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Mit der wirtschaftlichen Schwerpunktverschiebung von der Manufaktur zur Wissensgesellschaft ist unternehmerische Innovationsleistung zum entscheidenden unternehmerischen Erfolgsfaktor des 21. Jahrhunderts geworden. Allerdings unterminiert die Wirtschaft in dem Versuch, durch Leistungsdruck immer höhere Effizienz zu erreichen, um mit den sich rasant ändernden wirtschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen Schritt halten zu können, ihre wichtigste Voraussetzung für Kreativität und Innovation: die intrinsische Motivation ihrer Mitarbeiter. Gleichzeitig bemühen sich eine Vielzahl an Motivationstheorien darum, einzelne Faktoren als entscheidend für Motivation im Arbeitskontext zu validieren. Allerdings kann nur ein ganzheitlicher Human-Ressource-Ansatz nachhaltig ein hohes Maß an intrinsischer Motivation sicherstellen, wozu bisher keine überzeugenden Konzepte bekannt sind. Demgegenüber leiden sämtliche empirischen Modelle darunter, dass in ihnen für nachhaltige Motivation wesentliche strukturelle Elemente nachweislich deutlich unterrepräsentiert sind. Auf Basis der Korrelation von Flow - als höchster Form der Motivation - mit Happiness untersucht diese Arbeit, inwieweit das im Königreich von Bhutan entwickelte Modell des „Gross National Happiness“, das in den letzten Jahren weltweit zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit erfahren hat, mit seinen neun Haupt- und 37 Unterkriterien wirksam auf die Unternehmenswelt übertragen werden kann, um ebendiese Anforderung zu erfüllen. Es wird gezeigt, dass dieses „Gross Corporate Happiness“-Modell einerseits die wesentlichen Motivationstheorien repräsentiert und insofern dem Anspruch an ein ganzheitliches Orientierungssystems zur Schaffung eines maximal motivierenden Arbeitsumfeldes genügt. Im Rahmen einer empirischen Untersuchung wird weiterhin bei einer Reihe deutscher börsennotierter Unternehmen unterschiedlicher Branchen und Größen nachgewiesen, dass der Erfüllungsgrad in den 37 Kriterien des „Gross Corporate Happiness“-Modells mit der tatsächlichen Mitarbeitermotivation nahezu perfekt korreliert und dieses Modell somit deutlich alternativen Ansätzen zur Identifikation der wesentlichen Faktoren für Mitarbeitermotivation überlegen ist. In einer Nachbetrachtung wird die Frage angerissen, inwieweit dieses Modell, welches sowohl Motivation als auch organisatorisches Potential weitgehend objektiviert ermitteln kann, zur Erweiterung der klassischen Unternehmensbilanzierung geeignet ist, um insbesondere bei Unternehmen der Wissensgesellschaft das Innovationspotential der Mitarbeiter als Unternehmenswert bilanziell zu erfassen und hier eine eklatante Bewertungslücke im strategischen Berichtswesen zu schließen.
This study analyzes whether the introduction of a European smart grid, comprising of a compound of national smart grids, is economically worthwhile. Therefore, ten national cost-benefit-analyses are analyzed, which either address solely the implementation of smart meters or the implementation of national smart grids. Smart meters are regarded as a necessary precondition for the implementation of national smart grids involving private households. Thus, also an analysis of those studies, whose scope is limited, is beneficial. The studies are evaluated in regards to type, height, and distribution of the respective cost- and benefit-parameters. Although distributional effects are not subject to classical cost-benefit-analyses, considering them is significant for this study. Only thereby policy recommendations can be framed that offer state incentive regulations to those actors bearing the highest financial burden. In addition, own calculations are made in order to corroborate the cost- and benefit-analysis of smart grids. These analyze on the one hand the energy saving effect in private households fostered by smart grids, and on the other hand the capacity effect, which quantifies monetarily the reduction of peak load capacities through load shift during off-peak times. Finally, the costs for the necessary infrastructure update for grids are quantified. This study is based on the hypothesis that the future energy system needs to be able to integrate a higher share of renewable energy sources. This allows the following thesis: the costs of a so called dumb grid with a high share of renewable energy sources are higher then those of a smart grid as in the second case synergies can be exploited, load shift can take place, and, therefore, less infrastructure update is necessary. Under the premises that the future energy mix has to include a significant share of renewable energy sources smart grids, hence, create opportunity benefits.
