Refine
Year of publication
- 2009 (2405) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (943)
- Doctoral Thesis (391)
- Part of Periodical (309)
- Book (210)
- Review (125)
- Working Paper (116)
- Part of a Book (81)
- Conference Proceeding (76)
- Report (65)
- Preprint (16)
Language
- German (1397)
- English (878)
- Portuguese (47)
- Croatian (39)
- French (24)
- Multiple languages (5)
- Italian (4)
- Spanish (4)
- dut (2)
- Hungarian (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2405) (remove)
Keywords
- Deutsch (58)
- Linguistik (34)
- Literatur (25)
- Rezension (24)
- Filmmusik (21)
- Lehrdichtung (18)
- Reiseliteratur (16)
- Deutschland (14)
- Film (13)
- Mittelhochdeutsch (13)
Institute
- Medizin (287)
- Extern (195)
- Biochemie und Chemie (159)
- Biowissenschaften (93)
- Präsidium (80)
- Physik (67)
- Gesellschaftswissenschaften (61)
- Rechtswissenschaft (51)
- Geowissenschaften (48)
- Geschichtswissenschaften (48)
This paper traces the historical development of lexicography in Gabon. Gabon, like most African countries, is multilingual. The recent inventories of languages spoken in Gabon are those established by Jacquot (1978) and Kwenzi-Mikala (1998). According to Kwenzi-Mikala (1997), there are 62 speech forms divided into 10 language groups or language-units in Gabon. These speech forms co-exist with French, the official language. In fact, in article 2 of paragraph 8 of the revised Constitution of 1994 the following can be read: "The Gabonese Republic adopts French as the official language. Furthermore, she endeavours to protect and promote the national languages." This constitutional arrangement naturally makes French the language used in education, administration and the media. The survey of lexicography in Gabon that is presented here includes the linguistic situation in and the language policy of Gabon, the lexicographic survey itself, as well as the lexicographic needs of the different speech forms (including languages and dialects). Initially, the pioneers of Gabonese lexicography were missionaries or colonial administrators. Very little was done in this field by the Gabonese themselves. Although credit is to be given to these early works, there are a number of shortcomings regarding the linguistic as well as the metalexicographic contents of dictionaries and lexicons produced during this period. In fact, the main weak point of those studies was the lack of tones in the written transcription of oral productions and orthographic problems. Furthermore, in those contributions, the theory of lexicography is largely unknown and lexico-graphic works are hardly ever based on authentic data corpora of the languages being described.
The main goal of this article is to define the problem of vowel duration in Civili (H12a). It shows that the so-called Civili vowel-length desperately needs to be re-examined, because previous works on the sound system of this language hardly explain a number of phonological phenomena, such as vowel lengthening, on the basis of data at hand. Demonstrating the problem in question, the author first reviews previous works that all identify a vowel lengthening in Civili. From different analyses the complexity of the phenomenon is found out by observing differences from an analysis to another, and by regarding difficulties the different phonologists came up against. Then, the problem is also seen through the weakness of each analysis results. This eventually shows more aspects of the vowel duration issue, and leads the author to make a clear distinction between vowel length and vowel lengthening that can be all regarded as only vowel duration. Finally, the article shares a possible way for a solution through an experimental approach of the Civili sound system.
This article raises a number of questions that should be dealt with in drawing up a lexicographic plan for Gabon. For which of the Gabonese languages should lexicographic units be established? This question entrains the issue of inventorying the Gabonese languages and their standardization as well as the issue of language planning for Gabon. What is the status of those foreign languages widely spoken in Gabon? What about French? Should Gabon keep importing its French dictionaries from France, or should the Gabonese compile their own French dictionaries, including French words and expressions exclusively used in Gabon? Finally, after trying to answer these questions, a number of suggestions are made for the establishment of a lexicographic plan for Gabon.
