According to the prospect theory financial investors tend to sell winners too early and ride losers too long. Therefore, demand for financial advise should be high in a bull market and low in a bear market. Thus, we test the hypothesis whether the demand for business magazines is somehow related...

In addition to efficiency standards and consumer information, car-related taxes constitute one of three pillars of the European Commission¿s strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars. A longstanding question concerns the effectiveness of such taxes in determining the car-purchasing...

In this study, we develop a technique for estimating a firm’s expected cost of equity capital derived from analyst consensus forecasts and stock prices. Building on the work of Gebhardt/Lee/-Swaminathan (2001) and Easton/Taylor/Shroff/Sougiannis (2002), our approach allows daily estimation,...

Choosing an appropriate equivalence scale is a prerequisite for comparisons of economic well-being income distribution, inequality or poverty. This is true for country specific work or for cross-national comparisons. Researchers generally either use a country specific equivalence scale (social...

In May 2001, Germany adopted a fundamental pension reform cutting back public pensions and introducing personal pension accounts. The paper critically reviews the reform decisions and evaluates their long-term viability. It is shown that the adjustment of the Public Pension Scheme misses the...

Ostdeutschlands Regionen stellen als Bindeglied zwischen dem westlichen Europa und den mittel- und osteuropäischen Ländern für die Regionalforschung ein interessantes Forschungsobjekt dar. Hierbei ist es von herausragendem Interesse, inwieweit sich die ostdeutsche Abwanderung nach...

There is much discussion about derivatives at central banks. The main focus is on questions about the impact of the growing use of derivative instruments on the stability of the financial markets and the effectiveness ofmonetary policy measures. Irrespective ofthe answers, the information...

This paper questions traditional approaches for testing the day-of-the-week effect on stock returns. We propose an alternative approach based on the closure test principle introduced by Marcus, Peritz and Gabriel (1976), which has become very popular in Biometrics and Medical Statistics. We test...

The German Environmental Liability Law (ELL) of 1991 has introduced far-reaching civil liability for environmental damages with the aim to increase firms? efforts to prevent accidents. Previous studies find poor evidence that this goal has actually been achieved. One and a half decades after the...