Adler and Dumas (1983) laid the foundation for pricing international assets under deviation from Relative Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Only Lally (1996) regards the spectrum of international taxation but in his model - he disregards the tremendous impact of exchange gains taxation in International Capital Asset Pricing Theory (IntCAPT). Furthermore, the consensus in economic literature that exchange rates show evidence of a non-linear behavior as elaborated by Dumas (1992), Grauwe (1993) and Serçu and Uppal (1995) and that monetary policy ultimately determines inflation as determined by McCallum (1990) is ignored. In addition to this, a realistic version of the Tax International Capital Asset Pricing Model (Tax - IntCAPM) should incorporate the fact that dividends are stochastic, as developed in the Tax Capital Asset Pricing Model (Tax - CAPM) of Lally (1998), Wiese (2006b) and Mai (2006a). This dissertation develops a theory of taxation in pricing international assets. To understand this theory, in the first part we introduce and discuss the research question and the conceptual procedure of the dissertation. The review of the status of research provides an extensive overview on research pertaining to taxation in IntCAPT. In the second part, the framework of international taxation is introduced, and by introducing the features of exchange gains taxation a new income type in IntCAPT is presented. The analysis of the international tax system with the features of exchange gains taxation leads to the new result that under the hypothesis of Relative PPP certain constellations of international taxation lead to a Tax-IntCAPM that would be equal to the Tax - CAPM. With the features of exchange gains taxation and the modeling of deviation from Relative PPP by non-linear behavior of exchange rate and inflation determined by monetary policy, an extended model of taxation in IntCAPT - the Tax - IntCAPM - is developed and interpreted. The new result is that the integration of exchange gains taxation into the Tax - IntCAPM leads to an international pricing relationship composed of the risky asset's excess return and its world risk premium, which is adapted by exchange gains tax factors. The non-linear deterministic behavior of exchange rates and the determination of inflation by monetary policy lead to the integration of the market equilibrium exchange and inflation rate into the Tax - IntCAPM. International tax arbitrage opportunities lead to the derivation of the Tax - IntCAPM under short sale and borrowing restrictions. To implement this new international capital market model, the Tax - IntCAPM with homogeneous expectations is derived and interpreted. The third part concludes the dissertation with an extensive critique elaborating the boundaries of the models and a conclusion summarizing the main results and analyzing the implications of the findings.
Purpose/topicality: Demand and lead time uncertainty in business logistics increase, but can be mitigated by risk pooling. Risk pooling can reduce costs for a given service level, which is especially valuable in the current economic downturn. The extensive, but fragmented and inconsistent risk pooling literature has grown particularly in the last years. It mostly deals with specific mathematical models and does not compare the various risk pooling methods in terms of their suitability for specific conditions. Approach: Therefore this treatise provides an integrated review of research on risk pooling, notably on inventory pooling and the square root law, according to a value-chain structure. It identifies ten major risk pooling methods and develops tools to compare and choose between them for different economic conditions following a contingency approach. These tools are applied to a German paper merchant wholesaler, which suffers from customer demand and supplier lead time uncertainty. Finally, a survey explores the knowledge and usage of the various risk pooling concepts and their associations in 102 German manufacturing and trading companies. Triangulation (combining literature, example, modeling, and survey research) enhances our investigation. Originality/value: For the first time this research presents (1) a comprehensive and concise definition of risk pooling distinguishing between variability, uncertainty, and risk, (2) a classification, characterization, and juxtaposition of risk pooling methods in business logistics on the basis of value activities and their uncertainty reduction abilities, (3) a decision support tool to choose between risk pooling methods based on a contingency approach, (4) an application of risk pooling methods at a German paper wholesaler, and (5) a survey on the knowledge and utilization of risk pooling concepts and their associations in 102 German manufacturing and trading companies.
