A Probabilistic Framework for Risk Analysis of Widespread Flood Events: A Proof‐of‐Concept Study

This article presents a flood risk analysis model that considers the spatially heterogeneous nature of flood events. The basic concept of this approach is to generate a large sample of flood events that can be regarded as temporal extrapolation of flood events. These are combined with cumulative flood impact indicators, such as building damages, to finally derive time series of damages for risk estimation. Therefore, a multivariate modeling procedure that is able to take into account the spatial characteristics of flooding, the regionalization method top‐kriging, and three different impact indicators are combined in a model chain. Eventually, the expected annual flood impact (e.g., expected annual damages) and the flood impact associated with a low probability of occurrence are determined for a study area. The risk model has the potential to augment the understanding of flood risk in a region and thereby contribute to enhanced risk management of, for example, risk analysts and policymakers or insurance companies. The modeling framework was successfully applied in a proof‐of‐concept exercise in Vorarlberg (Austria). The results of the case study show that risk analysis has to be based on spatially heterogeneous flood events in order to estimate flood risk adequately.     

A modified combination test for the analysis of a clinical trial when a protocol amendment changed the inclusion criteria

Protocol amendments are often necessary in clinical trials. They can change the entry criteria and, therefore, the population. Simply analysing the pooled data is not acceptable. Instead, each phase should be analysed separately and a combination test such as Fisher's test should be applied to the resulting p-values. In this situation, an asymmetric decision rule is not appropriate. Therefore, we propose a modification of Bauer and Köhne's test. We compare this new test with the tests of Liptak, Fisher, Bauer/Köhne and Edgington. In case of differences in variance only or only small differences in mean, Liptak's Z-score approach is the best, and the new test keeps up with the rest and is in most cases slightly superior. In other situations, the new test and the Z-score approach are not preferable. But no big differences in populations are usually to be expected due to amendments. Then, the new method is a recommendable alternative.     

Capital structure decisions in family firms: empirical evidence from a bank-based economy

This paper analyzes the question if and how founding families influence the capital structure decision of their firms. By using a unique, partially hand-collected panel dataset of 660 listed German companies (5,135 firm years) over the period 1995–2006, we come up with the following results: German family firms have significantly lower leverage ratios than non-family firms. With respect to the question how families influence the capital structure of their firms, we can show that the family impact is mostly driven via management involvement. In this context, we also detect that the presence of a founder CEO has a strong negative effect on the leverage ratio. Our results prove to be stable against a battery of robustness tests, including the influence of other types of blockholders and the firms’ life cycle. Moreover, we use a propensity-score based matching estimator to alleviate concerns of reverse causality. Overall, our study suggests a strong, negative and causal relationship between family firm characteristics (especially family management) and the level of leverage.     

Disentangling Gut Feeling: Assessing the Integrity of Social Entrepreneurs

This paper analyzes how social venture capitalists evaluate the integrity of social entrepreneurs. Based on an experiment with 40 social venture capitalists and 40 students, we investigate how five attributes of the entrepreneur contribute to the assessment of integrity. These attributes are the entrepreneur’s personal experience, professional background, voluntary accountability efforts, reputation and awards/fellowships granted to the entrepreneur. Results indicate that social venture capitalists focus largely on voluntary accountability efforts of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur’s reputation when judging integrity. For an overall positive judgment of integrity, it seems to be sufficient if either voluntary accountability efforts or reputation of the entrepreneur are high. By comparing social venture capitalists with students, we show that experience leads to a simpler decision model focusing on key attributes.     

Reflections on Intergenerational Policy in Europe: The Past Twenty Years and Looking into the Future

This article will start from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-sponsored meeting on intergenerational programs in Dortmund, Germany, in 1999, as this was an awareness-raising moment for intergenerational programs in Europe. The connection between lifelong learning and intergenerational learning as one reason for the increased interest for intergenerational programs in the creation of European policy are discussed and connected to demography, health, aging, and well-being in policy. Therefore recent actions and reports from a European perspective are analyzed in order to reflect over the social and cultural factors that can have an impact and influence the intergenerational field in Europe in the future.     

Leverage and the performance of buyouts

In this paper we investigate the effects of debt usage on (risk-adjusted) equity returns in private equity-backed buyout transactions. We use a proprietary data set of more than 700 realized European and North American buyouts acquired between 1990 and 2006 to empirically assess theoretical predictions. Our results show a positive relationship between debt levels and equity returns indicating the return-enhancing effects related to leverage. However, our results also provide evidence that it is possible to ‘over-leverage’ a company, i.e. at very high levels of leverage (debt to total capital of approximately 90%) the increased company default risk outweighs the positive effects related to leverage resulting in decreasing equity returns. On the other side, we find no significant relationship between leverage and risk-adjusted equity returns which implies that the return increase through higher debt ratios comes along with increasing risk. In addition, we show that private equity sponsors successfully conduct debt-equity-arbitrage in times of favorable debt market conditions. This implies that these investors successfully time debt markets.     

Foundation ownership and shareholder value: an event study

Review of Managerial Science - Some of the largest listed firms in Western and Northern Europe are partly owned by foundations. So far, little research exists about the shareholder value effects of...