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I propose a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which the leverage of borrowers as well as banks and housing finance play a crucial role in the model dynamics. The model is used to evaluate the relative effectiveness of a policy to inject capital into banks versus a policy to relieve households of mortgage debt. In normal times, when the economy is near the steady state and policy rates are set according to a Taylor-type rule, capital injections to banks are more effective in stimulating the economy in the long-run. However, in the middle of a housing debt crisis, when households are highly leveraged, the short-run output effects of the debt relief are more substantial. When the zero lower bound (ZLB) is additionally considered, the debt relief policy can be much more powerful in boosting the economy both in the short-run and in the longrun. Moreover, the output effects of the debt relief become increasingly larger, the longer the ZLB is binding.
Inhalt
1. Strauß, Johann (Vater:/Sr.) (* 14.3.1804 – † 25.9.1849) [3]
2. Strauß, Johann (Sohn:/Jr.) (* 25.10.1825 – † 3.6.1899) [6]
3. Die Operetten-Adaptionen [12]
3.1 Die Fledermaus (Operette in 3 Akten, Johann Strauß, Sohn) :/:/ UA: 5.4.1874 [12]
3.2 Eine Nacht in Venedig (Operette in 3 Akten, Johann Strauß, Sohn) :/:/ UA: 3.10.1883 [17]
3.3 Der Zigeunerbaron (Operette in 3 Akten, Johann Strauß, Sohn) :/:/ UA: 24.10.1885 [18]
3.4 Wiener Blut (Johann Strauß, Sohn) :/:/ UA: 25.10.1899 [19]
3.5 Frühlingsluft (Jose. Strauß) :/:/ UA: 9.5.1903 [
Les Blank
(2017)
This paper studies the long-run effects of credit market disruptions on real firm outcomes and how these effects depend on nominal wage rigidities at the firm level. I trace out the long-run investment and growth trajectories of firms which are more adversely affected by a transitory shock to aggregate credit supply. Affected firms exhibit a temporary investment gap for two years following the shock, resulting in a persistent accumulated growth gap. I show that affected firms with a higher degree of wage rigidity exhibit a steeper drop in investment and grow more slowly than affected firms with more flexible wages.
A tontine provides a mortality driven, age-increasing payout structure through the pooling of mortality. Because a tontine does not entail any guarantees, the payout structure of a tontine is determined by the pooling of individual characteristics of tontinists. Therefore, the surrender decision of single tontinists directly affects the remaining members' payouts. Nevertheless, the opportunity to surrender is crucial to the success of a tontine from a regulatory as well as a policyholder perspective. Therefore, this paper derives the fair surrender value of a tontine, first on the basis of expected values, and then incorporates the increasing payout volatility to determine an equitable surrender value. Results show that the surrender decision requires a discount on the fair surrender value as security for the remaining members. The discount intensifies in decreasing tontine size and increasing risk aversion. However, tontinists are less willing to surrender for decreasing tontine size and increasing risk aversion, creating a natural protection against tontine runs stemming from short-term liquidity shocks. Furthermore we argue that a surrender decision based on private information requires a discount on the fair surrender value as well.
New provisioning rules introduced by IFRS 9 are expected to reduce the procyclicality of provisioning. Heterogeneity among banks in the procyclicality of provisioning may not only reflect the formal accounting rules, but also variation in discretionary provisioning policies. This paper presents empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of provisioning procyclicality among significant banks that are directly supervised by the ECB. In particular, this paper finds that provisioning is relatively procyclical at banks that have i) high loans-to-assets ratios, ii) high shares of non-interest income in total operating income, iii) low capitalization rates, and iv) low total assets. Supervisory guidance provided to banks on how to implement IFRS 9 has mostly been of a qualitative nature, and may prove inadequate to prevent an undesirably wide future variation in provisioning among EU banks.
This paper was provided at the request of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament and commissioned and drafted under the responsibility of the Economic Governance Support Unit (EGOV) of the European Parliament. It was originally published on the European Parliament’s webpage.
This paper analyzes the bail-in tool under the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and predicts that it will not reach its policy objective. To make this argument, this paper first describes the policy rationale that calls for mandatory private sector involvement (PSI). From this analysis, the key features for an effective bail-in tool can be derived.
These insights serve as the background to make the case that the European resolution framework is likely ineffective in establishing adequate market discipline through risk-reflecting prices for bank capital. The main reason for this lies in the avoidable embeddedness of the BRRD’s bail-in tool in the much broader resolution process, which entails ample discretion of the authorities also in forcing private sector involvement. Moreover, the idea that nearly all positions on the liability side of a bank’s balance sheet should be subjected to bail-in is misguided. Instead, a concentration of PSI in instruments that fall under the minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) is preferable.
