2005)
Most US credit card holders revolve high-interest debt, often combined with substantial (i) asset accumulation by retirement, and (ii) low-rate liquid assets. Hyperbolic discounting can resolve only the former puzzle (Laibson et al., 2003). Bertaut and Haliassos (2002) proposed an 'accountant-shopper' framework for the latter. The current paper builds, solves, and simulates a fully-specified accountant-shopper model, to show that this framework can actually generate both types of co-existence, as well as target credit card utilization rates consistent with Gross and Souleles (2002). The benchmark model is compared to setups without self-control problems, with alternative mechanisms, and with impatient but fully rational shoppers. Klassifikation: E210, G110
While much of classical statistical analysis is based on Gaussian distributional assumptions, statistical modeling with the Laplace distribution has gained importance in many applied fields. This phenomenon is rooted in the fact that, like the Gaussian, the Laplace distribution has many attractive properties. This paper investigates two methods of combining them and their use in modeling and predicting financial risk. Based on 25 daily stock return series, the empirical results indicate that the new models offer a plausible description of the data. They are also shown to be competitive with, or superior to, use of the hyperbolic distribution, which has gained some popularity in asset-return modeling and, in fact, also nests the Gaussian and Laplace. Klassifikation: C16, C50 . March 2005.
Financial markets embed expectations of central bank policy into asset prices. This paper compares two approaches that extract a probability density of market beliefs. The first is a simulatedmoments estimator for option volatilities described in Mizrach (2002); the second is a new approach developed by Haas, Mittnik and Paolella (2004a) for fat-tailed conditionally heteroskedastic time series. In an application to the 1992-93 European Exchange Rate Mechanism crises, that both the options and the underlying exchange rates provide useful information for policy makers. JEL Klassifikation: G12, G14, F31.
Using unobservable conditional variance as measure, latent-variable approaches, such as GARCH and stochastic-volatility models, have traditionally been dominating the empirical finance literature. In recent years, with the availability of high-frequency financial market data modeling realized volatility has become a new and innovative research direction. By constructing "observable" or realized volatility series from intraday transaction data, the use of standard time series models, such as ARFIMA models, have become a promising strategy for modeling and predicting (daily) volatility. In this paper, we show that the residuals of the commonly used time-series models for realized volatility exhibit non-Gaussianity and volatility clustering. We propose extensions to explicitly account for these properties and assess their relevance when modeling and forecasting realized volatility. In an empirical application for S&P500 index futures we show that allowing for time-varying volatility of realized volatility leads to a substantial improvement of the model's fit as well as predictive performance. Furthermore, the distributional assumption for residuals plays a crucial role in density forecasting. Klassifikation: C22, C51, C52, C53
Academic contributions on the demutualization of stock exchanges so far have been predominantly devoted to social welfare issues, whereas there is scarce empirical literature referring to the impact of a governance change on the exchange itself. While there is consensus that the case for demutualization is predominantly driven by the need to improve the exchange's competitiveness in a changing business environment, it remains unclear how different governance regimes actually affect stock exchange performance. Some authors propose that a public listing is the best suited governance arrangement to improve an exchange's competitiveness. By employing a panel data set of 28 stock exchanges for the years 1999-2003 we seek to shed light on this topic by comparing the efficiency and productivity of exchanges with differing governance arrangements. For this purpose we calculate in a first step individual efficiency and productivity values via DEA. In a second step we regress the derived values against variables that - amongst others - map the institutional arrangement of the exchanges in order to determine efficiency and productivity differences between (1) mutuals (2) demutualized but customer-owned exchanges and (3) publicly listed and thus at least partly outsider-owned exchanges. We find evidence that demutualized exchanges exhibit higher technical efficiency than mutuals. However, they perform relatively poor as far as productivity growth is concerned. Furthermore, we find no evidence that publicly listed exchanges possess higher efficiency and productivity values than demutualized exchanges with a customer-dominated structure. We conclude that the merits of outside ownership lie possibly in other areas such as solving conflicts of interest between too heterogeneous members.
