Volume 224, Issue 1-2

According to Colander, modern economics is economics of the model. Models have to be testable, in order to get a “theory with measurement”. This procedure was recently criticized vehemently by Blaug maintaining that there is only little empirical progress in the economics of today. He makes the case for evolutionary economics because the latter is considering especially entrepreneurship and innovations, topics which are neglected by economists constructing and testing models. The reason for this is, as G.M. Hodgson tells us: “By its nature, novelty defies the boundary of formalism.” Evolutionary economics stressing competition and market processes focuses on innovations and institutions, but its method – because of the involved complex relations – is not confined to simple testable models. This raises the question how theory is confronted with empirical facts in evolutionary economics. Taking into consideration that evolutionary economics has a preference for “pattern predictions” in the sense of von Hayek the author pleads for a plurality of empirical methods. The important role of the search for “invariant factors” in this context is analyzed, too.

Theory and policy experienced a number of essential changes. Starting in 19 th century from deliberations on factor endowments and trade, as a consequence of new and hardly envisioned trade patterns in the 20 th century. While theory was rather quick in taking up these new developments, policy waited to react till the Uruguay Round. The article outlines these two dimensions of change and explains in short the impact of innovations and services on foreign trade – its theories, policies and new structure of the international transfers. Both elements are analysed at first separately and then by looking at their interaction. Concerning innovation the development of the theory of foreign trade is traced (traditional, product cycle, “new” theory of foreign trade and the “new” growth theory and foreign trade). The trade policy follows only slowly and cautiously these sometimes extremely sophisticated theories. The growth of the international transfer of services and its impact on the pattern of foreign trade is so remarkable that the wording “revolutionary” is even used. Therefore, it cannot be a surprise that policy agents have discovered this topic and apply all activities of foreign trade policies – liberalising, protection, log-rolling, North-South conflicts etc.

We consider a model of a price setting monopolistic firm that has to decide on a price adjustment in light of some new information about the uncertain demand for its product. It is assumed that the firm applies the so-called minimax adjustment principle for this purpose. This optimality principle is based on the notion that human decision makers tend to be reluctant to change their behaviour and prefer to take the current price as a benchmark rather than to compute optimal new prices all the time. We show that the current price is maintained as long as it lies in some set that is derived from the firm’s degree of uncertainty and its degree of conservatism as regards changing behaviour. Otherwise, the price is adjusted but kept as close as possible to the current price. Hence, the model provides an explanation for the existence of price rigidities which is not based on any technical adjustment or menu costs but simply on how human decision makers may deal with uncertainty. Zusammenfassung Wir betrachten das Modell eines preissetzenden Monopolisten, der angesichts neuer Informationen über die unsichere Nachfrage nach dem von ihm angebotenen Produkt über eine Preisanpassung zu entscheiden hat. Es wird angenommen, daß der Monopolist hierzu das sogenannte Minimax-Anpassungsprinzip einsetzt. Dieses Optimalitätsprinzip basiert auf der Vorstellung, daß menschliche Entscheidungsträger einer Verhaltensänderung häufig eher ablehnend gegenüberstehen und sich bevorzugt am derzeitigen Preis orientieren anstatt fortlaufend neue optimale Preise zu bestimmen. Es wird gezeigt, daß der aktuelle Preis beibehalten wird, solange er zu einer bestimmten Menge von Preisen gehört, welche aus dem Grade der Unsicherheit bezüglich der Nachfrage und dem Grade der Abneigung gegenüber Verhaltensänderungen abgeleitet ist. Andernfalls wird der Preis zwar geändert, jedoch so nahe wie möglich am ursprünglichen Preis gehalten. Das Modell liefert somit eine Erklärung für die Existenz von Preisstarrheiten, die nicht auf technischen Anpassungskosten oder sogenannten menu-costs basiert, sondern alleine aus dem Umgang menschlicher Entscheidungsträger mit einer vorhandenen Unsicherheit folgt.

The paper aims at determining upper boundaries of accuracy (“error minima”) for German macroeconomic forecasts. The study is based on simulations with the RWI-model, a medium sized macroeconometric model for the FRG. A first upper limit of forecast accuracy is fixed by the accuracy of predetermined variables and outside sample stability of model relationships. Further limits are found by a decomposition of model forecast errors into “equation errors”, “model errors” and “errors of dynamics”. For forecasts of growth and inflation the model simulations suggest that (1) present forecast errors do not seem to have much potential for improvement; (2) primarily this potential seems to lie on the single equation level.

The paper reminds of Erich Preiser (1900-1967), the famous German political economist and admired academic teacher. This article, firstly develops Preiser’s assessment of the future of the market economy. Secondly, it looks at his view on the issue how close economic theory may come to reality, a still fundamental problem of economics. Finally, Preiser’s rarely matched capacity to look beyond the narrow ranges of economics is discussed.