Finally, this paper synthesized the prior analysis by putting forward an alternative regulatory approach that seeks to disentangle private sector involvement as a precondition for effective bank-resolution as much as possible form the resolution process as such.
The bail-in tool as implemented in the European bank resolution framework suffers from severe shortcomings. To some extent, the regulatory framework can remedy the impediments to the desirable incentive effect of private sector involvement (PSI) that emanate from a lack of predictability of outcomes, if it compels banks to issue a sufficiently sized minimum of high-quality, easy to bail-in (subordinated) liabilities. Yet, even the limited improvements any prescription of bail-in capital can offer for PSI’s operational effectiveness seem compromised in important respects.
The main problem, echoing the general concerns voiced against the European bail-in regime, is that the specifications for minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) are also highly detailed and discretionary and thus alleviate the predicament of investors in bail-in debt, at best, only insufficiently. Quite importantly, given the character of typical MREL instruments as non-runnable long-term debt, even if investors are able to gauge the relevant risk of PSI in a bank’s failure correctly at the time of purchase, subsequent adjustment of MREL-prescriptions by competent or resolution authorities potentially change the risk profile of the pertinent instruments. Therefore, original pricing decisions may prove inadequate and so may market discipline that follows from them.
The pending European legislation aims at an implementation of the already complex specifications of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) for Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) by very detailed and case specific amendments to both the regulatory capital and the resolution regime with an exorbitant emphasis on proportionality and technical fine-tuning. What gets lost in this approach, however, is the key policy objective of enhanced market discipline through predictable PSI: it is hardly conceivable that the pricing of MREL-instruments reflects an accurate risk-assessment of investors because of the many discretionary choices a multitude of agencies are supposed to make and revisit in the administration of the new regime. To prove this conclusion, this chapter looks in more detail at the regulatory objectives of the BRRD’s prescriptions for MREL and their implementation in the prospectively amended European supervisory and resolution framework.
Crowdfunding is a buzzword that signifies a sub-set in the new forms of finance facilitated by advances in information technology usually categorized as fintech. Concerns for financial stability, investor and consumer protection, or the prevention of money laundering or funding of terrorism hinge incrementally on including the new techniques to initiate financing relationships adequately in the regulatory framework.
This paper analyzes the German regulation of crowdinvesting and finds that it does not fully live up to the regulatory challenges posed by this novel form of digitized matching of supply and demand on capital markets. It should better reflect the key importance of crowdinvesting platforms, which may become critical providers of market infrastructure in the not too distant future. Moreover, platforms can play an important role in investor protection that cannot be performed by traditional disclosure regimes geared towards more seasoned issuers. Against this background, the creation of an exemption from the traditional prospectus regime seems to be a plausible policy choice. However, it needs to be complemented by an adequate regulatory stimulation of platforms’ role as gatekeepers.
The Judgement of the EGC in the Case T-122/15 – Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg - Förderbank v European Central Bank is the first statement of the European judiciary on the sub-stantive law of the Banking Union. Beyond its specific holding, the decision is of great importance, because it hints at the methodological approach the EGC will take in interpreting prudential banking regulation in the appeals against supervisory measures that fall in its jurisdiction under TFEU, arts. 256(1) subpara 1 and 263(4). Specifically, the case pertained to the scope of direct ECB oversight of significant banks in the euro area and the reassignment of this competence to national competent authorities (NCAs) in individual circumstances (Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) Regulation, art. 6(4) subpara 2; SSM Framework Regulation, arts. 70, 71).
This paper analyses the bail-in tool under the BRRD and predicts that it will not reach its policy objective. To make this argument, this paper first describes the policy rationale that calls for mandatory PSI. From this analysis the key features for an effective bail-in tool can be derived. These insights serve as the background to make the case that the European resolution framework is likely ineffective in establishing adequate market discipline through risk-reflecting prices for bank capital. The main reason for this lies in the avoidable embeddedness of the BRRD’s bail-in tool in the much broader resolution process which entails ample discretion of the authorities also in forcing private sector involvement. Finally, this paper synthesized the prior analysis by putting forward an alternative regulatory approach that seeks to disentangle private sector involvement as a precondition for effective bank-resolution as much as possible form the resolution process as such.
The bail-in tool as implemented in the European bank resolution framework suffers from severe shortcomings. To some extent, the regulatory framework can remedy the impediments to the desirable incentive effect of private sector involvement (PSI) that emanate from a lack of predictability of outcomes, if it compels banks to issue a sufficiently sized minimum of high-quality, easy to bail-in (subordinated) liabilities. Yet, even the limited improvements any prescription of bail-in capital can offer for PSI’s operational effectiveness seem compromised in important respects.
