World Heritage: Where are we? An empirical analysis

A statistical analysis of the UNESCO World Heritage List is presented. The World Heritage Convention intends to protect global heritage of outstanding value to mankind, but there has been great concern about the missing representativity of the member countries. There is a strongly biased distribution of Sites according to a country’s population, area or per capita income. The paper reveals the facts but refrains from judging whether the existing distribution is appropriate or not. This task must be left to the discussion in the World Heritage Convention.Global public goods, world heritage, international organizations, international political economy, culture, UNESCO

World Heritage: Where Are We? An Empirical Analysis

An empirical overview of the UNESCO World Heritage List according to various characteristics is presented. The officially stated intention of the World Heritage List is to protect global heritage. Our focus is on the imbalance of the existing List according to countries and continents. The existing distribution is compared to hypothetical distributions considered “balanced” from different points of view. It turns out that the World Heritage List is unbalanced with respect to a distribution of Sites according to population, area or per capita income. This paper wants to reveal facts about the existing distribution, and is designed to help a reasoned discussion to emerge.

Making World Heritage Truly Global: The Culture Certificate Scheme

Culture has attributes of a global public good that needs to be preserved for mankind as a whole. World Culture Certificates are proposed to efficiently preserve World Heritage. The community of nations has to agree on the Global Heritage List and how much each nation is to contribute to that purpose. Each World Heritage site conserved is acknowledged through the issuance of a tradable Certificate. Countries and private firms are induced to seek sites where financial resources can be spent most productively. This leads to an efficient allocation of resources to preserve World Heritage.global public good, World Heritage, Cultural Certificates, monuments, UNESCO

What determines the World Heritage List? An econometric analysis

The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the existing List is highly imbalanced according to countries and continents. Historical reasons, such as historical GDP, population, and number of years of high civilization, have a significant impact on being included on the List. In addition, economic and political factors unrelated to the value of heritage, such as rent seeking by bureaucrats and politicians, the size of the tourist sector, the importance of media, the degree of federalism, and membership in the UN Security Council, influence the composition of the List.Global public goods, world heritage, international organizations, international political economy, culture

Relational ownership and CEO continuity : a property rights perspective

Inspired by agency theory, research on CEO succession often focuses on turnovers as a mechanism to discipline CEOs in the event of poor firm performance. Recent research extends this view by showing that CEO turnovers can also lead to substantial disruption in a firm’s management. Less is known, however, about the antecedents of disruption and continuity in the context of CEO turnovers. Drawing on modern property rights theory, this paper investigates how CEO continuity varies across different types of firms. Using a sample of Swiss, publicly traded firms, we find that relational ownership enhances the likelihood of CEOs staying in office or moving to the position of board chair. Firms with little relational ownership, in contrast, display a high degree of CEO continuity only when capital intensity is high. Provided that a CEO turnover occurs, relational ownership and capital intensity reduce the likelihood of interim CEO successions. These findings highlight the importance of a nuanced view of CEO continuity, taking into account owner types as well as contextual factors

What determines the World Heritage List? An econometric analysis

The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the existing List is highly imbalanced according to countries and continents. Historical reasons, such as historical GDP, population, and number of years of high civilization, have a significant impact on being included on the List. In addition, economic and political factors unrelated to the value of heritage, such as rent seeking by bureaucrats and politicians, the size of the tourist sector, the importance of media, the degree of federalism, and membership in the UN Security Council, influence the composition of the List

Corporate ownership structure and top executives’ prosocial preferences : the role of relational and external blockholders

Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: The relationships between corporations and their stakeholders are often based on incomplete contracts, which are difficult to enforce in courts. Corporate managers play a key role in safeguarding incomplete contracts with stakeholders. This role requires a strong prosocial motivational orientation. Although the managers’ motivational orientation is invisible, stakeholders can make inferences about it from managers’ choices and behavior. Based on these ideas, this paper asks whether the managers’ motivational orientations vary according to the firms’ ownership structures, i.e., ownership by relational and external blockholders. Research Findings/Insight: Results show that ownership by relational blockholders is associated with more prosocially oriented managers, whereas ownership by external blockholders is related to more self-interested managers. This study adopts an unobtrusive measure to infer the managers’ motivational orientation. This measure reflects the managers’ willingness to pay taxes and can be assessed systematically in the Swiss empirical context. The results are corroborated using multivariate regression analysis and profile deviation analysis. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This paper joins incomplete contract theory and behavioral economics to analyze how the shareholder primacy model and the stakeholder model fit with different types of managers. Based on the idea of profile deviation, we suggest that corporate ownership structure is an important factor influencing the degree to which firms approximate these two corporate governance models, and thereby their fit with the respective manager type. Practitioner/Policy Implications: The theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence suggest that the fit between corporate ownership structure and managerial motivation merits consideration. When selecting managers, boards need to pay attention not only to their skills and competencies, but also to their motivational orientation in order to capitalize on the strengths of alternative corporate governance models

World heritage: Where are we? An empirical analysis

An empirical overview of the UNESCO World Heritage List according to various characteristics is presented. The officially stated intention of the World Heritage List is to protect global heritage. Our focus is on the imbalance of the existing List according to countries and continents. The existing distribution is compared to hypothetical distributions considered “balanced” from different points of view. Itnturns out that the World Heritage List is unbalanced with respect to a distribution of Sites according to population, area or per capita income. This paper wants to reveal facts about the existing distribution, and is designed tonhelp a reasoned discussion to emerge

Grundzüge der analytischen Mikroökonomie

Wie kann es sein, dass in einer Ökonomie, in welcher jeder nach seinem eigenen Nutzen strebt, kein Chaos herrscht, sondern sich eher ein Zustand des Gleichgewichts einstellt? Diese verblüffende Frage beantwortete Adam Smith mit der Metapher der "unsichtbaren Hand". Seine Antwort beschreibt den Preismechanismus und wurde zur Initialzündung der Volkswirtschaftslehre. Analytisch präzise zeigen die Autoren in ihrem Buch die Voraussetzungen für das Funktionieren des Preismechanismus. Schrittweise und immer detaillierter behandeln sie Angebot und Nachfrage anhand eines umfassenden Modells. Dieses enthält alle Aspekte der Grundpfeiler einer Ökonomie und bietet darüber hinaus Erweiterungen wie externe Effekte, öffentliche Güter und unvollkommenen Wettbewerb. Das Buch liefert eine wichtige Grundlage für eine mikrofundierte Makroökonomie. * Besonderes didaktisches Konzept: Erläuterungen anhand eines Modells, das in jedem Schritt bereits alle Aspekte der Ökonomie in den Grundzügen enthält * Zahlreiche Übungsaufgaben mit Lösungen * Wichtige Grundlage für das Buch "Grundzüge der analytischen Makroökonomik

A promise made is a promise kept: Union voice, HRM practices, implicit contracts and workplace performance in times of crisis

Sociological debates on financialisation emphasise that workplace‐based productivity bargains between employers and employees are often precarious. This literature suggests that where employers are unable to keep their side of the bargain, participative arrangements with employees are likely to become unsustainable in generating high workplace performance. Recessions substantially increase the pressures on employers to breach (unwritten and invisible) implicit bargains with employees. We propose that a robust (rather than shallow) implementation of union voice and Human Resource Management (HRM) practices will make implicit bargains more resilient and benefit workplace performance if recession impact is high. Using two waves of the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (2004 and 2011), we examine our hypotheses in the context of the deep 2008–2009 recession and find supportive evidence – especially in (a) firms without a dominant individual or family owner and (b) growing markets