Risk-shifting Through Issuer Liability and Corporate Monitoring

This article explores how issuer liability re-allocates fraud risk and how risk allocation may reduce the incidence of fraud. In the US, the apparent absence of individual liability of officeholders and insufficient monitoring by insurers under-mine the potential deterrent effect of securities litigation. The underlying reasons why both mechanisms remain ineffective are collective action problems under the prevailing dispersed ownership structure, which eliminates the incentives to moni-tor set by issuer liability. This article suggests that issuer liability could potentially have a stronger deterrent effect when it shifts risk to individuals or entities holding a larger financial stake. Thus, it would enlist large shareholders in monitoring in much of Europe. The same risk-shifting effect also has implications for the debate about the relationship between securities litigation and creditor interests. Credi-tors’ claims should not be given precedence over claims of defrauded investors (e.g., because of the capital maintenance principle), since bearing some of the fraud risk will more strongly incentivise large creditors, such as banks, to monitor the firm in jurisdictions where corporate debt is relatively concentrated

Collective bargaining unity and fragmentation in Germany: two concepts of trade unionism?

In recent years established collective bargaining arrangements in some sectors in Germany have been challenged by an upsurge of sectional union activity that has contested the status of industry-level incumbents. Gauging the impact of this development has proved difficult for both observers and insiders, with a range of responses from labour market actors and government. This article explores recent developments and actor responses and locates them in the wider context of the German political economy. It argues that of all these actors trade unions, in particular in organized forms of capitalism, are confronted by strategic dilemmas related to managing the difficult ‘variable geometry’ of mobilization and systemic accommodation

Gegenstandsbereich der Bevölkerungssoziologie

In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die Entwicklung der Bevölkerungssoziologie in Deutschland dar. Aufbauend auf den klassischen Arbeiten von Süßmilch wurde die Bevölkerungssoziologie in Deutschland bis zur Nachkriegszeit vor allem durch die Arbeiten von Nationalökonomen wie Brentano, Mombert und Mackenroth geprägt. Die zunehmende Verfügbarkeit von Mikrodaten hat zu einer Neuorientierung der Bevölkerungssoziologie beigetragen, in der statt einer ganzheitlichen Betrachtungsweise des „Bevölkerungsgeschehens“ die Analyse spezifischer demographischer Übergänge in den Vordergrund rückte. Vor allem die Lebenslaufforschung hat sich seit den 1980er-Jahren als theoretisches Konzept an der Schnittmenge von demographischer und soziologischer Forschung hervorgetan. Neuere Entwicklungen verweisen auf methodische und theoretische Herausforderungen bei der Untersuchung des Zweiten Demographischen Übergangs. Eine „verstehende“ Bevölkerungssoziologie, die gesellschaftliche Bewältigungsprozesse des demographischen Wandels in den Vordergrund rückt, weist dabei ein methodisch und theoretisch noch nicht ausgeschöpftes Analyse- und Interventionspotential auf