Das vorliegende Dissertationsprojekt hatte zwei zentrale Schwerpunkte. Den ersten Schwerpunkt bildete die innovative Insolvenzprognosemodellierung für ukrainische Unternehmen. Dafür wurde im Wesentlichen die moderne internationale Standardmethodik zur Insolvenzprognose auf Basis der logistischen Regression übernommen. Es mussten dennoch auch einige ukrainische Spezifika berücksichtigt werden. Es konnten ausschließlich bilanzielle offenlegungspflichtige Informationen verwendet werden. Die Jahresabschlüsse sind dabei nach den ukrainischen Rechnungslegungsstandards (UAS) verfasst, die auf internationalen Rechnungslegungsstandards (IAS) basieren. Die Kennzahlenbildung erfolgte deswegen nach den Mustern, die für IAS/US-GAAP üblich sind. Abgesehen von den traditionellen Kennzahlen wurden auch zusätzliche, technisch generierte Kennzahlen untersucht. Diese wurden durch geeignete Normierung der sämtlichen vorhandenen Bilanz- und GuV-Posten gebildet. Diese technischen Kennzahlen hatten den Zweck, die für große Industrienationen untypischen Zusammenhänge zu erfassen. Es konnten tatsächlich einige solche Kennzahlen identifiziert werden, die die Insolvenzprognose für ukrainische Unternehmen deutlich verbessern. Dies war auch für einige kategoriale Größen der Fall. So erwies sich bspw. die Region innerhalb der Ukraine ebenfalls als aussagekräftig. Den zweiten Schwerpunkt der Dissertation bildeten die Verfahren zur Kennzahlenauswahl für Insolvenzprognose in den Industrienationen (am Bespiel von Deutschland und USA). Die Auswahl von geeigneten bilanziellen Kennzahlen ist für diese Länder immer noch ein großes Problem, für die es noch keine Standardlösung gibt. Dies ist vor allem auf die betriebswirtschaftliche Theoriedefizite der bilanzbasierten Insolvenzprognose zurückzuführen. Auch die statistische Auswahl der Kennzahlen als erklärenden Variablen ist problematisch. Es wurden deswegen zwei alternative Methoden zur Kennzahlenauswahl vorgeschlagen. Die erste Methode ist betriebswirtschaftlich orientiert, die zweite – statistisch geprägt. Die erste Methode verdichtet die über 40 berücksichtigten traditionellen Liquiditäts- und Solvenzkennzahlen zu einer einziger aggregierten Kennzahl und macht auf diese Weise eine diesbezügliche Kennzahlenauswahl überflüssig. Dies wird durch geeignete Gewichtung und Division der üblichen, auch in den traditionellen Kennzahlen vorkommenden Bilanz- und GuV-Posten erreicht. Es wird gezeigt, wie die Gewichte anhand von empirischen Insolvenzdaten (in diesem Fall für deutsche GmbHs) angepasst werden können. Die Methode wird mit der populären statistischen Methode der schrittweisen Selektion verglichen. Es stellt sich heraus, dass die aggregierten Kennzahlen zur besseren Prognosegüte durch schwächeres Overfitting führen können. Zu den weiteren Vorteilen der aggregierten Kennzahl zählt die Erkenntnis, dass ihre Gewichte in vielen Fällen leichter zu interpretieren sind als Regressionskoeffizienten der traditionellen Kennzahlen. Die zweite Methode verwendet das innovative statistische Lasso-Verfahren zur Kennzahlenauswahl im Rahmen eines Insolvenzprognosemodells für US-amerikanische Grossunternehmen. Lasso ist ein neues vielversprechendes Verfahren zur Auswahl erklärender Variablen in multivariater Regression und bietet viele theoretische Vorteile im Vergleich zu traditionellen statistischen Verfahren. Da das Verfahren neu ist, existieren bis heute nur wenige empirische Untersuchungen, die auf dieses Verfahren zurückgreifen. In diesem Teilbeitrag wird auf die sehr umfassende Compustat-Datenbank zurückgegriffen. Dies ermöglicht die Erfassung praktisch aller relevanten öffentlich verfügbaren Bilanz- und Marktinformationen. Daraus werden insbesondere 100 traditionelle bilanzielle und markbasierte Kennzahlen gebildet. Es werden auch ca. 600 weitere, nicht traditionelle Kennzahlen in die Variablenauswahl einbezogen. Diese erfassen beispielsweise Trends und Branchendurchschnitte in den traditionellen Kennzahlen, berücksichtigen die detaillierten Bilanz- und GuV-Posten usw.. Die sehr präzise Datenerfassung in der Compustat-Datenbank hat es des Weiteren ermöglicht, die fehlenden bilanziellen Informationen als solche zu erkennen und die Qualität des Jahresabschlusses als weitere erklärende Variablen für Insolvenzprognose zu verwenden. Das Lasso-Verfahren wurde auch bei diesen Untersuchungen mit der traditionellen statistischen schrittweisen Auswahl verglichen. Die Prognoseperformance wurde dabei zuverlässig mittels Kreuzvalidierung abgeschätzt. Durch geeignete statistische Signifikanztests wurde gezeigt, dass Lasso in der Tat genauere Prognose liefert. Viele der oben erwähnten nicht traditionellen Informationen erwiesen sich dabei als nützlich. Das Lasso-Verfahren ermöglicht dabei diese Informationen so zu berücksichtigen, dass die traditionellen Kennzahlen nicht ersetzt, sondern lediglich vervollständigt werden.