The main problem, echoing the general concerns voiced against the European bail-in regime, is that the specifications for minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) are also highly detailed and discretionary and thus alleviate the predicament of investors in bail-in debt, at best, only insufficiently. Quite importantly, given the character of typical MREL instruments as non-runnable long-term debt, even if investors are able to gauge the relevant risk of PSI in a bank’s failure correctly at the time of purchase, subsequent adjustment of MREL-prescriptions by competent or resolution authorities potentially change the risk profile of the pertinent instruments. Therefore, original pricing decisions may prove inadequate and so may market discipline that follows from them.
The pending European legislation aims at an implementation of the already complex specifications of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) for Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) by very detailed and case specific amendments to both the regulatory capital and the resolution regime with an exorbitant emphasis on proportionality and technical fine-tuning. What gets lost in this approach, however, is the key policy objective of enhanced market discipline through predictable PSI: it is hardly conceivable that the pricing of MREL-instruments reflects an accurate risk-assessment of investors because of the many discretionary choices a multitude of agencies are supposed to make and revisit in the administration of the new regime. To prove this conclusion, this chapter looks in more detail at the regulatory objectives of the BRRD’s prescriptions for MREL and their implementation in the prospectively amended European supervisory and resolution framework.
During the 1970s, industrial countries, including the US and continental Europa, experienced a combination of slow productivity growth and high unemplyoment. Subsequent research has shown that the standard model of unemployment actually gives counterfactual predictions. Motivated by the observation that the 1970s were also characterized by high and rising inflation, Tesfaselassie and Wolters examine the effect of growth on unemployment in the presence of nominal price rigidity.
The authors demonstrate that the effect of growth on unemployment may be positive or negative. Faster growth leads to lower unemployment if the rate of inflation is high enough. There is a threshold level of inflation below which faster growth leads to higher unemployment and above which faster growth leads to lower unemployment. The threshold level in turn depends on labor market characteristics, such as hiring efficiency, the job destruction rate, workers' relative bargaining power and the opportunity cost of work.
Der Beitrag arbeitet die moralische Subjektivierungsform ökonomischer Verschuldung heraus. In Auseinandersetzung mit Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber und Pierre Bourdieu wird argumentiert, dass die Form der Verschuldung durch eine spezifische Zeitlichkeit geprägt ist. Die zentrale These lautet, dass sich das Zeitregime von Schuld und Schulden als paradox erweist: Einerseits ermöglicht die moderne "Entzauberung der Welt" (Max Weber) eine Öffnung auf gesellschaftliche Zukünfte hin und diese temporale Öffnung bildet auch eine notwendige Bedingung kapitalistischer Investitionstätigkeiten. Andererseits verstellt das gegenwärtige rigide Zeitregime der Schuld(en) jedoch die Möglichkeit subjektiver und politischer neuer Anfänge in der Zeit, da die Verschuldung eine Dynamik der ökonomischen Determinierung gegenwärtiger Handlungsoptionen durch den Zwang zur Rückzahlung ins Werk setzt.
Under Solvency II, corporate governance requirements are a complementary, but nonetheless essential, element to build a sound regulatory framework for insurance undertakings, also to address risks not specifically mitigated by the sole solvency capital requirements. After recalling the provisions of the second pillar concerning the system of governance, the paper is devoted to highlight the emerging regulatory trends in the corporate governance of insurance firms. Among others, it signals the exceptional extension of the duties and responsibilities assigned to the Board of directors, far beyond the traditional role of both monitoring the chief executive officer, and assessing the overall direction and strategy of the business. However, a better risk governance is not necessarily built on narrow rule-based approaches to corporate governance.
Under Solvency II, corporate governance requirements are a complementary, but nonetheless essential, element to build a sound regulatory framework for insurance undertakings, also to address risks not specifically mitigated by the sole solvency capital requirements. After recalling the provisions of the Second Pillar concerning the system of governance, the paper highlights the emerging regulatory trends in the corporate governance of insurance firms. Among others things, it signals the exceptional extension of the duties and responsibilities assigned to the board of directors, far beyond the traditional role of both monitoring the chief executive officer, and assessing the overall direction and strategy of the business. However, a better risk governance is not necessarily built on narrow rule-based approaches to corporate governance.
Helmut Siekmann erläutert in seinem Beitrag die Einstandspflicht der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für die Deutsche Bundesbank und die Europäische Zentralbank. Dabei kommt er zu dem Schluss, dass weder eine „Haftung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für Verluste der EZB noch eine Verpflichtung zur Auffüllung von aufgezehrtem Eigenkapital“ besteht.
Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst erschienen in: Festschrift für Theodor Baums zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, S. 1145-1179, Helmut Siekmann, Andreas Cahn, Tim Florstedt, Katja Langenbucher, Julia Redenius-Hövermann, Tobias Tröger, Ulrich Segna, Hrsg., Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck 2017
Das Fahren ohne (gültigen) Fahrschein im ÖPNV ist bereits seit den 1960er Jahren ein Problem zahlreicher Verkehrsunternehmen. Auch für die ÖPNV-Nutzenden stellt es ein Problem dar, da Personen, die den ÖPNV ohne (gültiges) Ticket nutzen in Deutschland eine Straftat begehen. In der Wissenschaft wurde das Thema aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven heraus untersucht (v.a. Rechtswissenschaften, Betriebswirtschaften, Kriminologie sowie einige sozialwissenschaftliche Ansätze), jedoch konzentriert sich die Forschung vorrangig auf sozio-demographische Charakteristika, Marktsegmentierungen und die Folgen des Fahrens ohne (gültigen) Fahrschein für Verkehrsunternehmen und -verbünde. Die Motive und Beweggründe des Fahrens ohne (gültigen) Fahrschein werden in den vorhandenen Studien lediglich objektiv betrachtet. Das Arbeitspapier zeigt die Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung der Motive des Fahrens ohne (gültigen) Fahrschein im Bediengebiet des Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbundes (RMV), die mithilfe von qualitativen Interviews mit Personen, die bei einer Fahrkartenkontrolle kein (gültiges) Ticket vorzeigen konnten, exploriert wurden.
We propose a model for measuring the runtime of concurrent programs by the minimal number of evaluation steps. The focus of this paper are improvements, which are program transformations that improve this number in every context, where we distinguish between sequential and parallel improvements, for one or more processors, respectively. We apply the methods to CHF, a model of Concurrent Haskell extended by futures. The language CHF is a typed higher-order functional language with concurrent threads, monadic IO and MVars as synchronizing variables. We show that all deterministic reduction rules and 15 further program transformations are sequential and parallel improvements. We also show that introduction of deterministic parallelism is a parallel improvement, and its inverse a sequential improvement, provided it is applicable. This is a step towards more automated precomputation of concurrent programs during compile time, which is also formally proven to be correctly optimizing.
We explore space improvements in LRP, a polymorphically typed call-by-need functional core language. A relaxed space measure is chosen for the maximal size usage during an evaluation. It Abstracts from the details of the implementation via abstract machines, but it takes garbage collection into account and thus can be seen as a realistic approximation of space usage. The results are: a context lemma for space improving translations and for space equivalences; all but one reduction rule of the calculus are shown to be space improvements, and the exceptional one, the copy-rule, is shown to increase space only moderately.
Several further program transformations are shown to be space improvements or space equivalences, in particular the translation into machine expressions is a space equivalence. These results are a step Forward in making predictions about the change in runtime space behavior of optimizing transformations in callbyneed functional languages.
We explore space improvements in LRP, a polymorphically typed call-by-need functional core language. A relaxed space measure is chosen for the maximal size usage during an evaluation. It Abstracts from the details of the implementation via abstract machines, but it takes garbage collection into account and thus can be seen as a realistic approximation of space usage. The results are: a context lemma for space improving translations and for space equivalences; all but one reduction rule of the calculus are shown to be space improvements, and the exceptional one, the copy-rule, is shown to increase space only moderately.
Several further program transformations are shown to be space improvements or space equivalences, in particular the translation into machine expressions is a space equivalence. These results are a step Forward in making predictions about the change in runtime space behavior of optimizing transformations in callbyneed functional languages.
The German savings and cooperative banks of the 19th century were precursors of modern microfinance. They provided access to financial services for the majority of the German population, which was formerly excluded from bank funding. Furthermore, they did this at low costs for themselves and affordable prices for their clients. By creating networks of financially viable and stable financial institutions covering the entire country, they contributed significantly to building a sound and “inclusive” financial infrastructure in Germany. A look back at the history of German savings and cooperative banks and combining these experiences with the lessons learned from modern microfinance can guide current policy and be valuable for present and future models of microfinance business.
Hans-Joachim Schlegel
(2017)
Motivated by tools for automaed deduction on functional programming languages and programs, we propose a formalism to symbolically represent $\alpha$-renamings for meta-expressions. The formalism is an extension of usual higher-order meta-syntax which allows to $\alpha$-rename all valid ground instances of a meta-expression to fulfill the distinct variable convention. The renaming mechanism may be helpful for several reasoning tasks in deduction systems. We present our approach for a meta-language which uses higher-order abstract syntax and a meta-notation for recursive let-bindings, contexts, and environments. It is used in the LRSX Tool -- a tool to reason on the correctness of program transformations in higher-order program calculi with respect to their operational semantics. Besides introducing a formalism to represent symbolic $\alpha$-renamings, we present and analyze algorithms for simplification of $\alpha$-renamings, matching, rewriting, and checking $\alpha$-equivalence of symbolically $\alpha$-renamed meta-expressions.
