Erstellung einer Blitzschutzrichtlinie für die Produktpalette der FAM im Auftrag der "Gesellschaft für Prozeßautomation mbH" (GPA)"

On the basis of the global use of the FAM installations and systems, their location, type and height, a lightning protection system is required, which protects humans and machines from danger of a lightning. At the beginning the development, the threat and the potential for destruction of lightning are described. Besides the resulting solid normative calculation models and tables are presented. Then, the product portfolio of the FAM is characterized. From this demonstration models are selected; on the one hand a model for the totality of all portable devices and the other hand a model which defines the power plants. Subsequently, the risk management and a strengths and weaknesses analysis are performed. After that, with graphical and mathematical models, these weaknesses as well as the functional equipotential bonding and grounding system and its dimensioning are investigated and solutions are demonstrated. The following is a coordination of lightning protection standard with other directives and standards in order to classify the resulting internal lightning protection and protective measures against electromagnetic pulse and to generate a uniform protection and application platform. Furthermore, problems of the economy of protective circuit is shown and a solution is given. Finally, the indicated possible solutions are replaced by definitions. The main classification and structure of lightning protection directive are shown and exemplarily applied.

Internal promotion versus external recruitment: evidence in industrial plants

An analysis is carried out in a sample of 738 industrial plants of the determining factors in the use of internal promotion of blue-collar workers to middle managers and skilled technicians as against their external recruitment. The use of internal promotion is positively correlated with variables indicative of the efforts made by plants to measure employees' skills, and to a lesser extent, with the level of specificity of investments in human capital made by blue-collar workers. Contrary to what was expected, variables related with the use and efficiency of other incentive systems have no significant influence on the increased or decreased use of internal promotion. These results are initial evidence that internal promotions are used to protect and favour specific investments, especially those made by firms in order to discover their workers' skills.

The optimal behaviour of firms facing stochastic costs

This paper aims at assessing the optimal behavior of a firm facing stochastic costs of production. In an imperfectly competitive setting, we evaluate to what extent a firm may decide to locate part of its production in other markets different from which it is actually settled. This decision is taken in a stochastic environment. Portfolio theory is used to derive the optimal solution for the intertemporal profit maximization problem. In such a framework, splitting production between different locations may be optimal when a firm is able to charge different prices in the different local markets.

Endogenous capacity utilization and the asymmetric effects of monetary policy

This paper investigates the role of variable capacity utilization as a source of asymmetries in the relationship between monetary policy and economic activity within a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework. The source of the asymmetry is directly linked to the bottlenecks and stock-outs that emerge from the existence of capacity constraints in the real side of the economy. Money has real effects due to the presence of rigidities in households' portfolio decisions in the form of a Luces-Fuerst 'limited participation' constraint. The model features variable capacity utilization rates across firms due to demand uncertainty. A monopolistic competitive structure provides additional effects through optimal mark-up changes. The overall message of this paper for monetary policy is that the same actions may have different effects depending on the capacity utilization rate of the economy.

Financial integration, productivity and capital accumulation

Understanding the mechanism through which financial globalization affects economic performance is crucial for evaluating the costs and benefits of opening financial markets. This paper is a first attempt at disentangling the effects of financial integration on the two main determinants of economic performance: productivity (TFP) and investments. I provide empirical evidence from a sample of 93 countries observed between 1975 and 1999. The results suggest that financial integration has a positive direct effect on productivity, while it spurs capital accumulation only with some delay and indirectly, since capital follows the rise in productivity. I control for indirect effects of financial globalization through banking crises. Such episodes depress both investments and TFP, though they are triggered by financial integration only to a minor extent.

Nuclear Weapons as Symbols. The Role of Norms in Nuclear Policy Making

Throughout history, nuclear weapons have been considered to be the ultimate weapons. This understanding largely detached them from the portfolio of conventional military means and assigned them a symbolic meaning that influenced the identity and norms creation of nations. In most countries today, the development of nuclear weapons is considered morally prohibitive, incompatible with a country’s identity and international outlook. In some states, however, these negative norms are overridden by a positive set of norms, causing nuclear weapons to become either symbols of invulnerability to perceived threats or the regalia of major power status. Main purpose of this paper is to explore on the conditions that cause most states to develop a moral aversion to nuclear weapons, yet effectively lead to their glorification in others. Many studies on the normative understanding of nuclear weapons consider the existence of a negative normative predisposition, often referred to as ‘nuclear taboo’, as a major factor in preventing their acquisition and use. Other studies acknowledge the existence of a nuclear taboo inhibiting the use of nuclear weapons, but point to the existence of the opposing effect of norms, frequently referred to as the ‘nuclear myth’, when it comes to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. This myth emerges when certain symbolic meanings are attached to nuclear weapons, such as a state’s identity, self-image, and its desired position in the international system. With 180 odd countries in the world abstaining from the acquisition of nuclear weapons and 8 countries in possession of them (with two further countries assumed to have pursued their acquisition), one might consider the dominance of the nuclear taboo over the nuclear myth to be the rule. The core question is thus why and how this relationship reversed in the case of defectors.

