Publications

Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet drei zentrale Diskussionsbereiche mit Blick auf die Anwendung des Wettbewerbsrechts auf kommerzialisierte Sportmärkte im Allgemeinen und Märkte für den europäischen Spitzenfußball im Speziellen. Hierbei handelt es sich um die wettbewerbspolitische und sportökonomische Bewertung der Zentralvermarktung von Übertragungsrechten, der sog. 50plus1-Sonderregel im deutschen Fußball sowie die fundamentale Frage der Marktmacht von marktinternen Regulierern (z.B. UEFA oder DFB) und ihrer Begrenzung. Die Gemeinsamkeit dieser drei Diskussionsbereichen liegt in der sportspezifischen Besonderheit, dass eine (marktinterne) Regulierung in der Regel als notwendig anerkannt wird - allerdings häufig, ohne dass gleichzeitig Handlungsspielräume und Anreize für Marktmachtmissbrauch durch den marktinternen Regulierer angemessen berücksichtigt werden. Anhand der drei Beispiele werden Marktmacht, Handlungsspielraum und antikompetitive Dual-Role-Anreize von Sportverbänden diskutiert, wobei ein Hauptaugenmerk auf die Einbindung von (empirischer) sportökonomischer Evidenz gelegt wird.

Sexueller Missbrauch an Kindern findet meist durch vertraute Erwachsene statt. Zu lange wurde dieses Problem tabuisiert. Erst seit 2010 wird Missbrauch in der medialen Öffentlichkeit deutlich stärker in den Fokus und von der Politik viel ernster genommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die Thematisierung des sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs durch unterschiedliche Akteure in verschiedenen Medien. Dabei werden Chancen und Risiken anhand von Beispielen aufgezeigt.

This paper argues that regional variation in the efficiency of labor allocation among German manufacturing plants plays a critical role in explaining regional disparities in productivity. In fact, we show that over 50% of the East-West productivity gap is associated with a less efficient labor allocation in former East Germany. Yet, we also demonstrate that the mere focus on East-West comparisons hides partially large differences between the German federal states. These results suggest that regional productivity differences could be substantially narrowed by a more efficient labor allocation among plants. With respect to the underlying causes, we find evidence that the regional differences in allocative efficiency are significantly correlated with differences in export intensity, market concentration and plant size.

The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the worldwide biggest live media events and the world’s leading broadcast of an international music competition. The countries of the European Broadcasting Union participate by sending an artist (or a group of artists) to the contest and both expert juries and the television audience of all participating countries vote in a special ranking and points system to determine the eventual winner. A substantial list of cultural economics papers empirically analyzed the voting behavior of juries (consisting of music industry professionals) and audiences to identify voting biases because of cultural and political influences on the voting bodies. Due to limited data availability, this literature suffered from having to treat the national juries as a black box even though they are composed of individuals with different demographic characteristics (age, gender, etc.) and expert backgrounds (industry managers, musicians, composers, music journalists, etc.). Our analysis benefits from utilizing new data about each individual member of the jury including their role within the jury (e.g., the chairperson) as well as about their individual votes in the ESC. Therefore, for the first time, we can disentangle the voting behavior of the juries and track the voting behavior of individual jury members. Based upon a rich dataset including personal characteristics (gender, age, career/professional background, nationality, cultural heritage, etc.) of both jury members (voters) and performing artists in the contest (voting objects), we analyze whether the increasing similarity between voter (jury member) and voting object (contest performer) correlates with upward biases in terms of awarded points. In doing so, we employ the concept of Mahalanobis distance to measure similarity and employ modern econometric regression methods to derive our results. Inter alia, we identify conditions under which the similarity of jury members with contestants leads to a pro-bias in voting (across different countries). Interestingly, the professional background of jury members also significantly influences the individual voting bias, for instance, experts with classical music backgrounds display significantly less bias than presenters of radio or television programs or music journalists. Altogether, our analysis allows us to look beyond the hitherto dominating “country X is biased for/against country Y” conclusions and track voting biases on an individual level, based on personal characteristics.

When an organization implements practices within the context of new work, individual actors must translate and adapt them to their local context. These change agents thereby often encounter the paradox of being both translators and targets of change. However, how they react to such a situation, which strategies they use, and whether their reactions legitimize the implementation of new work attempts in their organization have hardly been considered so far. We filled this gap by studying middle managers translating organizational change toward more self-managing structures and other procedures that empower employees. At the same time, however, these changes make the institution of middle management redundant. Findings of a qualitative 32-month single-case study at a medium-sized firm showed that middle managers reacted with five distinct reactions. Informed by translation and institutional theory, we showed that middle managers’ intraorganizational social positions determined their reactions over time, making them either victims or phoenixes of the change process toward new forms of work. Our findings contribute to contemporary research on the implementation of self-managing organizations and help to better understand how such concepts are translated within an organization.