In an increasingly competitive environment, firms have to optimally adjust both their allocation of input factors and their technology portfolio. The latter determines economies of scope and scale in future research and production. The aim of this dissertation is to achieve better insight into the strategies that firms employ and the impact of these strategies on performance. Hence, this thesis can be seen as having two parts. Chapters 2 and 3 center on the question of outsourcing, market structure and productivity, while Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the strategic alignment of firms and the efficient use of inputs in the knowledge production process, given product market entry restrictions. In Chapter 2 I evaluate whether firms experience significant productivity gains which decide to rearrange their production process by subcontracting in-house activities to outside suppliers. Here, I focus on the influence of service outsourcing, measured by the costs of external contract work. The chapter is based on a unique micro dataset for the German manufacturing sector. My findings suggest that service outsourcing can contribute significantly to a better performance of firms. Firms starting to outsource exhibit a seven percentage points higher growth rate than firms that decide to continue all production activities in-house. Chapter 3 looks at specific market characteristics that favor the outsourcing decision of firms. I test two main hypotheses which I derive from both transaction costs and production costs considerations. My empirical analysis focuses on the German automobile industry, which offers a particularly interesting example in this context since German-car makers have played an active role in restructuring the industry by means of outsourcing. Chapter 4 aims to examine the supply side in greater detail. More specifically, I discuss the impact of a firm’s technology portfolio on its performance, measured in terms of its market value. Based on an expanded Tobin’s q approach, I present evidence for a negative relationship between the number of fields and the market value, combined with a counterbalancing effect of relatedness. Enlarging the technology portfolio in unrelated fields negatively influences the market value of a firm due to the fact that it reduces the ability to exploit future economies of scale and scope. In contrast, diversifying into related areas increases the possibility to benefit from economies of scope, which reduces future costs and thereby increase future profits. The last chapter – at least to some extent – turns back to the question of optimal input allocation and puts the knowledge production process at the center of the analysis. In contrast to Chapter 4, where the focus lies on the alignment of the technology portfolio and the market value of firms, Chapter 5 takes a macroeconomic perspective and assesses the relative efficiency of knowledge production on the country level. Countries are exposed to an increasingly competitive environment, both in domestic and foreign markets for innovative products and future technologies. This process forces nations to continuously update their technological capabilities. Thus, in a globalized world, the efficient usage of the scarce resources devoted to R&D becomes more and more important. While most of the empirical literature affirms a positive link between R&D expenditure, the number of researchers and innovative output, far less attention has been paid to the question of whether the input factors in the knowledge creation process are allocated to their most efficient use. In Chapter 5 I fill the gap in two ways: First, I calculate the relative efficiency of public and private R&D expenditures in the OECD using a nonparametric efficiency analysis approach, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique. Using country level R&D and patent information, I present efficiency scores based on intertemporal frontier estimation for the period 1995 to 2004. Secondly, I take a closer look at the different market structures of these countries. In particular, I test the hypothesis that regulation reduces competition by raising barriers to entry, thereby lowering competitive pressure and the incentives to innovate efficiently. I examine the impact of countries’ product market regulation on their relative R&D efficiency by applying a consistent two stage truncated regression approach proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007).
This dissertation investigates the forces driving firm innovativeness, performance, and internationalization, focusing on the effects of firm location by employing survey data from approximately 6,200 East German firms. The impact of firm environment is captured through three aspects: locational conditions, collaboration activities, and competition situation. What makes this thesis unique is that it uses firms’ perceptions of the importance and quality of 15 different locational factors to assess the influence of locational characteristics. This approach takes into consideration that not all locational factors affect the performance and operations of all firms equally. The analysis also includes firm-related factors that allow consideration of firm heterogeneity in terms of size, age, and industry affiliation.