We introduce rewriting of meta-expressions which stem from a meta-language that uses higher-order abstract syntax augmented by meta-notation for recursive let, contexts, sets of bindings, and chain variables. Additionally, three kinds of constraints can be added to meta-expressions to express usual constraints on evaluation rules and program transformations. Rewriting of meta-expressions is required for automated reasoning on programs and their properties. A concrete application is a procedure to automatically prove correctness of program transformations in higher-order program calculi which may permit recursive let-bindings as they occur in functional programming languages. Rewriting on meta-expressions can be performed by solving the so-called letrec matching problem which we introduce. We provide a matching algorithm to solve it. We show that the letrec matching problem is NP-complete, that our matching algorithm is sound and complete, and that it runs in non-deterministic polynomial time.
Wie verhalten sich Freiheit und Geld zueinander? In der liberalen Tradition der Philosophie und der Ökonomik wird Geld meist als bloßes Mittel gefasst, dessen Einführung den Austausch von Waren erleichtert, darüber hinaus jedoch keine tiefergreifenden sozialen Folgen zeitigt. Im Gegensatz hierzu wird in diesem Working Paper der Zusammenhang von Geld und (Un-)Freiheit herausgearbeitet. Im Anschluss an die Tradition kritischer Sozialphilosophie und in Auseinandersetzung mit Marx, Simmel und der neueren Geldsoziologie wird dabei in einem ersten Schritt der paradoxe Charakter dieser gesellschaftlich eröffneten Freiheit dargelegt: Zum einen kultiviert Geld in kapitalistischen Ökonomien eine individuelle Form von Wahlfreiheit. Zum anderen wird über Geld der Zugang zum gesellschaftlichen Reichtum auf ungleiche und disziplinierende Weise strukturiert: Je nach individueller Verfügung über finanzielle Mittel ist man auf unterschiedliche Weise zum Verkauf der eigenen Arbeitskraft angehalten, um den Zugriff auf Güter und die eigene Reproduktion zu sichern. Diese paradoxe Form von Freiheit wird in einem zweiten Schritt hinsichtlich ihrer Entfremdungstendenz befragt: Insofern die über die Institution des Geldes eröffnete Freiheit ihren gesellschaftlichen Ermöglichungsgrund verdeckt, kann sie als eine fetischisierte Form von Freiheit begriffen werden.
To broaden the scope of monetary policy, cash abolishment is often suggested as a means of breaking through the zero lower bound. However, practically nothing is said about the welfare costs of such a proposal. Rösl, Seitz and Tödter argue that the welfare costs of bypassing the zero lower bound can be analyzed analytically and empirically by assuming negative interest rates on cash holdings. They gauge the welfare effects of abolishing cash, both, for the euro area and for Germany.
Their findings suggest that the welfare losses of negative interest rates incurred by money holders are large, notably if implemented in the current low interest rate environment. Imposing a negative interest rate of 3 percentage points on cash holdings and reducing the interest on all assets included in M3 creates a deadweight loss of € 62bn for the euro area and of €18bn for Germany. Therefore, the authors argue that cash abolishment or negative interest rates on cash to break through the zero lower bound at any price can hardly be a meaningful policy goal.
The Global Irrigation Model (GIM) is used within the framework of the global hydrological model WaterGAP to calculate monthly irrigation crop water use. Results on a 0.5 degrees grid include, consumption (ICU) and, via division by irrigation efficiencies, water withdrawal (IWU). The model distinguishes up to two cropping periods of rice and non-rice crops, each grown for 150 days, using a grid of area equipped for irrigation (AEI). Historical development of AEI and fraction of area actually irrigated (AAI) was previously considered via scaling of cell-specific results with country-specific factors for each year. In this study, GIM was adapted to use the new Historical Irrigation Data set (HID) with cell-specific AEI for 14 time slices between 1900 and 2005. AEI grids were temporally interpolated, and using the optional grid of AAI/AEI, results for years 1901-2014 were generated (runs "HID-ACT"). Thus, new installation or abandonment of irrigation infrastructure in new grid cells can be represented in a spatially explicit manner. For evaluated years 1910, 1960, 1995, and 2005, ICU from HID-ACT was superior to country-specific scaled results (run "HID-ACTHIST") in representing historical development of the spatial pattern. Compared to US state-level reference data, spatial patterns were better, while country totals were not always better. For calculating the cropping periods, 30-years climate means are needed, the choice of which is relevant. Four chosen periods before 1981-2010 all resulted in considerable, pertaining changes of ICU spatial pattern, and various percent changes in country totals. This might be because of already present climate change.
