The sample census of population in Poland, 1949

In this note the author describes the sample census of Poland that was taken after the end of the war. He explains the method by which the sample was selected and the type of information that can be obtained from it.     

Stochastic orders and non-Gaussian risk factor models

The main results of this paper are monotonicity statements about the risk measures value-at-risk (VaR) and tail value-at-risk (TVaR) with respect to the parameters of single and multi risk factor models, which are standard models for the quantification of credit and insurance risk. In the context of single risk factor models, non-Gaussian distributed latent risk factors are allowed. It is shown that the TVaR increases with increasing claim amounts, probabilities of claims and correlations, whereas the VaR is in general not monotone in the correlation parameters. To compare the aggregated risks arising from single and multi risk factor models, the usual stochastic order and the increasing convex order are used in this paper, since these stochastic orders can be interpreted as being induced by the VaR-concept and the TVaR-concept, respectively. To derive monotonicity statements about these risk measures, properties of several further stochastic orders are used and their relation to the usual stochastic order and to the increasing convex order are applied.     

The meaning of nonprofit advocacy: An ordonomic perspective

Orthodox economic theories of the nonprofit sector are focused on its service delivery role but have little to say about nonprofit advocacy. This study explains nonprofit advocacy by building upon the ordonomic approach, a recently developed strand of institutional economics that explores the interdependencies between institutions and ideas. From the ordonomic perspective, the evolution of a modern society occurs through an ongoing realignment between institutions and ideas. The meaning of nonprofit advocacy is shown to be in contributing to this realignment. This leads to a new understanding of the service delivery role of the nonprofit sector. This role is shown to have a compensatory character in that it is intended to maintain a reasonable quality of human life before the time-consuming ideational and institutional adjustments actually take place.     

International work experience and compensation: Is more always better for CFOs?

The CFO is increasingly considered the second most important executive in the firm after the CEO. Still, little is known about the factors that determine CFOs' compensation. Recently, it has often been claimed that, in MNCs, CFOs should have international work experience. But is a CFO's international work experience also reflected in his or her compensation? We combine human capital and social capital perspectives to account for both the upside and the downside of international work experience. We suggest that working abroad provides CFOs with valuable knowledge and skills which increase compensation; however, staying abroad for too long has an adverse effect due to losses in social network ties. We thus propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between CFOs' international work experience and their compensation. Furthermore, we suggest that this relationship is contingent on the characteristics of the CEO. In testing our hypotheses on a sample of the largest MNCs in Europe, we find support for the proposed relationships. Our study contributes to the literature on top management characteristics and executive compensation, specifically by providing a comprehensive understanding of how and when international work experience pays off for CFOs.     

Energy crop production in an urban area: a comparison of habitat types and land use forms targeting economic benefits and impact on species diversity

In urban areas, the potential of biomass production is rarely utilized, although many biomass sources are located in cities, ranging from road margins to public parks. There is, however, increasing interest in these potential biomass sources, as they are close to consumers and provide options to reduce maintenance costs of urban green areas. We analyzed the costs and benefits of utilizing biomass, and compared it to the biodiversity maintained on 17 urban land use forms the Ruhr Metropolitan Area (Germany). Economic costs and benefits were reflected by contribution margins, while biodiversity was measured by species numbers of plants, birds and butterflies. For the 17 land use types, there is a weak overall correlation between contribution margins and species numbers. However, this is mainly due to the two land use forms with the highest contribution margins (cultivation of energy maize and fertilized grassland), which are characterized by the lowest species numbers. For the remaining cases, there is no relationship between contribution margins and species numbers. Comparatively high contribution margins and high mean species numbers were observed for road margins, industrial fallows with wood cutting for biogas production and water-influenced grassland mown traditionally. We conclude that biomass production and the maintenance of urban biodiversity is not necessarily a contradiction.     

A tractable model of process fairness under risk

This paper proposes a social utility model of individual preferences for process fairness that complements the Fehr–Schmidt model for outcome fairness. The model assumes that the outcome generating process rather than the actual outcomes influences fairness perceptions, and that process fairness is evaluated through comparison of expected payoffs. The process model successfully predicts data from bargaining games involving risky payoffs that neither outcome-based nor reciprocity models can explain. In a theoretical application, Machina’s parental example for non-expected utility in a distributional problem (Machina’s Mom) is analyzed by incorporating individual level process fairness preferences under expected utility.     

Monitoring processes with data censored owing to competing risks by using exponentially weighted moving average control charts

In industry, process monitoring is widely employed to detect process changes rapidly. However, in some industrial applications observations are censored. For example, when testing breaking strengths and failure times often a limited stress test is performed. With censored observations, a direct application of traditional monitoring procedures is not appropriate. When the censoring occurs due to competing risks, we propose a control chart based on conditional expected values to detect changes in the mean strength. To protect against possible confounding caused by changes in the mean of the censoring mechanism we also suggest a similar chart to detect changes in the mean censoring level. We provide an example of monitoring bond strength to illustrate the application of this methodology.     

Zentralisierung durch Dezentralisierung

Paradoxical slogans such as “controlled autonomy”, “externally organized self-organization”, “centralistic decentralization” and “regulated anarchy” point to strategies by the management which make use of two seemingly contradictory phenomena: the advantages in innovation and efficiency that are implied in decentralized self-organization on the one hand and the advantages in synergy and control that come with a centralized management on the other hand. Starting from this assumption on the combination of centralization and decentralization as a deliberate management strategy, the results of a case study are discussed which was conducted in a medium-sized German company. This leads to a re-consideration and partial reversal of the original assumption. It is shown that, rather than being a strategy intentionally employed by the management, “centralization by decentralization” was an unintended side-effect of the introduction of team structures on several hierarchical levels which originally was a part of decentralization.