Inter-group conflict and intra-group punishment in an experimental contest game

We study how conflict in a contest game is influenced by rival parties being groups and by group members being able to punish each other. Our main motivation stems from the analysis of socio-political conflict. The relevant theoretical prediction in our setting is that conflict expenditures are independent of group size and independent of whether punishment is available or not. We find, first, that our results contradict the independence of group-size prediction: conflict expenditures of groups are substantially larger than those of individuals, and both are substantially above equilibrium. Towards the end of the experiment material losses in groups are 257% of the predicted level. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity in the investment behaviour of individual group members. Second, allowing group members to punish each other after individual contributions to the contest effort are revealed leads to even larger conflict expenditures. Now material losses are 869% of the equilibrium level and there is much less heterogeneity in individual group members' investments. These results contrast strongly with those from public goods experiments where punishment enhances efficiency and leads to higher material payoffs.

The biophysical perspective of a middle income economy: material flows in Mexico

We analyse natural resource use dynamics in the Mexican economy during the last three decades. Despite low and uneven economic growth, the extraction and use of materials in the Mexican economy has continuously increased during the last 30 years. In this period, population growth rather than economic growth was the main driving force for biophysical growth. In addition, fundamental changes have taken place in the primary sectors, in manufacturing, and in household consumption and these are reflected in an increasing emphasis on the use of fossil fuels and construction materials. Mexico’s economy has been strongly influenced by international trade since the country commenced competing in international markets. In the 1970s, Mexico mainly exported primary resources. This pattern has changed and manufactured goods now have a much greater importance due to a boom in assembling industries. In contrast with other Latin American countries, Mexico has achieved a diversification of production, moving towards technology-intensive products and a better mix in its export portfolio. However, crude oil exports still represent the single most important export good. Mexico’s material consumption is still well below the OECD average but is growing fast and the current resource use patterns may well present serious social and environmental problems to the medium and long term sustainability of Mexico’s economy and community. Information on natural resource use and resource productivity could provide valuable guidance for economic policy planning in Mexico.

In Search of a theory of debt management

A growing literature integrates theories of debt management into models of optimal fiscal policy. One promising theory argues that the composition of government debt should be chosen so that fluctuations in the market value of debt offset changes in expected future deficits. This complete market approach to debt management is valid even when the government only issues non-contingent bonds. A number of authors conclude from this approach that governments should issue long term debt and invest in short term assets. We argue that the conclusions of this approach are too fragile to serve as a basis for policy recommendations. This is because bonds at different maturities have highly correlated returns, causing the determination of the optimal portfolio to be ill-conditioned. To make this point concrete we examine the implications of this approach to debt management in various models, both analytically and using numerical methods calibrated to the US economy. We find the complete market approach recommends asset positions which are huge multiples of GDP. Introducing persistent shocks or capital accumulation only worsens this problem. Increasing the volatility of interest rates through habits partly reduces the size of these simulations we find no presumption that governments should issue long term debt ? policy recommendations can be easily reversed through small perturbations in the specification of shocks or small variations in the maturity of bonds issued. We further extend the literature by removing the assumption that governments every period costlessly repurchase all outstanding debt. This exacerbates the size of the required positions, worsens their volatility and in some cases produces instability in debt holdings. We conclude that it is very difficult to insulate fiscal policy from shocks by using the complete markets approach to debt management. Given the limited variability of the yield curve using maturities is a poor way to substitute for state contingent debt. The result is the positions recommended by this approach conflict with a number of features that we believe are important in making bond markets incomplete e.g allowing for transaction costs, liquidity effects, etc.. Until these features are all fully incorporated we remain in search of a theory of debt management capable of providing robust policy insights.