»Das sind meine Gene – deswegen kann ich daran nichts ändern!« Wie oft hört man solche oder ähnliche Äußerungen von Menschen mit Fettsucht oder anderen Malaisen. Aber unterliegen Fettsucht oder komplexe Erkrankungen tatsächlich weitgehend unabänderlichen Naturgesetzen, oder sind sie doch beeinfl ussbar? Vor einigen Jahren noch hätten selbst gewiefte Genetiker keine oder wenigstens keine gute Antwort auf solche Fragen geben können. Mit dem Fortschreiten der Molekularbiologie in den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten konnte sich jedoch ein Wissenschaftszweig, die bereits in den 1940er Jahren von Conrad Waddington definierte Epigenetik, zur Blüte entwickeln, der die Genetik und ihre (Aus-)Prägung durch Lebensumstände und die Umwelt zusammenbringt.
Content A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, INCLUDING MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS B. COMPLETE REPORT 1. INTRODUCTION 2. RISK MAP 2.1 Why a Risk Map is needed, and for what purpose 2.1.1 Creating a unified data base 2.1.2 Assessing systemic risk 2.1.3 Allowing for coordinated policy action 2.2 Recommendations 3. GLOBAL REGISTER FOR LOANS (CREDIT REGISTER) AND BONDS (SECURITIES REGISTER) 3.1 Objectives of a credit register 3.2 Credit registers in Europe (and beyond) 3.3 Suggestions for a supra-national Credit Register 3.4 Integrating a supra-national Securities Register 3.5 Recommendations 4. HEDGE FUNDS: REGULATION AND SUPERVISION 4.1 What are hedge funds (activities, location, size, regulation)? 4.2 What are the risks posed by hedge funds (systematic risks, interaction with prime brokers)? 4.3 Routes to better regulation (direct, indirect) 4.4 Recommendations 5. RATING AGENCIES: REGULATION AND SUPERVISION 5.1 The role of ratings in bond and structured finance markets, past and present 5.2 Elements of rating integrity (independence, compensation and incentives, transparency) 5.3 Recommendations (registration, transparency, annual report on rating performance) 6. PROCYCLICALITY: PROBLEMS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS 6.1 What is meant by “procyclicality” and why is it a problem? 6.2 The roots of procyclicality and the lessons it suggests for policymakers 6.2.1 Underpinnings of the phenomenon 6.2.2 Lessons to be learned 6.3 Characteristics of a macrofinancial stability framework 6.4 Recommendations 7. THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND FORA, IN PARTICULAR THE IMF, BIS AND FSF 7.1 Legitimacy 7.2 Re-focusing the work 7.3 Recommendations
Content New Financial Architecture (Short Version) 1. Purpose of the paper – causes of the crisis 2. Recommendations 2.1. Incentives 2.2. Transparency 2.3. Regulation and Supervision 2.4. International Institutions 3. Concluding remarks Appendix (Full text) A 1. Causes of the crisis A 2. Improving the Framework A 2.1. Incentives A 2.2. Transparency A 2.3. Regulation and Supervision A 2.4. International Institutions A 3. Concluding remarks
We analyze a national sample of Americans with respect to their debt literacy, financial experiences, and their judgments about the extent of their indebtedness. Debt literacy is measured by questions testing knowledge of fundamental concepts related to debt and by selfassessed financial knowledge. Financial experiences are the participants’ reported experiences with traditional borrowing, alternative borrowing, and investing activities. Overindebtedness is a self-reported measure. Overall, we find that debt literacy is low: only about one-third of the population seems to comprehend interest compounding or the workings of credit cards. Even after controlling for demographics, we find a strong relationship between debt literacy and both financial experiences and debt loads. Specifically, individuals with lower levels of debt literacy tend to transact in high-cost manners, incurring higher fees and using high-cost borrowing. In applying our results to credit cards, we estimate that as much as one-third of the charges and fees paid by less knowledgeable individuals can be attributed to ignorance. The less knowledgeable also report that their debt loads are excessive or that they are unable to judge their debt position. JEL Classification: D14, D91
Governance und Vertragsstrukturen in der deutschen VC Industrie: eine empirische Einschätzung
(2009)
Diese Arbeit analysiert die wesentlichen Elemente der Vertragsstrukturen in der Venture Capital-Industrie. Aufbauend auf einem sehr umfangreichen und detaillierten Datensatz, der die Verträge zwischen Venture Capital-Investoren und deren Portfoliounternehmen abbildet, werden die Kontroll-, Entscheidungs- und Vetorechte einer detaillierten Analyse unterzogen. Dabei zeigt sich eine klare Tendenz in der Entwicklung der Vertragsstrukturen in Deutschland hin zu angelsächsisch strukturierten Verträgen. Dies beinhaltet unter anderem eine verstärkte Verwendung von Kontroll- und Entscheidungsrechten aber auch ein breiteres Spektrum dieser Rechte. Außerdem finden wir eine klare Interaktionen zwischen Kontrollrechten, Cash-Flow Rechten und Liquidationsrechten. Insbesondere ist zu betonen, dass Cash-Flow und Kontrollrechte einerseits und Stimmrechte und Aufsichtsratsanteile andererseits separat alloziiert werden und viele Kontrollrechte als Komplemente und nicht als Substitute zueinander aufgefasst werden müssen. JEL Classification: G24, G32, D86, D80, G34