Because of the current financial crisis and the crisis of the German welfare state, the population development has become a topic of public discussion in Germany. The aging and decline of the population which is on the horizon of most of the highly-developed countries brings up fears of a “collapse” of the compulsory pension scheme which is leached out by the long running high unemployment and the burden of the reunification. This article deals with the assumption of an economy that declines with population, an assumption expressed by economicsts as well. The analysis of the impacts of population development has to consider that the altogether tectonic shifts perform in rather modest annual alternation rates and are overlaid by developments of single cohorts. In this context, the adaptability of the economy in the long run is underestimated. The decrease of the labour force potential that results from a decline of the population can be adsorbed by the mobilisation of domestic labour reserves accompanied by a controlled labour market – and growth oriented immigration policy. There can also be improvements of quality, productivity and dynamics of growth provoked by the release of new labour force. The risk of a shrinking of the economy can be coped with a long-ranging release of new labour force and a economic policy supporting the resources of the economy.

It will be discussed if the confidence in the results of the production of economic and social data will be justified. Probability based conclusions are possible concerning the sampling error. In order to quantify the non-sampling error an accuracy check is necessary which causes practical problems. Therefore special methods are applied to reduce the errors in surveys before the results are published. The confidence in statistics on this level depends on the collaboration of the official statistics with the applied statistical science.

In the present the social and economic development of regions gets a growing importance especially in the context of European integration. Linked with that is the request need for a permanent improvement of the regional information basis. The paper analyses the possibilities and boundaries of a regionalised observation of economic activity. For this purpose the district [Kreis] should be a problem adequate reference on the observation level. This is owed to the functional demarcation of the [German] districts and data availability at this level. Under the aspect of the economic production capacity of districts different indicators will be discussed. For some indicators reservations as to their information value have to be made. Especially for such data which are not collected primary in the districts [for this specific Statistical purpose] respectively if enterprises are acting multiregionally.

A popular and widespread, though rarely ever scrutinised method of measuring a complex multidimensional construct y consists of adding the scores x 1 , ..., x m assigned to a unit in m “dimensions”. These scores (“indicators”) are supposed to represent the m relevant aspects of y. Interestingly the sum-of-scores method (SSM) is not only lacking a theoretical justification there is not even a clear understanding of the relevance of the correlation between the indicators for y. The paper therefore aims at relating the SSM to methods of multivariate analysis and tries to clarify the role of weights in the summation of scores.

In 1998 the advertising ban of the EC directive was challenged by the Federal Republic of Germany. One reason for Germany’s fierce opposition to the EC directive is the conviction that a ban of tabacco advertising is an ineffective way to curb smoking. In this article I look for empirical studies for the relationship between advertising and smoking. If one distinguishes the effect of advertising on adults from the effects on children and adolescents one can make a point for the advertising ban. Empirical evidence shows that the various ways limiting youth access to cigarettes were not very successful. New research on the problem how fear appeals may motivate acceptance of action recommendations demonstrates that mere information on the health risks of smoking will be unable to persuade the youth of their personal vulnerability. Small steps to regulate tobacco seem unable to prevent the youth becoming nicotine addicts. In Germany the participation rate of youth smoking has recently increased dramatically.

The question arises whether there can be an enrichment of business cycle research when business cycle indicators will be used in an increasing dimension. This article, dedicated to Professor Adolf Wagner, tries to differentiate three fields of research: Hypothesis formation in theory, characterisation of market imbalances and measurement of cycle and trend in empirical methods, short-term prognoses and turning point analyses in forecasting. Can we establish new hypotheses by considering expectations, gained from surveys? A special proposal aimed at the measure of the reference cycle by using the utilization of capacities in enterprises. It is evident, that when using business cycle indicators in business cycle research we can avoid the dichotomy between the three fields in business cycle research, which has been observed in the past.

Since call center services are labour-intensive, human resource planning is a critical management task in terms of service quality and operating costs. This paper introduces a planning software tool to support short-term human resource planning. It is designed to forecast the stream of inbound telephone calls and to simulate transaction processes in order to estimate the minimum number of call center agents, required to achieve service objectives at a future working day.

Though men of letters have a strong impact on public opinion and articulate strong judgments on their economic environment, economic evaluations of those reflections are rather rare. This article analyses the essays of Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It is shown that one cannot distinguish between Marx as the analyst of global capitalism and Marx as the prophet of a new world, as Enzensberger believes. Marx’s understanding of the capitalist world is developed from his deterministic view of history. Further on one cannot distinguish between good, freedom guaranteeing Utopias and bad Utopias, based on collectivistic force; rather all Utopias, abolishing private property as the cause of exploitation, will involve resort to force. Finally it is shown that Enzensberger’s arguments are contradictory. On the one side he sees men bounded to a global capitalism and complains that they have no alternative, and on the other side the social evolution is regarded as unpredictable and forecasts as principally uncertain. His second Statement is an implicit pleading for an open society, which implies decentralized property rights and is therefore anti-socialistic by nature.