I analyze the real effects of the quality of the judicial enforcement by showing that an increase in the average duration of civil proceedings reduces firms' employment. I exploit a reorganization of court districts in Italy as an exogenous shock to court productivity and, using an instrumental variable approach, estimate an elasticity of employment to average trial length between -0.24 and -0.29. These results are very different from OLS estimates which do not control for endogeneity, and suggest that stronger law enforcement eases financing constraints. The effects are more pronounced in highly levered and more financially dependent firms, and appear to affect mainly firms in less financially developed areas. Revenues respond more slowly than employment to the reform, and wages fall as the judiciary improves. There is no evidence of effects on capital structure and profitability. These results offer a more complete picture of the interplay between legal institutions and real economic outcomes.
Die Bedeutung der AKM-Entscheidung des EuGH für das Recht der Kabelweitersendung in Deutschland
(2017)
Der Beitrag erörtert die Auswirkungen der »AKM/Zürs.net«-Entscheidung des EuGH für die Praxis der Kabelweitersendung in Deutschland. Aus dem Urteil folgt, dass die integrale Kabelweitersendung der öffentlich-rechtlichen und privaten deutschen Fernsehsender im Inland kein neues Publikum erreicht und daher nicht gesondert erlaubnispflichtig ist. Bei ausländischen Sendern kommt es auf die Umstände des Einzelfalls an.
Der Beitrag ist der urheberrechtlichen Einordnung des sog. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) gewidmet. In einem ersten Abschnitt werden technische, organisatorisch-wirtschaftliche und juristische Unterschiede zwischen dieser Übertragungstechnologie und dem sog. Internet-TV herausgearbeitet. Sodann wird nach Maßgabe der SatCabRL 93/83 geprüft, ob die Ausübungsregeln der §§ 20b, 87 V UrhG nur für klassisches Kabelfernsehen oder auch für IPTV gelten. Das Ergebnis lautet, dass IPTV unter die §§ 20b, 87 V UrhG fällt, soweit sein Einsatz nach der AKM-Entscheidung des EuGH überhaupt eine erlaubnispflichtige öffentliche Wiedergabe darstellt.
Die Geschichte des Urheberrechts ist die Geschichte seiner Expansion. In diesem Beitrag wird die Expansionsgeschichte des Urheberrechts, in der das Urheberrechtsgesetz 1965 letztlich nur eine, wenn auch wichtige Episode darstellt, in Anlehnung an Thesen des 1944 erschienenen, wirtschaftssoziologischen Klassikers „The Great Transformation. Politische und ökonomische Ursprünge von Gesellschaften und Wirtschaftssystemen“ von Karl Polanyi gedeutet. Im Zentrum steht dabei der Gedanke, dass in einer Informationsgesellschaft, deren Wirtschaft auf Märkten und Wettbewerb beruht, alle neuen Technologien und hiermit verknüpften immateriellen Leistungsergebnisse über Ausschließlichkeitsrechte zugeordnet werden müssen, damit gewährleistet ist, dass alle relevanten In- und Outputfaktoren handelbar sind, so dass ihre jeweiligen Erzeuger marktbasierte Einkünfte erzielen können. Der Aufsatz erläutert, dass sich diese Kommodifizierungslogik in der jüngeren deutschen Urheberrechtsgeschichte nachweisen lässt. Auf die soziologische und rechtliche Relevanz der entgegengesetzten Zugangsnorm wird im Schlussteil hingewiesen.
This paper reexamines the current legal landscape regarding the protection of trade marks and other industrial property rights in signs on the Internet. It is based on a comparative analysis of EU and national laws, in particular, German, U.S., and U.K. law. It starts with a short restatement of the principles governing trade mark conflicts that occur within a particular jurisdiction (part 2) and proceeds to the regulation of transnational disputes (part 3). This juxtaposition yields two basic approaches. Whereas trade mark conflicts within closed legal systems are generally adjudicated according to a binary either/or logic, transnational disputes are and should indeed be solved in a way that leads to a fair coexistence of conflicting trade mark laws and rights under multiple laws. This paper explains how geolocation technologies can alleviate the implementation of the principle of fair coexistence in concrete cases.
Der urheberrechtlich konnotierte Begriff des Plagiats zählt zu den anerkannten Grundtatbeständen wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens. Der Beitrag zeigt indes, dass das Urheberrecht und das Wissenschaftsrecht keine konzentrischen Kreise bilden, sondern unterschiedliche Zwecke mit je anderen Regelungskonzepten verfolgen. Die Übernahme urheberrechtlicher Argumentationsmuster in die Wissenschaftsethik und das Wissenschaftsrecht erschwert die Herausbildung spezifisch wissenschaftsbezogener Kriterien zur Beurteilung wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens. Als Alternative entwickelt der Beitrag ein Konzept wissenschaftlicher Redlichkeit, das sich am Recht gegen unlauteren Wettbewerb orientiert. Dazu werden weitreichende teleologische und strukturelle Gemeinsamkeiten des Lauterkeitsrechts und der Regeln zu wissenschaftlichem Fehlverhalten aufgedeckt. Insbesondere verfolgen beide Materien eine funktionale Teleologie. Das Lauterkeitsrecht gewährleistet die Funktionsbedingungen des wirtschaftlichen Wettbewerbs, das Verbot wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens sichert die Funktionsbedingungen und damit zugleich den Zielerreichungsgrad des offenen Wissenschaftsprozesses und des Wettbewerbs um wissenschaftliche Reputation.
