The Political Economy of Natural Disaster Insurance: Lessons from the Failure of a Proposed Compulsory Insurance Scheme in Germany

This paper studies the politico-economic reasons for the refusal of a proposed compulsory flood insurance scheme in Germany. It provides the rationale for such scheme and outlines the basic features of a market-orientated design. The main reasons for the political down-turn of this proposal were the misperceived costs of a state guarantee, legal objections against a compulsory insurance, distributional conflicts between the federal government and the Ger-man states (Länder) on the implied administrative costs, and the well-known charity hazard of ad-hoc disaster relief. The focus on pure market solutions proved to be an ineffective strategy for policy advice in this field.

Can Minimum Prices Assure the Quality of Professional Services?

This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price floor set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers demand the highest possible average quality. If consumers demand services of lesser quality, the association's price floor will be too high if measured by consumer surplus. Moreover we show that a de-regulated market will always reproduce the favorable result of a uniformly high price in the case of top quality demand while delivering superior results in the case of a mixed demand for high and low quality services. The general picture that emerges from this discussion is that the current EU Commission's initiative to abolish fixed price schemes for professional services will not lead to a decrease in quality that would be undesirable from a standpoint of consumer protection. This holds even if we acknowledge the opponent's claim that there is a chance of deprivation of professional ethics due to price competition.Liberal professions; Price regulation; Quality; Professional association; Self-regulation; EU competition policy; Intrinsic motivation

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE IN THE 1980S: THE IMPLIED RESEARCH PRIORITIES

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Fallstudie Axa Winterthur : intelligenter Distributionsanfrageprozess

Mitarbeitende in Vertrieb und Underwriting von zeitraubenden Routineaufgaben zu entlasten, damit sie sich auf ihre Kunden und fachliche Aspekte konzentrieren können, war die Zielsetzung des Projekts der Axa Winterthur, das in der vorliegenden Fallstudie beschreiben wird. Mit der Standardisierung des Distributionsanfrageprozesses und der Einführung einer Workflowlösung inklusive Business Rules konnte eine flexible Lösung geschaffen werden, die sich nicht nur auf andere Geschäftsbereiche übertragen lässt, sondern sich durch die zentrale Wissensbasis und auswertbare operative Daten weiter in Richtung eines entscheidungsunterstützenden und lernenden Systems entwickeln kann

THE NORTHEAST AND INTERREGIONAL COMPETITION FOR BROILERS

An interregional model which minimizes production and transportation costs for broilers was developed and tested. Ten production and 22 consumption regions were defined. The results indicate that current flow patterns are relatively efficient given the existing production capacities. As demand increases the increased production will tend to be in the Southwest (Texas) and to a lesser extent in the Southeast (North Carolina). Shadow prices indicate that in the longer run production in the Northeast will continue to decline in relative terms and perhaps in absolute terms.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Troll

No abstract available

Exports, Foreign Direct Investment, and Productivity: Evidence from German Firm Level Data

This paper presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either trough exports or foreign direct investment: only the more productive firms choose to serve the foreign markets, and the most productive among this group will further choose to serve these markets via foreign direct investments. Using a non-parametric test for first order stochastic dominance it is shown that, in line with this hypothesis, the productivity distribution of foreign direct investors dominates that of exporters, which in turn dominates that of national market suppliers.Exports, Foreign Direct Investment, Productivity, Firm level data, Germany, Heterogeneous firms