Suppliers play a major role in innovation processes. We analyze ownership allocations and the choice of R&D technology in vertical R&D cooperations. Given incomplete contracts on the R&D outcome, there is a tradeoff between R&D specifically designed towards a manufacturer (increasing investment productivity) and a general technology (hold-up reduction). We find that the market solution yields the specific technology in too few cases. More intense product market competition shifts optimal ownership towards the supplier. The use of exit clauses increases the gains from the collaboration. JEL Classification: L22, L24, O31, O32
Venture capital exit rights
(2009)
Theorists argue that exit rights can mitigate hold-up problems in venture capital. Using a hand-collected data-set of venture capital contracts from Germany we show that exit rights are included more frequently in venture capital contracts when a hold-up problem associated with the venture capitalist's exit decision is likely. Examples include drag-along and tag-along rights. Additionally, we find that almost all exit rights are allocated to the venture capitalist rather than to the entrepreneur. In addition, we show that besides the basic hold-up mechanism there are other mechanisms such as ex-ante bargaining power and the degree of pledgeable income that drive the allocation of exit rights. JEL Classification: G24, G34, D80
We merge administrative information from a large German discount brokerage firm with regional data to examine if financial advisors improve portfolio performance. Our data track accounts of 32,751 randomly selected individual customers over 66 months and allow direct comparison of performance across self-managed accounts and accounts run by, or in consultation with, independent financial advisors. In contrast to the picture painted by simple descriptive statistics, econometric analysis that corrects for the endogeneity of the choice of having a financial advisor suggests that advisors are associated with lower total and excess account returns, higher portfolio risk and probabilities of losses, and higher trading frequency and portfolio turnover relative to what account owners of given characteristics tend to achieve on their own. Regression analysis of who uses an IFA suggests that IFAs are matched with richer, older investors rather than with poorer, younger ones.
Analyzing interest rate risk: stochastic volatility in the term structure of government bond yields
(2009)
We propose a Nelson-Siegel type interest rate term structure model where the underlying yield factors follow autoregressive processes with stochastic volatility. The factor volatilities parsimoniously capture risk inherent to the term structure and are associated with the time-varying uncertainty of the yield curve’s level, slope and curvature. Estimating the model based on U.S. government bond yields applying Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques we find that the factor volatilities follow highly persistent processes. We show that slope and curvature risk have explanatory power for bond excess returns and illustrate that the yield and volatility factors are closely related to industrial capacity utilization, inflation, monetary policy and employment growth. JEL Classification: C5, E4, G1
This paper provides a joint analysis of household stockholding participation, stock location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers, using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our multivariate choice model matches observed participation rates, conditional and unconditional, and asset location patterns. Financial education and sophistication strongly affect direct stockholding and mutual fund participation, while social interactions affect stockholding through retirement accounts only. Household characteristics influence stockholding through retirement accounts conditional on owning retirement accounts, unlike what happens with stockholding through mutual funds. Although stockholding is more common among retirement account owners, this fact is mainly due to their characteristics that led them to buy retirement accounts in the first place rather than to any informational advantages gained through retirement account ownership itself. Finally, our results suggest that, taking stockholding as given, stock location is not arbitrary but crucially depends on investor characteristics. JEL Classification: G11, E21, D14, C35
Milah books & manuals
(2009)