Seit 2006 haben die Bundesländer das Recht, den Steuersatz der Grunderwerbsteuer selbst zu bestimmen. Von diesem Recht wurde in den meisten Bundesländern – mit Ausnahme von Bayern und Sachsen – ausgiebig Gebrauch gemacht. Mit dieser Entwicklung sind verschiedene negative Begleiterscheinungen der Steuer weiter in den Vordergrund gerückt. Ausweichreaktionen und Preiseffekte auf dem Immobilienmarkt führten dazu, dass aus jedem Prozent, um das der Steuersatz erhöht wurde, schätzungsweise nur rund 0,6 Prozent zusätzliche Steuereinahmen resultierten, während ohne Ausweichreaktionen und Preiseffekte eine Einnahmenerhöhung um ein Prozent zu erwarten gewesen wäre. Hinter diesem unterproportionalen Aufkommenseffekt sind verschiedene Mechanismen zu vermuten, wie etwa die Umgehung durch den Kauf des Grundvermögens als Teil einer Kapitalgesellschaft.
In Anbetracht der gestiegenen Steuersätze wurde im letzten Bundestagswahlkampf aus CDU sowie FDP der Ruf laut nach einem Freibetrag für Immobilienkäufer, die erworbenes Wohneigentum selbst nutzen möchten. Die Kinderzahl soll den Freibetrag je nach Vorschlag erhöhen.
Der Beitrag diskutiert kritisch die Forderung nach einer Familienkomponente der Grunderwerbssteuer und zeigt darüber hinaus mögliche Alternativen zur Einschränkung der Steuergestaltungen durch Share Deals auf.
We document that natural disasters significantly weaken the stability of banks with business activities in affected regions, as reflected in lower z-scores, higher probabilities of default, higher non-performing assets ratios, higher foreclosure ratios, lower returns on assets and lower bank equity ratios. The effects are economically relevant and suggest that insurance payments and public aid programs do not sufficiently protect bank borrowers against financial difficulties. We also find that the adverse effects on bank stability dissolve after some years if no further disasters occur in the meantime.
Patterns and interpretation
(2017)
One thing for sure: digitization has completely changed the literary archive. People like me used to work on a few hundred nineteenth-century novels; today, we work on thousands of them; tomorrow, hundreds of thousands. This has had a major effect on literary history, obviously enough, but also on critical methodology; because, when we work on 200,000 novels instead of 200, we are not doing the same thing, 1,000 times bigger; we are doing a different thing. The new scale changes our relationship to our object, and in fact 'it changes the object itself'.
Despite various policy and management responses, biodiversity continues to decline worldwide. We must redouble our efforts to halt biodiversity loss. The current lack of policy action can be partly linked to an insufficient knowledge base regarding the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Biodiversity research needs to incorporate both social and ecological factors to gain a deeper understanding of the interrelations between society and nature that affect biodiversity. A transdisciplinary research approach is crucial to fulfilling these requirements. It aims to produce new insights by integrating scientific and nonscientific knowledge. Several measures need to be taken to strengthen transdisciplinary social-ecological biodiversity research: Within the science community: firstly, scientists themselves must promote transdisciplinarity; secondly, the reward system for scientists must be brought into line with transdisciplinary research processes; and thirdly, academic training needs to advocate transdisciplinarity. As for research policies, research funding priorities need to be linked to large scale biodiversity policy frameworks, and funding for transdisciplinary social-ecological research on biodiversity must be increased significantly.
People who delay claiming Social Security receive higher lifelong benefits upon retirement. We survey individuals on their willingness to delay claiming later, if they could receive a lump sum in lieu of a higher annuity payment. Using a moment-matching approach, we calibrate a lifecycle model tracking observed claiming patterns under current rules and predict optimal claiming outcomes under the lump sum approach. Our model correctly predicts that early claimers under current rules would delay claiming most when offered actuarially fair lump sums, and for lump sums worth 87% as much, claiming ages would still be higher than at present.