Financing Small Businesses in Western Europe – A Micro-Level and an Institutional Perspective
(2007)
Improving the access to finance for entrepreneurial endeavours is crucial in fostering competition, innovation and growth in Europe. A series of studies has shown that small companies and start-up firms play an important role for an economy’s growth and development perspectives. However, access to sufficient capital to either start operations or grow and further develop their activities is a difficulty faced by many small businesses in Europe. Most financial providers consider small business finance a high-risk activity that generates high transaction costs and/or low returns on investment, and therefore refrain from extending loans to this potential client group. Solving this dilemma has become a major concern to entrepreneurs, financial institutions, and public policymakers. Based on three different data sets, this thesis provides new insights into the issue of small business finance from a micro-level as well as an institutional perspective. The results contribute to further the understanding of the financial needs and behaviours of small businesses and offer some practical recommendations for those involved in improving the access to finance for these enterprises. These findings can be summarised as follows. (1) There is a demand for microlending products in Germany. The target group is typically made up of retail business owners, foreign business owners, and persons with a loan history on the private market rather than the bank market. Key product features include fast access to these loans and flexibility in the repayment schemes. Demand for these products also arises in the periods after the foundation of the business. Therefore, adequate products should particularly focus on those businesses that are already operating. (2) Self-employed households tend to intermingle their household and business finance by transferring funds obtained through consumer loans to their businesses. This behaviour is particularly pronounced for those households that are credit constrained, which indicates an evasion strategy: business loans that cannot be obtained regularly are substituted through consumer loans. (3) Organisations that provide access to finance for small businesses are diverse. Any performance measurement of these entities must therefore be based on a theoretical rationale that takes into account the heterogeneous nature of this sector. A useful typology differentiates these institutions along three dimensions: organisational structure, type of lending, and orientation towards the client or the funder market. Social and financial aspects of performance are closely related to these dimensions and should be evaluated accordingly. Therefore, a policy aimed at improving the finance of small businesses should take the following into consideration. (1) Federal and local government activities on supporting Microfinance institutions (MFIs) should be refocused. Instead of developing own products (which are then distributed through local MFIs) or the provision of loan capital with heavy restrictions on the access to their special loan funds, policy should concentrate on the provision of risk capital available without any restrictions except for a maximum loan size and outreach-oriented targets. Banks and MFIs which aim to use these special funds should then be incentivised to do so. (2) MFIs are important in improving the access to finance for small businesses in Western Europe. Policy has to acknowledge, though, that an MFI sector cannot do the whole job. Consumer lending products of banks are an important source of business finance, which prevents these entities from establishing a credit history and thereby entering the formal banking market. Banks should therefore be incentivised to identify “hidden” business customers and promote them into their business department. (3) Policy makers are interested in identifying MFIs that use public funds in the most efficient way. Peer groups of these institutions could be created using the three dimensions mentioned above to enable more appropriate comparison. After identifying MFIs that perform within each peer group, their lending activities should not be restricted to overwhelming rules and regulations. Rather, they should be supported with sufficient capital to achieve scale and be given the opportunity to operate for some years with a minimum of restrictions on their lending activities.
The first chapter investigates the factors that explain the level of technical efficiency of a firm. In an empirical analysis, a unique sample of about 35,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2004 is used. The technical efficiency of the firms is estimated using distribution free assumption and then it is relates to firm- and industry-specific characteristics. One third of the explanatory power is due to industry effects. Size accounts for another 25 percent and the headquarter's location explains ten percent of the variation in efficiency. Most other firm characteristics such as ownership structure, legal form, age of the firm and outsourcing activities have an extremely small explanatory power. R&D activity does not exert any positive influence on technical efficiency. In the second chapter a special attention is given to allocative efficiency. The traditional approach to measuring allocative efficiency exploits input prices, which are rarely known at the firm level. In this paper we propose a new approach to measure allocative efficiency as a profit-oriented distance to the frontier in a profit--technical efficiency space, which does not require information on input prices. To validate the new approach, we perform a Monte-Carlo experiment providing evidence that the estimates of allocative efficiency employing the new and the traditional approach are highly correlated. Finally, as an illustration, we apply the new approach to a sample of about 900 enterprises from the chemical manufacturing industry in Germany. The third chapter notices that the German chemical manufacturing industry experienced a major downsizing during 1992--2004. On the average, size of the firm almost halved. Using modern frontier efficiency analysis, this paper investigates technical and scale efficiency of firms. Based on reliable census data, analysis suggests that firms were not primarily concerned with improving technical efficiency, but rather establishing of an optimal scale of production. The share of scale efficiency firms has been persistently increasing, and downsizing was found to be a rational behavior because all scale inefficient firms have continually operated on decreasing returns to scale portion of technology.
In this thesis different definitions of financial contagion are explored. These definitions are applied to test for evidence of contagion on a number of stock markets and during several turbulent periods. First, we investigate the question whether emerging stock markets are more or less vulnerable to large financial shocks than developed capital markets. Second, this study analyzes how significant financial turmoil can change the direction and strength of spillovers between a mature calm market and emerging crisis markets. Additionally, we explore the direction of spillovers and contagion effects between two crisis markets during the same turbulent period. Third, dynamic dependencies between mature stock markets are explored to learn how the strength of spillovers changes in tranquil and turbulent times and how crisis markets are influenced by the leading stock market.