Weather‐related Employment Subsidies as a Remedy for Seasonal Unemployment? Evidence from Germany

Many European countries try to reduce seasonal unemployment by subsidizing short‐time employment during the winter period. Despite such costly efforts, pronounced seasonal unemployment patterns continue to exist. This puts doubts on the effectiveness of such policy interventions. This paper provides a first empirical assessment of the effectiveness of different subsidy schemes by exploiting the institutional variation in a German subsidy scheme that applies to the construction sector and the variation in local weather and business cycle conditions across 20 years. The findings confirm that generous short‐time subsidies reduce individual lay‐off probabilities in the case of poor weather conditions. However, the link between weather conditions and seasonal lay‐offs is much less strong than expected, making planned capacity reductions the main suspect for causing seasonality in unemployment patterns.     

Designing Service Level Contracts for Supply Chain Coordination

Supply contracts are used to coordinate the activities of the supply chain partners. In many industries, service level‐based supply contracts are commonly used. Under such a contract, a company agrees to achieve a certain service level and to pay a financial penalty if it misses it. The service level used in our study refers to the fraction of a manufacturer's demand filled by the supplier. We analyze two types of service level‐based supply contracts that are designed by a manufacturer and offered to a supplier. The first type of contract is a flat penalty contract, under which the supplier pays a fixed penalty to the manufacturer in each period in which the contract service level is not achieved. The second type of contract is a unit penalty contract, under which a penalty is due for each unit delivered fewer than specified by the parameters of the contract. We show how the supplier responds to the contracts and how the contract parameters can be chosen, such that the supply chain is coordinated. We also derive structural results about optimal values of the contract parameters, provide numerical results, and connect our service level measures to traditional service level measures. The results of our analyses can be used by decision makers to design optimal service level contracts and to provide them with a solid foundation for contract negotiations.     

Unternehmensbewertung bei wertabhängiger und autonomer Finanzierungspolitik unter Berücksichtigung einer Kursgewinnbesteuerung

The German tax reform in 2009 entails the general taxation of realized capital gains. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of a differentiated taxation of dividend payments and capital gains on discounted cash flow valuations. We develop explicit und practical useful valuation formulas for the free cash flow approach in case of financing based on market values and the adjusted present value approach in case of autonomous financing. Furthermore it is shown how the required risk-adjusted cost of equity can be derived from a modified Tax-CAPM. Finally we discuss how the particularities resulting from the new German tax law can be taken into account in discounted cash flow valuations.     

Concurrent processing of heteroskedastic vector-valued mixture density models

We introduce a combined two-stage least-squares (2SLS)–expectation maximization (EM) algorithm for estimating vector-valued autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models with standardized errors generated by Gaussian mixtures. The procedure incorporates the identification of the parametric settings as well as the estimation of the model parameters. Our approach does not require a priori knowledge of the Gaussian densities. The parametric settings of the 2SLS_EM algorithm are determined by the genetic hybrid algorithm (GHA). We test the GHA-driven 2SLS_EM algorithm on some simulated cases and on international asset pricing data. The statistical properties of the estimated models and the derived mixture densities indicate good performance of the algorithm. We conduct tests on a massively parallel processor supercomputer to cope with situations involving numerous mixtures. We show that the algorithm is scalable.     

Teacher–Child Relationship Quality and Children's Peer Victimization and Aggressive Behavior in Late Childhood

This investigation examines the extent to which characteristics of the teacher–child relationship (closeness, dependency, and conflict) are predictive of changes in children's peer victimization and aggressive behavior over the course of a school year. Relational and physical forms of victimization and aggression were studied, and changes in peer acceptance and number of friendships were tested as possible mediators. Longitudinal data from 410 fourth‐ and fifth‐grade students (193 boys; 217 girls) and their teachers (N = 25) were analyzed. Whereas dependency on the teacher predicted heightened victimization from peers, a close relationship with the teacher forecasted less physical aggression toward peers. Moreover, decreases in number of friendships partially mediated the link between dependency on the teacher and heightened relational victimization for boys. These findings have implications for understanding the continuing influence of teacher–child relationships on children's social development in late childhood and for identifying interpersonal risk factors associated with involvement in peer harassment.     

Gender Differences for Specific Body Regions When Looking at Men and Women

The goal of the present study was to provide first evidence for gender differences in gaze patterns while looking at the body of men and women. For this purpose participants were exposed to 30 pictures of 15 male and 15 female models in casual clothing. The individual scan paths were recorded using an eye-tracker. The results show that both male and female observers primarily gaze at people’s face. Only after this initial face-scan, men look significantly earlier and longer at women’s breasts, while women look earlier at men’s legs. These observations uncover important aspects of the pattern of the human gaze at others and particularly reveal important gender differences.     

Netzwerksteuerung zwischen Management und Moderation: Zur Bedeutung und Handhabung von Moderationskonzepten bei der Steuerung von Unternehmensnetzwerken

The use of participative methods, like moderation, as a management tool for interfirm networks is increasing. In contrast, the evaluation of results might not satisfy expectations. One major reason lies in the unreflective transmission from the roots of moderation. It was historically developed for the context of social groups and organizations. However, the network as a relatively unknown social phenomenon implies a set of different characteristics and conditions which have to be taken into account. Dilemmas, fluid and volatile resources as well as the lack of openness in the manner of participation shown by the members of a network, affect radically the identity, the possibilities of action and the applicable instruments of moderation. Therefore, basic principles of action (i.e. neutrality) and the demarcation from obvious roles and functions (i.e. network management) have to be reexamined.