Given rising life expectations around the world, it seems that old-age pension benefits will need to be cut and pension contributions boosted in many nations. Yet our research on old-age system reforms does not require raising mandatory retirement ages or contributions. Instead, we offer ways to enhance incentives for people to work longer and delay retirement. There are good reasons to incentivize older people to work longer and delay retirement. These include rising longevity, the shrinking workforce, and emerging evidence indicating that working longer can be associated with better mental and physical health for many people. Nevertheless, old age Social Security systems in many nations find that people tend to claim benefits early, usually leading to reduced benefits.In the United States, for instance, a majority of Americans claim their Social Security benefits at the earlier feasible age, namely 62, even though their monthly benefits would be 75% higher if they waited until age 70. To test whether this is the result of people underweighting the economic value of higher lifetime benefit streams, we examine whether people would claim later and work longer if they were rewarded with a lump sum instead of a higher lifetime benefit stream for deferring. Two arguments have been offered to explain early claiming. One is that workers claim early to avoid potentially “forfeiting” their deferred benefits should they die too soon (Brown et al., 2016). A second explanation is that many people underweight the economic value of lifetime benefit streams (Brown et al., 2017). This latter rationale motivates the present study.
This paper presents new evidence on the expectation formation process of firms from a survey of the German manufacturing sector. It focuses on the expectation about their future business conditions, which enters the widely followed economic sentiment index and which is an important determinant of their employment and investment decisions. We find that firms extrapolate their experience too much and make predictable forecasting errors. Moreover, firms do not seem to anticipate the upcoming reversals of business cycle peaks and troughs which causes suboptimal adjustment of investment and employment and affects their inventories and profits. However, the impact on expectation errors decreases with the size and the age of the firm as firms learn to reduce their extrapolation bias over time.
We analyze older individuals’ debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we examine three different cohorts (individuals age 56–61) in 1992, 2004, and 2010 to evaluate cross-cohort changes in debt over time. We also use two waves of the NFCS (2012 and 2015) to gain additional insights into debt management and older individuals’ capacity to shield themselves against shocks. We show that recent cohorts have taken on more debt and face more financial insecurity, mostly due to having purchased more expensive homes with smaller down payments.
This study provides a graphic overview on core legislation in the area of economic and financial services. The presentation essentially covers the areas within the responsibility of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON); hence it starts with core ECON areas but also displays neighbouring areas of other Committees' competences which are closely connected to and impacting on ECON's work. It shows legislation in force, proposals and other relevant provisions on banking, securities markets and investment firms, market infrastructure, insurance and occupational pensions, payment services, consumer protection in financial services, the European System of Financial Supervision, European Monetary Union, euro bills and coins and statistics, competition, taxation, commerce and company law, accounting and auditing. Moreover, it notes selected provisions that might become relevant in the upcoming Article 50 TEU negotiations.
Different insurance activities exhibit different levels of persistence of shocks and volatility. For example, life insurance is typically more persistent but less volatile than non-life insurance. We examine how diversification among life, non-life insurance, and active reinsurance business affects an insurer's contribution and exposure to the risk of other companies. Our model shows that a counterparty's credit risk exposure to an insurance group substantially depends on the relative proportion of the insurance group's life and non-life business. The empirical analysis confirms this finding with respect to several measures for spillover risk. The optimal proportion of life business that minimizes spillover risk decreases with leverage of the insurance group, and increases with active reinsurance business.
We study the impact of estimation errors of firms on social welfare. For this purpose, we present a model of the insurance market in which insurers face parameter uncertainty about expected loss sizes. As consumers react to under- and overestimation by increasing and decreasing demand, respectively, insurers require a safety loading for parameter uncertainty. If the safety loading is too small, less risk averse consumers benefit from less informed insurers by speculating on them underestimating expected losses. Otherwise, social welfare increases with insurers’ information. We empirically estimate safety loadings in the US property and casualty insurance market, and show that these are likely to be sufficiently large for consumers to benefit from more informed insurers.
We develop a state-space model to decompose bid and ask quotes of CDS into two components, fair default premium and liquidity premium. This approach gives a better estimate of the default premium than mid quotes, and it allows to disentangle and compare the liquidity premium earned by the protection buyer and the protection seller. In contrast to other studies, our model is structurally much simpler, while it also allows for correlation between liquidity and default premia, as supported by empirical evidence. The model is implemented and applied to a large data set of 118 CDS for a period ranging from 2004 to 2010. The model-generated output variables are analyzed in a difference-in-difference framework to determine how the default premium, as well as the liquidity premium of protection buyers and sellers, evolved during different periods of the financial crisis and to which extent they differ for financial institutions compared to non-financials.
We investigate the effect of overreaction in the fine art market. Using a unique sample of auction prices of modern prints, we define an overvalued (undervalued) print as a print that was bought for a price above (below) its high (low) auction pricing estimate. Based on the overreaction hypothesis, we predict that overvalued (undervalued) prints generate a negative (positive) excess return at a subsequent sale. Our empirical findings confirm our expectations. We report that prints that were bought for a price 10 percent above (below) its high (low) pricing estimate generate a positive (negative) excess return of 12 percent (17 percent) after controlling for the general price movement on the prints market. The price correction for overvalued (undervalued) prints is more pronounced during recessions (expansions).