Prek?re Einkommenslagen in Deutschland. Ein Ost-West-Vergleich 1996–2002

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag untersucht die Verteilung der ?quivalenzgewichteten Nettoeinkommen von Haushalten und Lebensgemeinschaften in West- und Ostdeutschland für die Zeit von 1996 bis 2002 auf der Grundlage der Daten des Mikrozensus. Die Untersuchung gliedert sich in einen deskriptiven Teil, der eindimensionale Ma?e zur Einkommensverteilung und zur Messung der Ungleichheit diskutiert, und in einen zweiten Teil, in dem auf der Basis eines Logit-Modells Determinanten bestimmt werden, die für prek?re Lebens- und Einkommenslagen urs?chlich sein k?nnen. Ein besonderes Gewicht wird hierbei auf unterschiedliche Lebensformen und die Anzahl der Kinder gelegt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen ein deutlich h?heres Armutsrisiko für Lebensgemeinschaften/Familien mit Kindern im Vergleich zu kinderlosen Paaren.     

A future agenda for research on climate change and human mobility

In the past 15 years, research activities focusing on the interlinkages between climate change and human mobility have intensified. At the same time, an increasing number of actors and processes have sought to address human mobility in the context of climate change from a policy perspective. Hitherto, research has been limited in terms of geographical preferences as well as conceptual and methodological focus areas. This paper argues that to address the evolving policy space, future research on climate change in the context of human mobility needs to become more differentiated, integrated and generalized. This includes concerted efforts to better integrate researchers from the global South, improved cross-linkages between different datasets, approaches and disciplines, more longitudinal and comparative studies and development of innovative qualitative and quantitative methods.     

Linking power and inequality in global value chains

There is increasing interest in the study of globalization on whether the emergence and consolidation of global value chains (GVCs) have exacerbated inequalities within and across nations and/or how GVCs may be leveraged to mitigate them. Although power asymmetries have been identified as a central factor shaping (un)successful GVC participation, dominant discourses still disregard the links between power and inequality or use these concepts interchangeably. In this article, we provide an analytical approach to GVC-related inequalities (within, along and through value chains) and examine how they may co-evolve with different types of power (bargaining, demonstrative, institutional and constitutive). We apply this approach to the case study of the hake value chain in South Africa to illustrate how existing inequalities are manifested, challenged, mitigated or exacerbated—and draw an agenda for future research.     

Testing for a break in persistence under long-range dependencies and mean shifts

We show that the CUSUM-squared based test for a change in persistence by Leybourne et al. (J Time Ser Anal 28:408–433, 2007) is not robust against shifts in the mean. A mean shift leads to serious size distortions. Therefore, adjusted critical values are needed when it is known that the data generating process has a mean shift. These are given for the case of one mean break. Response curves for the critical values are derived and a Monte Carlo study showing the size and power properties under this general de-trending is given.     

Venture capital and risk perception

This study extends the current state of research on venture capital (VC) determinants by introducing a behavioral perspective. We focus on individuals’ risk perception and connect it to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism and uncertainty avoidance. Individualism is related to overoptimism and uncertainty avoidance is related to overcaution, and hence affect the perception of risk. In a cross-country empirical analysis with 49 countries, we find that individualism is positively associated with VC activity, whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with VC activity. Our results are robust to controlling for other determinants as well as using other proxies of VC activity, other time periods, and subsamples of countries.     

English as a lingua franca: A threat to multilingualism?

In this paper I argue against the widespread assumption that the English language in its role as lingua franca is a serious threat to national languages and to multilingualism. I support this argument by making a distinction between 'languages for communication' and 'languages for identification'. Further support for the stance against one-sidedly attacking English as a killer language will be drawn from the findings of three research projects currently being carried out at Hamburg University, one on the impact English has on discourse norms in influential genres in other languages; the second one on the nature of interactions in English as a lingua franca; and the third one on so-called 'international degree programmes', in which English is the language of instruction. Finally, I make some tentative suggestions for a new research paradigm for English as a lingua franca.     

The integration of sustainability into the theory and practice of finance: an overview of the state of the art and outline of future developments

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of the current state of the literature in sustainable issues in financial research. Progress in these areas has generally been slow, and the concept of sustainable finance has not yet fully settled in the academic literature. We introduce corporate social responsibility as the underlying framework for sustainable finance and review key strands from the diverse literature on sustainability in finance. We suggest how this research field might advance in the future and propose a number of open questions that require further analysis.