Welfare Implications of the Design of a Currency Union in Case of Member Countries of Different Sizes and Output Persistence

In the study, the relevance of several optimum-currency-area (OCA) criteria is formally worked out in a welfare approach. The optimum monetary-policy rules of the supranational central bank are derived within the Barro-Gordon framework, and consideration is given to how the welfare of the member countries of a currency union is affected by symmetric and asymmetric national output shocks. The welfare implications are deduced both analytically and with the use of simulations. In a twocountry framework, the countries are allowed to differ in size, and different degrees of labour mobility are addressed. Also the issue of output persistence is taken up. The central-bank council may consist of a central-bank board and of a group of national central-bank presidents, where the national presidents are assumed to focus on their home economies. It is shown that relatively small member countries favour a situation where the group of national central bank presidents is in a strong position while large countries prefer decisions to be taken by the central-bank board. The preferences are the less strong the higher the degree of labour mobility. With output persistence, labour migration also moderates the disadvantages of the decisions taken by a central-bank board for a relatively small country. Furthermore, for output persistence in conjuncture with labour migration, monetary policy by a small country within the group of national presidents may negatively affect its future welfare. Besides, differences in the national monetary transmission processes as well as divergent national inflation and output preferences affect welfare. --monetary union,voting power,shocks,output persistence,monetary transmission process,central bank council,labour mobility

The Role of Technology in M&As: A Firm Level Comparison of Cross-Border and Domestic Deals

Technological change is often hypothesized as one of the main drivers of merger activities. This paper analyzes the role of technology in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) at the firm level. Based on a newly created data set that combines financial information and patent data for public firms in Europe as well as country level variables, we apply a structural model to investigate technology-related motivations behind merger formation. Distinguishing between cross-border and domestic M&As, we find that technological relatedness of the M&A partners reduces uncertainty and the expected risk of failure associated with cross-border acquisitions significantly, whereas there is no evidence for technological complementarities driving domestic M&As. The relevance of technology for cross-border M&As further illustrates the international character of technology markets. --domestic versus cross-border M&As,technological relatedness,market relatedness

Der Informationsgehalt des Geldmengenziels der Deutschen Bundesbank-Ergebnisse einer Umfrage aus dem Jahr 1998-

The German central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, conducted monetary targeting until the end of the year 1998. By the announcement of a monetary target, the central bank wanted to inform the public of its monetary stance. If the information-transmisson process has been successful, I checked by the use of a survey. In the survey, I questioned research institutes, large enterprises, unions and employers‘ associations. One of the results is that the information content of the monetary target was not high for nearly half of the interviewees. An overwhelming majority of the interviewees preferred a mixed strategy of monetary and inflation targeting.Geldmengenziel, Inflationsziel, Informationsgehalt, monetary targeting, inflation targeting, information content

The discontinuous integration of Western Europe's heterogeneous market for corporate control from 1995 to 2007

As, in Europe, many institutional reforms have been undertaken to establish an economic union, it can be expected that the relevance of borders has decreased over time. For the EU 15, we investigate the expected integration process of the market for corporate control - an illustrative market for studying integration issues - over the period from 1995 to 2007. Our gravity regressions show that borders lost relevance from 1995 up to the bursting of the new economy bubble. During this period, the transition from the European Economic Community to the European Union at the end of 1993 and the introduction of the euro may have led to accelerated integration. However, thereafter we find no evidence for further progress driven by institutional factors. On the other hand, geographical distance became less relevant for M&As for the entire time span from 1995 to 2007. The continued lack of full integration is also evidenced by heterogeneity inside Europe. This becomes apparent in differing and continuing bilateral border effects. Country pairs with supposedly liberal capital market thinking, such as the Netherlands, Germany and the UK are found to be divided by relatively small barriers. Hence, a still existing lack of integration in Europe may not be a result of missing institutional reforms. In the Poisson estimations, the results depend neither on the choice of the number of observations nor on the log of aggregated transaction value as the dependent variable; however, the use of the levels is inappropriate. --Integration,Europe,border effects,bilateral borders,distance,gravity,Poisson,panel,mergers and acquisitions

Europe integrates less than you think: Evidence from the market for corporate control in Europe and the US

National borders are still strong barriers for mergers and acquisitions in Europe. We estimate a gravity equation model based on NUTS 2-regions and find that the restraining impact of national borders decreased by about a third between 1990 and 2007. However, there has been no significant change since 1997, i.e., two years before the introduction of the Euro. To benchmark our results we run a corresponding analysis within the United States using the ten federal OMB regions as country equivalents. The 'quasi border'-effect in the US is weaker than in the EU and even declines more during the same time period. We conclude that European integration policy has little effect on fostering cross-border transactions. --European integration,corporate control,border effects