In recent years stock exchanges have been increasingly diversifying their operations into related business areas such as derivatives trading, post-trading services and software sales. This trend can be observed most notably among profit-oriented trading venues. While the pursuit for diversification is likely to be driven by the attractiveness of these investment opportunities, it is yet an open question whether certain integration activities are also efficient, both from a social welfare and from the exchanges' perspective. Academic contributions so far analyzed different business models primarily from the social welfare perspective, whereas there is only little literature considering their impact on the exchange itself. By employing a panel data set of 28 stock exchanges for the years 1999-2003 we seek to shed light on this topic by comparing the factor productivity of exchanges with different business models. Our findings suggest three conclusions: (1) Integration activity comes at the cost of increased operational complexity which in some cases outweigh the potential synergies between related activities and therefore leads to technical inefficiencies and lower productivity growth. (2) We find no evidence that vertical integration is more efficient and productive than other business models. This finding could contribute to the ongoing discussion about the merits of vertical integration from a social welfare perspective. (3) The existence of a strong in-house IT-competence seems to be beneficial to overcome.
Die Arbeit ist Teil der konzeptionellen Vorbereitung einer Dissertation zum Thema Innovationsfinanzierung im Mittelstand. Sie stellt gleichzeitig die Grundlage einer explorativen Erhebung zur Innovationstätigkeit und Finanzierungsproblematik Kunststoff verarbeitender Unternehmen der südlichen Westpfalz dar, welche im Sommer 2004 durchgeführt wurde. Innovationspolitische Diskussionen konzentrieren sich in Deutschland fast ausschließlich auf so genannte High Tech-Industrien. Unter Verwendung von Indikatoren zur Messung des Personal- und des Investitionsaufwandes in Forschungs- und Entwicklungsabteilungen, der Kooperationshäufigkeit zwischen Forschungseinrichtungen und Unternehmen oder Patentanmeldungen werden Branchen hinsichtlich Innovativität und nachhaltiger Förderwürdigkeit bewertet. Aufgrund fehlender alternativer Indikatoren zur Innovationstätigkeit in Unternehmen werden weite Teile des Mittelstandes ausgeblendet. Regionen, in denen sich traditionelle Branchen konzentrieren, werden für die dynamische Entwicklung der Volkswirtschaft als weniger bedeutend eingestuft. So liegen beispielsweise die FuE-Aufwendungen der Kunststoff verarbeitenden Industrie unter dem Durchschnitt des verarbeitenden Gewerbes. Sie ist eine typische Zulieferindustrie. Über Interaktionen mit Zulieferern und Kunden erschließen sich Kunststoff verarbeitende Unternehmen wichtige Innovationsimpulse. Mit praktischen Kompetenzen generiert sie einen Mehrwert an technologischem Fortschritt für eine Vielzahl vor- und nachgelagerter Industriezweige. Die Beziehungen der Kunststoffverarbeiter zu ihren Kunden sind stark projektbezogen. Es dominieren inkrementelle Innovationen. Die Struktur der Branche unterliegt daher einem stetigen Wandel. Erfolgreiche lohnfertigende Zulieferer werden zu System-Zulieferern oder bringen eigene Produkte auf den Markt. Die statistische Erfassung der Innovationsleistungen der Branche wird durch ihre Zuliefer-Rolle zusätzlich erschwert. Auch die Ableitung des tatsächlichen Innovationsaufwandes kann nicht ohne weiteres erfolgen. Es bedarf eines angepassten Innovationsverständnisses. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, ein Verständnis für die Innovationsleistungen einer mittelständisch geprägten, in Wertschöpfungsketten eingebetteten Low Tech Branche zu entwickeln. Es sollen Ansatzpunkte für eine Klassifikation der Innovationsaktivitäten und aufwendungen erarbeitet werden. Nach einer kurzen Diskussion der Unzweckmäßigkeit einer einseitigen Verwendung FuE-basierter Indikatoren werden im dritten Kapitel für die Kunststoff verarbeitenden Industrie Aspekte branchenspezifischer Innovationsprozesse ermittelt und klassifiziert. Die Entwicklung von Produkt-, Werkstoff- und Werkzeugkonzepten durch Kunststoff verarbeitende Unternehmen werden als zentrale Innovationsaktivitäten der Branche herausgearbeitet. Das letzte Kapitel dient der Diskussion der zu erwartenden Risiken und Investitionsaufwendungen dieser Entwicklungsleistungen. Mögliche Finanzierungsformen werden abgeleitet.