The ENVISAT validation programme for the atmospheric instruments MIPAS, SCIAMACHY and GOMOS is based on a number of balloon-borne, aircraft, satellite and ground-based correlative measurements. In particular the activities of validation scientists were coordinated by ESA within the ENVISAT Stratospheric Aircraft and Balloon Campaign or ESABC. As part of a series of similar papers on other species [this issue] and in parallel to the contribution of the individual validation teams, the present paper provides a synthesis of comparisons performed between MIPAS CH4 and N2O profiles produced by the current ESA operational software (Instrument Processing Facility version 4.61 or IPF v4.61, full resolution MIPAS data covering the period 9 July 2002 to 26 March 2004) and correlative measurements obtained from balloon and aircraft experiments as well as from satellite sensors or from ground-based instruments. In the middle stratosphere, no significant bias is observed between MIPAS and correlative measurements, and MIPAS is providing a very consistent and global picture of the distribution of CH4 and N2O in this region. In average, the MIPAS CH4 values show a small positive bias in the lower stratosphere of about 5%. A similar situation is observed for N2O with a positive bias of 4%. In the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere (UT/LS) the individual used MIPAS data version 4.61 still exhibits some unphysical oscillations in individual CH4 and N2O profiles caused by the processing algorithm (with almost no regularization). Taking these problems into account, the MIPAS CH4 and N2O profiles are behaving as expected from the internal error estimation of IPF v4.61 and the estimated errors of the correlative measurements.
Stocks are exposed to the risk of sudden downward jumps. Additionally, a crash in one stock (or index) can increase the risk of crashes in other stocks (or indices). Our paper explicitly takes this contagion risk into account and studies its impact on the portfolio decision of a CRRA investor both in complete and in incomplete market settings. We find that the investor significantly adjusts his portfolio when contagion is more likely to occur. Capturing the time dimension of contagion, i.e. the time span between jumps in two stocks or stock indices, is thus of first-order importance when analyzing portfolio decisions. Investors ignoring contagion completely or accounting for contagion while ignoring its time dimension suffer large and economically significant utility losses. These losses are larger in complete than in incomplete markets, and the investor might be better off if he does not trade derivatives. Furthermore, we emphasize that the risk of contagion has a crucial impact on investors' security demands, since it reduces their ability to diversify their portfolios.
We provide explicit solutions to life-cycle utility maximization problems simultaneously involving dynamic decisions on investments in stocks and bonds, consumption of perishable goods, and the rental and the ownership of residential real estate. House prices, stock prices, interest rates, and the labor income of the decision-maker follow correlated stochastic processes. The preferences of the individual are of the Epstein-Zin recursive structure and depend on consumption of both perishable goods and housing services. The explicit consumption and investment strategies are simple and intuitive and are thoroughly discussed and illustrated in the paper. For a calibrated version of the model we find, among other things, that the fairly high correlation between labor income and house prices imply much larger life-cycle variations in the desired exposure to house price risks than in the exposure to the stock and bond markets. We demonstrate that the derived closed-form strategies are still very useful if the housing positions are only reset infrequently and if the investor is restricted from borrowing against future income. Our results suggest that markets for REITs or other financial contracts facilitating the hedging of house price risks will lead to non-negligible but moderate improvements of welfare.
This paper relates recursive utility in continuous time to its discrete-time origins and provides a rigorous and intuitive alternative to a heuristic approach presented in [Duffie, Epstein 1992], who formally define recursive utility in continuous time via backward stochastic differential equations (stochastic differential utility). Furthermore, we show that the notion of Gâteaux differentiability of certainty equivalents used in their paper has to be replaced by a different concept. Our approach allows us to address the important issue of normalization of aggregators in non-Brownian settings. We show that normalization is always feasible if the certainty equivalent of the aggregator is of expected utility type. Conversely, we prove that in general L´evy frameworks this is essentially also necessary, i.e. aggregators that are not of expected utility type cannot be normalized in general. Besides, for these settings we clarify the relationship of our approach to stochastic differential utility and, finally, establish dynamic programming results. JEL Classifications: D81, D91, C61