The Role of Technology in M&As: A Firm Level Comparison of Cross-Border and Domestic Deals

Technological change is often hypothesized as one of the main drivers of merger activities. This paper analyzes the role of technology in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) at the firm level. Based on a newly created data set that combines financial information and patent data for public firms in Europe as well as country level variables, we apply a structural model to investigate technology-related motivations behind merger formation. Distinguishing between cross-border and domestic M&As, we find that technological relatedness of the M&A partners reduces uncertainty and the expected risk of failure associated with cross-border acquisitions significantly, whereas there is no evidence for technological complementarities driving domestic M&As. The relevance of technology for cross-border M&As further illustrates the international character of technology markets

Hospital-wide therapist scheduling and routing: exact and heuristic methods

In this paper, we address the problem of scheduling and routing physical therapists hospital-wide. At the beginning of a day, therapy jobs are known to a hospital's physical therapy scheduler who decides for each therapy job when, where and by which therapist a job is performed. If a therapist is assigned to a sequence which contains two consecutive jobs that must take place in different treatment rooms, then transfer times must be considered. We propose three approaches to solve the problem. First, an Integer Program (IP) simultaneously schedules therapies and routes therapists. Second, a cutting plane algorithm iteratively solves the therapy scheduling problem without routing constraints and adds cuts to exclude schedules which have no feasible routes. Since hospitals are interested in obtaining quick solutions, we also propose a heuristic algorithm, which schedules therapies sequentially by simultaneously checking routing and resource constraints. Using real-world data from a hospital, we compare the performance of the three approaches. Our computational analysis reveals that our IP formulation fails to solve test, which have more than~30 jobs, to optimality in an acceptable solution time. In contrast, the cutting plane algorithm can solve instances with more than 100 jobs optimally. The heuristic approach obtains good solutions for large real-world instances within fractions of a second

Cross-border bank lending, risk aversion and the financial crisis

This study investigates the determinants of adjustments in the provision of cross-border loans by internationally active banks. For the period from 2002 to 2010, we look at quarterly transaction data (excluding valuation effects) on long-term loans issued by the largest 69 German banking groups to the private sector of 66 countries. We show that the parent bank's lending adjustment is based almost exclusively on supply-side determinants, in particular on bank-specific factors. However, foreign countries' demand and risk characteristics become more relevant when loans are distributed by banks' affiliates located abroad. Focusing on risk measures such as the parent bank's ratio of Tier I capital to risk-weighted assets, we find that rising risk aversion among banks curbed cross-border lending during the financial crisis, especially at a later stage following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. However, we find a threshold at around 11% of the Tier I capital ratio above which an increase in the ratio does not curb lending anymore. --cross-border lending,banks,financial crisis

Multiple supermassive black hole systems: SKA's future leading role

Galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are believed to evolve through a process of hierarchical merging and accretion. Through this paradigm, multiple SMBH systems are expected to be relatively common in the Universe. However, to date there are poor observational constraints on multiple SMBHs systems with separations comparable to a SMBH gravitational sphere of influence (<< 1 kpc). In this chapter, we discuss how deep continuum observations with the SKA will make leading contributions towards understanding how multiple black hole systems impact galaxy evolution. In addition, these observations will provide constraints on and an understanding of stochastic gravitational wave background detections in the pulsar timing array sensitivity band (nanoHz -microHz). We also discuss how targets for pointed gravitational wave experiments (that cannot be resolved by VLBI) could potentially be found using the large-scale radio-jet morphology, which can be modulated by the presence of a close-pair binary SMBH system. The combination of direct imaging at high angular resolution; low-surface brightness radio-jet tracers; and pulsar timing arrays will allow the SKA to trace black hole binary evolution from separations of a galaxy virial radius down to the sub-parsec level. This large dynamic range in binary SMBH separation will ensure that the SKA plays a leading role in this observational frontier.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. To be published in the proceedings of "Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array", PoS(AASKA14)151, in pres

The Effect of Abstract and Concrete Thinking on Risk-Taking Behavior in Women and Men

Recent studies have demonstrated that participants with an abstract mind-set (high construal level [CL]) showed an increased risk affinity when compared with those with a concrete way of thinking (low CL). With regard to the importance of replicating research findings, we conducted a replication study and re-investigated the CL effect on risk-taking. Furthermore, we extended previous research by comparing experimental groups with a control group as well as by exploring effects of sex. The CL effect on risk-taking was as expected. However, risk-taking by the control group did not differ from that by the experimental groups. Both women and men took less risk after receiving concrete priming rather than abstract priming. However, men were generally more risk-seeking compared with women. Both effects (men being more risk-seeking than women and the CL effect) were successfully replicated