Towards a European migration policy

The stagnating West European population combined with the prosperous economic development of the European Community (EC) generate strong economic incentives for immigration. The drastic political changes in Eastern Europe have caused additional migration pressures. There are a variety of problems with the economic and political integration of migrants, however. The paper argues that immigration can compensate for demographic losses due to the decline and ageing of the European labor force. Economic theory further predicts welfare gains from free factor movements, which should be reaped as long as social costs and adjustment costs are not prohibitive. An active European migration policy is recommended to achieve this aim.This article is a completely revised version of CEPR Discussion Paper No. 641, presented by the second author at the CEPR Workshop The economies of migration on 23 November 1991 in London, UK, and at a hearing of the European Parliament on 25 May 1992 in Bruxelles, Belgium.     

Managed growth and optimum population: Irreconcilable concepts

Managed growth is a politically popular rallying point which offends no faction by insisting upon nonnegotiable limits. Subscribers to this philosophy focus upon short-run accommodations to growth which apparently mitigate its physical consequences. Managed growthers react to longterm numerical projections with rejection, if not outright hostility. They may be more amenable to quality-of-life rationales for population limitation evolving from the biophilia hypothesis and ecopsychology. These theories claim that our species needs to exist in proximity to untrammelled wilderness and a natural environment for psychic health and creativity.     

Locus of control,altruism and agentic disposition

This study presents and empirically tests a simple model of attitudinal and personality influences on individual willingness to take action in support of the environment (agentic disposition) in a sample of 367 residents of Fairfax County in Virginia. The model, comprised of items from Schwartz's theory of norm activated altruism and an abridged version of Levenson's three-dimensional conception of locus of control, fits the data well. Results of the study indicate that 1) locus of control is best viewed as multidimensional rather than previous unidimensional conceptualizations, 2) each of the Levenson locus of control dimensions plays a unique role in the model of environmental agentic disposition, and 3) agentic disposition can be conceptualized as a type of norm activated altruism. The role of agentic disposition in legitimating the positions taken by social movement organizations is discussed.     

Effekte von ?Life-Coaching�� f��r F��hrungskr?fte in einem Gesundheitszentrum

This study evaluates the effects of life-coaching for high-level managers in an approved regeneration-center in Tyrol/Austria. This type of life-coaching consists of four steps, namely to analyze the life-situation, to de-block in case of disorders, to transform realizations into new attitudes and finally to integrate optimized thinking- and behavioral pattern in the daily routine. The effects of life-coaching were evaluated with a sound multimethodical design and the use of a control group. Results show that there is full satisfaction with the effectiveness of the entire treatment, but also there are significant differences between the groups with and without coaching.     

Franchise- vs. Neugr��ndung: Analyse der Einfl��sse auf Gr��ndungsart und Gr��ndungserfolg

The survey at hand uses a sophisticated classification between derivative and original founders to demonstrate that the group of entrepreneurs consists of several distinct sub-groups or types. With the help of personality traits (Big Five) we examine the different entrepreneurial types. We also investigate how the interaction of personality and entrepreneurial type influences success. The analyses were conducted with a sample of franchise founders (derivative founders) and new business founders (original founders) in Germany. The results in relation to the entrepreneurial type support the distinction between groups as differences were found in personality traits. With respect to the prediction of success we identify interaction effects between personality and entrepreneurial type.     

Zur Zeitwertbilanzierung latenter Steuern in der internationalen Rechnungslegung

The significance of deferred taxes was increased by the introduction of international financial reporting standards. However, the usefulness of the information provided by interperiod tax allocation is regarded with skepticism by researchers and practitioners alike. This is largely due to the overestimation of the book value of non-current deferred tax liabilities and deferred tax assets as the present value of these items is disregarded. The IASB refuses to discount deferred taxes even though this would comply with the underlying asset-liability-concept. The IASB justifies the ban on discounting deferred taxes by the ??supposed?? high complexity; hence, cost-benefit considerations. The paper at hand analyses critical issues regarding the determination of the present value of deferred taxes. An approach for determining the maturity of deferred taxes, a risk-adequate discount rate and an approach for the derivation of a feasible net present value calculation are proposed. It is shown that discounting of deferred taxes is generally possible without resulting in more complex estimations than in those of other accounting areas. Despite the inevitable discretion management has in estimating the present value, it is still possible to represent such information faithfully so that the relevant information is useful to external users.     

Einf��hrung von Kommunikationsstandards in Unternehmensnetzwerken �C ein gestaltungsorientierter Ansatz bei dezentraler Entscheidungsstruktur

Standards and technologies (e.g. in the area of web services) that are currently discussed in research and practice will strongly change IT-based communication between organizations. However, the decision to standardize is accompanied by the risk of introducing a standard that is not adopted by other organizations afterwards. Hence, the interdependencies among the standardization decisions due to positive network effects result in a coordination problem, which is referred to as ??the standardization problem??. If the standardization decisions are taken by autonomous actors (e.g. legally independent organizations) that do not know the standardization decisions of the other actors in the network, this standardization problem arises for a decentralized decision structure and incomplete information. Thus, actors have to decide under uncertainty on whether to standardize or not. To avoid resulting inefficiencies and wrong decisions, we propose a formal, normative approach. This approach allows an actor within the network to anticipate the standardization decisions of the other actors and the associated network effects. Central to our approach are the consideration of interdependencies among the standardization decisions and the solution of the resulting system of equations.     

Using english as a foreign language in international and multicultural consulting: Asset or hindrance?

When it comes to an encounter of people of mixed national and ethnical backgrounds, one of the major challenges is undoubtedly the linguistic diversity. Given the widely acknowledged status of English as the world language, English has also become the most widely used language when it comes to professional counselling in intercultural contexts. Due to the growing demand of counselling processes in English, a certain command of the English language has also become indispensible for consultants. It has to be noted, however, that it??s rarely English native speakers who prompt a ??multilingual?? group to speak English. In most working contexts it is speakers, for ??none of whom is the mother tongue?? (House 1999: 74), who agree to use English as common code of understanding, i.e. English as a lingua franca (ELF). Current researches strongly question the status of native English norms as the only point of reference for ??correct?? usage of English (cf. e.g. Seidlhofer et al. 2006). Based on empirical data, this contribution chooses an interdisciplinary approach at the interface between linguistics and other social sciences to examine some implications of the use of ELF in professional counselling processes with a strong focus on supervision. It is meant to show that consulting processes in English, among non-native speakers, can be carried out successfully despite clear linguistic deviations from native speaker norms.