In order to judge the quality of survey data it is necessary above all to estimate the size of the individual error components, i. e. the systematic and the random errors in the responses (survey data) of the surveyed units and, if feasible, to determinate their true value. This paper develops an estimation procedure by which the individual random errors included in individual response values can be ascertained as well as the total random error of a survey. As costumary in statistical surveys an additive linear error model is assumed: Individual response value = true value + systematic error + random error. The true value of a characteristic together with its systematic error are referred to as the permanent (smooth) component of the survey value. To assess the value of the permanent component the variate difference method is suggested in analogy to time series analysis, and the difference between response and estimated permanent component is the estimated random error. The permanent component is being estimated for each unit in a first stochastic approximation by means of an average of responses in three (re-)enumerations. With more than three (re-)enumarations further individual random errors and their average could be computed, this meaning a horizontal aggregation of individual estimates. This procedure is demonstrated for a simulated case.

In order to focus on a unique way how to stimulate the establishment of business pension schemes in Germany, it is recently proposed to abolish the possibility to tax contributions to business pension schemes at a rather low flat rate. Instead, a general scheme of taxing old age pensions while leaving contributions tax free should be introduced. The present paper studies if this proposed tax change deteriorates the income situation of workers receiving business pensions. For the average worker, abolishing the flat tax rate regime does not reduce old age income net of taxes. Only if the employer – and not the employee – finances the contributions to the business pension scheme, a reduction in old age net income is likely. The reason for this outcome is that the employer has to pay a social security tax on the contributions to the business pension scheme if the flat tax rate regime is abolished. If, however, all contributions to business pension schemes were treated identically in the social security system independent of the way how contributions to business pension systems are stimulated, abolishing the flat tax rate regime is not disadvantageous to the average worker.

Modern survey sampling methods generally deal with improving estimators with respect to available prior information. An increasingly important source of prior information is data from registers. In some countries, e.g. Canada, The Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries, personal identification numbers in registers generally make it possible to improve estimation processes mainly due to the exact match of units between register and estimation variable. In many other countries, this exact matching of information is not possible, e.g. for legal reasons. In the German Microcensus, however, the variable unemployed refers to the register data of the Bundesanstalt fur Arbeit in Nuremberg which are not permitted to be matched to each other for legal reasons. This article deals with an improvement of estimators with respect to available auxiliary information within the survey to enable an appropriate use of aggregated register information. A Monte Carlo simulation study will allow for the comparison of the estimators with different information or matching levels. This will be achieved in a practical environment using the data of the German Microcensus which is a 1 % survey sample of the German population. The given example yields recommendations on applying the methodology to similar cases that are influenced by data protection in order to allow for improved estimates in practice. Zusammenfassung Moderne Stichprobenverfahren befassen sich vorrangig damit, Schätzungen mit Hilfe verfügbarer Hilfsinformationen zu verbessern. Dabei sind Daten aus Registern von wachsender Bedeutung. In einer Reihe von Ländern, wie z. B. in Kanada, den Niederlanden und in Skandinavien ist es erlaubt, Personenkennziffern in der amtlichen Statistik zu führen und mit deren Hilfe exakte Zuordnungen zwischen korrespondierenden Register- und Stichprobeneinheiten herzustellen. Dadurch lassen sich Stichprobenschätzungen mittels Registerdaten als Hilfsinformationen entscheidend verbessern. In vielen anderen Ländern ist eine solche Art einer exakten Verbindung von Stichproben- und Registerdaten wegen bestehender Datenschutzgesetze nicht zulässig. Dieser Aufsatz behandelt Möglichkeiten, Schätzungen aus Stichprobendaten unter Zuhilfenahme einer speziellen Hilfsvariablen sowie aggregierter Registerdaten zu verbessern, ohne die Datenschutzbestimmungen zu verletzen. Im deutschen Mikrozensus wird eine Variable erhoben, die parallel zu den Registerdaten der Bundesanstalt in Nürnberg, Informationen über die Arbeitslosigkeit in Form von Stichprobendaten bereitstellt. Eine Zuordnung dieser Stichprobendaten zu den Registerdaten ist jedoch aus Datenschutzgründen direkt nicht gestattet. Dennoch können diese Daten als Hilfsvariablenwerte eingesetzt werden. Am Beispiel der Schätzung von Erwerbslosenzahlen im deutschen Mikrozensus unter Berücksichtigung der Registerdaten der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit wird die oben skizzierte Methode vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse einer zugehörigen Monte-Carlo-Studie weisen komparativ die Wirksamkeit der Verwendung der Hilfsinformationen auf verschiedenen Aggregationsniveaus nach. Mit Hilfe unterschiedlicher Szenarios wird der Einfluss der Qualität der zusätzlichen Variablen im Mikrozensus auf die Effizienz der Schätzung untersucht. Dieses Beispiel empfiehlt das Modell auf vergleichbare durch den Datenschutz restringierte Fälle zu übertragen, um verbesserte Stichprobenschätzungen in der Praxis zu gewinnen.