F?rdern aktienkursbasierte Vergütungsinstrumente langfristig orientierte Unternehmensentscheidungen? Lehren aus der Kreditkrise

The question whether stock-based management incentives encourage long-term oriented management decisions is the topic of a controversial public debate. Also, the existing academic literature provides no clear picture, mainly due to endogeneity problems. In this paper, we reexamine the issue in the context of the recent credit crises, which allows us to solve the endogeneity problem. In the empirical analysis we find that firms, which have awarded stock-based incentives to their executives prior or during the financial crises, face substantially lower cuts in investment spending. These firms also show higher levels of R&D investments during the financial crises. Overall, our results suggest that stock based long-term incentives promote long-term oriented management decisions.     

Impact of Hazardous Substances Regulations on Small Firms in Delaware and New Jersey

Regulations under the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act impose significant requirements on firms handling hazardous chemicals. The nature of the regulations would suggest that small firms, because of limited resources and other structural limitations, would experience more difficulty complying with the regulations than large firms. To understand the difficulties imposed by the regulations on small firms, we interviewed ten small firms in Delaware and New Jersey, states with existing hazardous regulations similar to those being considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and evaluated their responses to state regulations. The impacts of the environmental regulations on the firms and on the risk levels of their businesses are discussed. Propositions for research into small firms compliance are developed. Possible means for reducing the regulatory burden on small firms while enhancing regulatory effectiveness are suggested.     

Bayesian palaeoclimate reconstruction

Summary.  We consider the problem of reconstructing prehistoric climates by using fossil data that have been extracted from lake sediment cores. Such reconstructions promise to provide one of the few ways to validate modern models of climate change. A hierarchical Bayesian modelling approach is presented and its use, inversely, is demonstrated in a relatively small but statistically challenging exercise: the reconstruction of prehistoric climate at Glendalough in Ireland from fossil pollen. This computationally intensive method extends current approaches by explicitly modelling uncertainty and reconstructing entire climate histories. The statistical issues that are raised relate to the use of compositional data (pollen) with covariates (climate) which are available at many modern sites but are missing for the fossil data. The compositional data arise as mixtures and the missing covariates have a temporal structure. Novel aspects of the analysis include a spatial process model for compositional data, local modelling of lattice data, the use, as a prior, of a random walk with long-tailed increments, a two-stage implementation of the Markov chain Monte Carlo approach and a fast approximate procedure for cross-validation in inverse problems. We present some details, contrasting its reconstructions with those which have been generated by a method in use in the palaeoclimatology literature. We suggest that the method provides a basis for resolving important challenging issues in palaeoclimate research. We draw attention to several challenging statistical issues that need to be overcome.     

Grape flavonoids and menopausal health

Grape flavonoids are members of a larger group of plant compounds called polyphenols. Epidemiological evidence relating to the traditional Mediterranean diet, which is high in polyphenols, derived from vegetables and red wine, suggests that dietary polyphenols are of benefit to health and reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Overall, the evidence is promising for the benefit of grape flavonoids in the form of red wine, red grape juice and related preparations for cardiovascular risk factors. There are data to suggest a reduction in platelet activation, inflammation and low-density lipoprotein oxidation, and improvement of endothelial function with grape flavonoids. The evidence for grape flavonoids and renal function, cognition and cancer is less clear. However, it is important to note that much of this research has been carried out in animal and cell models; relatively little work has been done in humans and specifically on the health of menopausal women. There are no general safety concerns with ingestion of grape products. Obviously, consumption of red wine should be within recommended limits and it should be noted that grape juice has high sugar content. Grape flavonoids are also available as a supplement. In conclusion, it is likely that grape flavonoids do benefit the menopausal women. Further research is needed on the mode and dosage of application to maximize these benefits.     

Prejudicial Attitudes Toward Older Adults May Be Exaggerated When People Feel Vulnerable to Infectious Disease: Evidence and Implications

Prejudice against elderly people ("ageism") is an issue of increasing social concern, but the psychological roots of ageism are only partially understood. Recent theorizing suggests that ageism may result, in part, from fallible cue-based disease-avoidance mechanisms. The perception of subjectively atypical physical features (including features associated with aging) may implicitly activate aversive semantic concepts (implicit ageism), and this implicit ageism is likely to emerge among perceivers who are especially worried about the transmission of infectious diseases. We report an experiment (N = 88) that provides the first empirical test of this hypothesis. Results revealed that implicit ageism is predicted by the interactive effects of chronic perceptions of vulnerability to infectious disease and by the temporary salience of disease-causing pathogens. Moreover, these effects are moderated by perceivers' cultural background. Implications for public policy are discussed .     

Evolved Disease-Avoidance Processes and Contemporary Anti-Social Behavior: Prejudicial Attitudes and Avoidance of People with Physical Disabilities

Drawing on evolutionary psychological logic, we describe a model that links evolved mechanisms of disease-avoidance to contemporary prejudices against individuals with physical disabilities. Because contagious diseases were often accompanied by anomalous physical features, humans plausibly evolved psychological mechanisms that respond heuristically to the perception of these features, triggering specific emotions (disgust, anxiety), cognitions (negative attitudes), and behaviors (avoidance). This disease-avoidance system is over-inclusive: Anomalous features that are not due to disease (e.g., limb amputation due to accident) may also activate it, contributing to prejudicial attitudes and behaviors directed toward people with disabilities. This model implies novel hypotheses about contemporary variables that may amplify or reduce disability-based prejudice. We discuss past research within this context. We also present new evidence linking chronic and temporary concerns about disease to implicit negative attitudes toward and behavioral avoidance of disabled others. Discussion focuses on the conceptual and practical implications of this evolutionary approach.     

Compounded or confused? Bioidentical hormones and menopausal health

The aim of this article is to focus on compounded bioidentical hormone (BH) formulations for menopausal symptoms and to discuss the impact of these on women's choice of treatment. The practice of compounding BHs for individualized treatment of women with menopausal symptoms has developed in the USA. In spite of claims of superiority, there is no evidence to suggest that these formulations are any more efficacious or safe than conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT). In fact, there are some concerns about dosing inconsistencies and usefulness of saliva testing that is carried out as part of this type of treatment. While there should be no serious safety issues for women, there is a mismatch between the reality of compounded BH formulations and women's perception of them.     

Are the Effects of Monetary Policy Asymmetric?

By building on the Hamilton (1989) Markov switching model, we examine questions like: Does monetary policy have the same effect in expansions and recessions? Given that the economy is currently in a recession, does a fall in interest rates increase the probability of an expansion? Does monetary policy have an incremental effect on the growth rate within a given state, or does it only affect the economy if it is sufficiently strong to induce a state change (e.g., from recession to expansion)? As suggested by models with sticky prices or finance constraints, interest rate changes have larger effects during recessions.