Three essays on the psychology of investment and financial markets

Préface My thesis consists of three essays where I consider equilibrium asset prices and investment strategies when the market is likely to experience crashes and possibly sharp windfalls. Although each part is written as an independent and self contained article, the papers share a common behavioral approach in representing investors preferences regarding to extremal returns. Investors utility is defined over their relative performance rather than over their final wealth position, a method first proposed by Markowitz (1952b) and by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), that I extend to incorporate preferences over extremal outcomes. With the failure of the traditional expected utility models in reproducing the observed stylized features of financial markets, the Prospect theory of Kahneman and Tversky (1979) offered the first significant alternative to the expected utility paradigm by considering that people focus on gains and losses rather than on final positions. Under this setting, Barberis, Huang, and Santos (2000) and McQueen and Vorkink (2004) were able to build a representative agent optimization model which solution reproduced some of the observed risk premium and excess volatility. The research in behavioral finance is relatively new and its potential still to explore. The three essays composing my thesis propose to use and extend this setting to study investors behavior and investment strategies in a market where crashes and sharp windfalls are likely to occur. In the first paper, the preferences of a representative agent, relative to time varying positive and negative extremal thresholds are modelled and estimated. A new utility function that conciliates between expected utility maximization and tail-related performance measures is proposed. The model estimation shows that the representative agent preferences reveals a significant level of crash aversion and lottery-pursuit. Assuming a single risky asset economy the proposed specification is able to reproduce some of the distributional features exhibited by financial return series. The second part proposes and illustrates a preference-based asset allocation model taking into account investors crash aversion. Using the skewed t distribution, optimal allocations are characterized as a resulting tradeoff between the distribution four moments. The specification highlights the preference for odd moments and the aversion for even moments. Qualitatively, optimal portfolios are analyzed in terms of firm characteristics and in a setting that reflects real-time asset allocation, a systematic over-performance is obtained compared to the aggregate stock market. Finally, in my third article, dynamic option-based investment strategies are derived and illustrated for investors presenting downside loss aversion. The problem is solved in closed form when the stock market exhibits stochastic volatility and jumps. The specification of downside loss averse utility functions allows corresponding terminal wealth profiles to be expressed as options on the stochastic discount factor contingent on the loss aversion level. Therefore dynamic strategies reduce to the replicating portfolio using exchange traded and well selected options, and the risky stock.

Is sociality driven by the costs of dispersal or the benefits of philopatry? A role for kin-discrimination mechanisms.

The role of ecological constraints in promoting sociality is currently much debated. Using a direct-fitness approach, we show this role to depend on the kin-discrimination mechanisms underlying social interactions. Altruism cannot evolve under spatially based discrimination, unless ecological constraints prevent complete dispersal. Increasing constraints enhances both the proportion of philopatric (and thereby altruistic) individuals and the level of altruistic investments conceded in pairwise interactions. Familiarity-based discrimination, by contrast, allows philopatry and altruism to evolve at significant levels even in the absence of ecological constraints. Increasing constraints further enhances the proportion of philopatric (and thereby altruistic) individuals but not the level of altruism conceded. Ecological constraints are thus more likely to affect social evolution in species in which restricted cognitive abilities, large group size, and/or limited period of associative learning force investments to be made on the basis of spatial cues.

Economic effects of road accessibility in the Pyrenees: user perspective

At present, Spain faces one of the key moments in planning the future design of the infrastructure network. As a consequence of the critical role played by haulage in intra-European trade, the most important investments are those that guarantee that road haulage traffic can move freely at the borders. That is why it is necessary to make serious evaluations of the economic and social profitability of these investments. Normally the most significant social benefit of investment projects in transport infrastructure is time saving, which in turn changes traffic intensity. In this article we analyse the changes in the user excess caused by public investment in transport infrastructure planned by the Spanish government and which will be located on the border between Spain and France. In particular, we study the increase in network user surplus for HGV traffic in the Spanish and French border zones in the Pyrenees.

Gestión de cambios y proyectos

Moltes inversions corporatives actuals són destinades a la millora de la gestió del canvi. Aquestes inversions són motivades per una carència històrica entre el conjunt recursos humans i les noves tecnologies tal com va reflexar l'estudi del MIT en 1992. L’objectiu del projecte és analitzar la gestió del canvi i projectes des d’un put de vista poc conegut per els enginyers. Direcció de l'equip humà, Procés de qualitat industrial, Programació extrema, Anàlisi de la cobertura dels Sistemes d’informació d’una companyia segons la seva estructura i estratègia empresarial, El mercat i les seves forces competitives, el retorn de la inversió, el cicle PDCA d’un projecte d’inversió, entre d’altres.

Political Risk, Economic Integration, and the Foreign Direct Investment Decision

In this paper we analyse the impact of policy uncertainty on foreign direct investment strategies. We also consider the impact of economic integration upon FDI decisions. The paper follows the real options approach, which allows investigating the value to a firm of waiting to invest and/or disinvest, when payoffs are stochastic due to political uncertainty and investments are partially reversible. Across the board we find that political uncertainty can be very detrimental to FDI decisions while economic integration leads to an increasing benefit of investing abroad.

The Global Side of the Investment-Savings Puzzle

In this paper we re-examine the long standing and puzzling correlation between national savings and investment in industrial countries. We apply an econometric methodology that allows us to separate idiosyncratic correlation at the country level from correlation at the global level. In a major break with the existing literature, we find no evidence of a long run relationship in the idiosyncratic components of savings and investment. We also find that the global components in savings and investments comove, indicating that they react to shocks of a global nature.