In this paper, we propose a model of credit rating agencies using the global games framework to incorporate information and coordination problems. We introduce a refined utility function of a credit rating agency that, additional to reputation maximization, also embeds aspects of competition and feedback effects of the rating on the rated firms. Apart from hinting at explanations for several hypotheses with regard to agencies' optimal rating assessments, our model suggests that the existence of rating agencies may decrease the incidence of multiple equilibria. If investors have discretionary power over the precision of their private information, we can prove that public rating announcements and private information collection are complements rather than substitutes in order to secure uniqueness of equilibrium. In this respect, rating agencies may spark off a virtuous circle that increases the efficiency of the market outcome.
Small and medium-sized firms typically obtain capital via bank financing. They often rely on a mixture of relationship and arm’s-length banking. This paper explores the reasons for the dominance of heterogeneous multiple banking systems. We show that the incidence of inefficient credit termination and subsequent firm liquidation is contingent on the borrower’s quality and on the relationship bank’s information precision. Generally, heterogeneous multiple banking leads to fewer inefficient credit decisions than monopoly relationship lending or homogeneous multiple banking, provided that the relationship bank’s fraction of total firm debt is not too large.
Small and medium-sized firms typically obtain capital via bank financing. They often rely on a mixture of relationship and arm’s-length banking. This paper explores the reasons for the dominance of heterogeneous multiple banking systems. We show that the incidence of inefficient credit termination and subsequent firm liquidation is contingent on the borrower’s quality and on the relationship bank’s information precision. Generally, heterogeneous multiple banking leads to fewer inefficient credit decisions than monopoly relationship lending or homogeneous multiple banking, provided that the relationship bank’s fraction of total firm debt is not too large.
Außerhalb der indoeuropäischen Sprachen [erfreut sich] [d]ie Kategorie „Adjektiv“ […] einer geringeren Verbreitung als man als Laie vermuten würde, und es zeigen sich in nicht-indoeuropäischen Sprachen von den europäischen Sprachen stark verschiedene Aufteilungen der Welt in Nomina und Verba. Eine bisher nicht beschriebene Verteilung von Konzepten auf Wortarten in der Sprache Guarani, welche hauptsächlich in Paraguay gesprochen wird, ist das Thema dieser Arbeit.
The paper explores factors that influence the design of financing contracts between venture capital investors and European venture capital funds. 122 Private Placement Memoranda and 46 Partnership Agreements are investigated in respect to the use of covenant restrictions and compensation schemes. The analysis focuses on the impact of two key factors: the reputation of VC-funds and changes in the overall demand for venture capital services. We find that established funds are more severely restricted by contractual covenants. This contradicts the conventional wisdom which assumes that established market participants care more about their reputation, have less incentive to behave opportunistically and therefore need less covenant restrictions. We also find that managers of established funds are more often obliged to invest own capital alongside with investors money. We interpret this as evidence that established funds have actually less reason to care about their reputation as compared to young funds. One reason for this surprising result could be that managers of established VC funds are older and closer to retirement and therefore put less weight on the effects of their actions on future business opportunities. We also explore the effects of venture capital supply on contract design. Gompers and Lerner (1996) show that VC-funds in the US are able to reduce the number of restrictive covenants in years with high supply of venture capital and interpret this as a result of increased bargaining power by VC-funds. We do not find similar evidence for Europe. Instead, we find that VC-funds receive less base compensation and higher performance related compensation in years with strong capital inflows into the VC industry. This may be interpreted as a signal of overconfidence: Strong investor demand seems to coincide with overoptimistic expectations by fund managers which make them willing to accept higher powered incentive schemes. JEL: G32 Keywords: Venture Capital, Contracting, Limited Partnership, Funds, Principal Agent, Compensation, Covenants, Reputation, Bargaining Power
It is shown that between one-turn pushdown automata (1-turn PDAs) and deterministic finite automata (DFAs) there will be savings concerning the size of description not bounded by any recursive function, so-called non-recursive tradeoffs. Considering the number of turns of the stack height as a consumable resource of PDAs, we can show the existence of non-recursive trade-offs between PDAs performing k+ 1 turns and k turns for k >= 1. Furthermore, non-recursive trade-offs are shown between arbitrary PDAs and PDAs which perform only a finite number of turns. Finally, several decidability questions are shown to be undecidable and not semidecidable.