Central bank policymakers are not primarilyrandom number generators.1 Reading boththe financial press and the work of academics,however, one might get the opposite impression.Reporters (and the readers of their stories) seem toattach considerable importance to each Federal OpenMarket Committee...

The deterioration in the financial climate over the past12 months has eroded consumers’ confidence in theirown financial security, with 58% of consumers eitherdisagreeing (33%) or disagreeing strongly (25%) thatthey feel more financially secure.This can be attributed, to some extent, to...

The state is conceptually distinct from both economy and society, with inherent interests in expanding its scope for autonomous action, asserting control over economic and social interactions, and structuring economic and social relations. These interests derive primarily from the state’s...

This paper offers one Africanist’s perspective on the question (to paraphrase Patrick O’Brien) of how, where, when and why a sample of states encouraged or restrained economic growth from recurring. The last phrase places the focus where it belongs: the issue in Sub-Saharan economic history...

Recent advances in brain research have provided new evidence thatearly experience matters and have greatly increased interest in theeffects of early childhood interventions on outcomes for children. Thispaper reviews what is now known about the potential benefits andpotential ill effects of...

This paper presents a model for investigating group decisions of managers who are imperfectlyinformed and averse to taking risks. Of primary interest is financial success for risk neutral shareholderswho have no other aim than maximizing expected profit and can therefore be treatedhomogeneously...

The productivity of (human) information processing as an economicactivity is a question raising some interest. Using Marschak’s evaluationframework, Radner and Stiglitz have shown that under certainconditions the production function of this activity has increasing marginalreturns in the...

The novel mobile application csxPOI (short for: collabora-tive, semantic, and context-aware points-of-interest) enables its usersto collaboratively create, share, and modify semantic points of interest(POI). Semantic POIs describe geographic places with explicit semanticproperties of a...

This paper analyzes the numerical impact of different surplus distribution mechanisms on the risk exposure of a life insurance company selling with profit life insurance policies with a cliquet-style interest rate guarantee. Three representative companies are considered, each using a different...

Kennzeichnet man Banken von i h r e r s p e z i e l l e n Funktionsübernahmei n e i n e r V o l k s w i r t s c h a f t her, so s t e l l t man f e s t , daß Banken,insbesondere die das B i l d des modernen deutschen Bankensystemsbeherrschenden Universalbanken (1), heute üblicherweisefolgende...