KREDIT und KAPITAL - Issue 2/1981


Contents


Articles

Reinhardt, Paul G. and Abner, Brian D.
Inflation-Induced Price Lags and their Redistributive Effect

Frisch, Helmut and Hof, Franz
A "Textbook"-Model of Inflation and Unemployment

Jaeger, Klaus
Economic Policy Effectiveness in Hicksian Analysis: A Note

Keinath, Karl
Die Bedeutung der Einkommenskreislaufgeschwindigkeit des Geldes für die Effizienz der Geldpolitik bei festen und flexiblen Wechselkursen

Schmidt, Reinhard H.
Grundformen der Finanzierung. Eine Anwendung des neo-institutionalistischen Ansatzes der Finanzierungstheorie


Reports

Schönwitz, Dietrich
Zunehmende Unternehmenskonzentration in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Zur bankbetrieblichen Bedeutung des dritten Hauptgutachtens der Monopolkommission


Book Reviews

Blümle/ Feninger/ Frowein/ Walch
Grundlagen der Makroökonomik
(Karl-Heinz Dignas)

Rose, Klaus
Theorie der Außenwirtschaft
(Manfred Borchert)

Kroiss, Alois
Der Eurodollarmarkt – Grundlagen, Gegenwartsproblematik und seine Bedeutung als potentielle Finanzierungsquelle für Entwicklungsländer
(Bernd Heinevetter)

Böhm, Bernhard
Geld und privater Konsum in Österreich
(Gunther Tichy)

Mously, Muaffac
Ökonometrische Preismodelle, eine theoretische und empirische Analyse
(Manfred Piel)

Jacobsson, Erin E.
A Life for Sound Money, Per Jacobsson His Biography
(Rüdiger von Rosen)


Summaries

Reinhardt, Paul G. and Abner, Brian D.
”Inflation-Induced Price Lags and their Redistributive Effect”

The present investigation suggests that redistributive effects of imperfectly synchronized price adjustments may be recognized by analyzing the periodic properties of relative price movements. The study sets out the requirements for price adjustments to be distributionally neutral. Deviations from such a neutral pattern are then interpreted as indicating redistributive gains or losses. On the basis of this approach, the results of some earlier investigations are reinterpreted as demonstrating that some sectors typically gained on others during inflation.

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Frisch, Helmut and Hof, Franz
”A "Textbook"-Model of Inflation and Unemployment”

This paper investigates the dynamic structure underlying the simple macro-economic model suggested by J. Vanderkamp and R. Dornbusch. This model allows an analysis of the interaction of a change in the rate of money supply with the rate of real growth and the rate of inflation. A "monetary impulse" affects both the rate of real growth and the rate of inflation. lt is shown that the adjustment process in the short-run (i. e. before inflationary expectations are revised) is exclusively explained by a shift in the Okun-curve, leading to a short-run equilibrium, with a reduced rate of unemployment and a higher rate of inflation. In the long-run inflationary expectations adjust according to an adaptive expectations formation process. The long-run adjustment process is characterized by a shift in both the Phillips curve and the Okun curve. This process can be modelled by a system of difference-equations of the second order. lt has been proven in the paper that this system generates cycles, but that under most plausible economic assumptions. The time-path of the rate of inflation, the rate of "expected" inflation and the rate of unemployment approaches the long-run equilibrium position with dampened oscillations. During the long-run adjustment process stagflation phenomena with a rising rate of unemployment and high rates of inflation may occur.

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Keinath, Karl
„The Significance of the Income-Velocity of Monetary for the Efficiency of Monetary Policy with Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rates“

Monetary policy is more efficient with flexible than with fixed exchange rates, since in the case of flexible exchange rates the liquidity effect is lacking and a reinforcing effect comes into play via improvement or deterioration of the balance of payments on current account. When in the course of cyclical trends the income-velocity of money exhibits fluctuations, rising during upward and declining during downward trends, it can be shown that the difference in the efficiency of monetary policy with fixed or flexible exchange rates is smaller than when the income-velocity of money is constant.

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Schmidt, Reinhard H.
„Basic Forms of Financing – An application of the neo-institutionalist approach to financing theory“

An application of the neo-institutionalist approach to financing theory The article sets out to explain why there are various forms or instruments of financing and why those forms have quite specific institutional characteristics. Financing is subdivision of participation; the various financing instruments as a whole lay down the manner in which the uncertain future returns on the financed investments will be distributed among those who provide a firm with capital. But that is not an adequate explanation of the function of financing instruments. Each financing instrument constitutes a specific combination of rights and possible actions of the capital investors, the object of which is to overcome undesired consequences of the originally asymmetrical distribution of information among investors and capital-seekers (firms). Four combinations of such rights and possible courses of action are analysed. lt can be shown that they have the following qualities: Each right and each possible action benefits investors. The granting or creating of them thus increases their willingness to provide capital, which in turn benefits the receiver. The importance of the various rights or possible actions must not be assessed in Isolation. The advantages accruing to investors from the granting of the individual rights or lines of action mutually reinforce each other, while the costs or disadvantages involved for the receiver because he has to grant individual rights and freedoms of action mutually diminish each other. The four combinations of rights and possible actions construed and discussed in the article are the four most important forms of financing in reality: participation in a partnership and in a public company, short-term borrowing without liens and long-term borrowing secured by liens.

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Reports

Schönwitz, Dietrich
„Increasing Business Concentration in the Federal Republic of Germany - On the significance of the third major opinion of the monopoly commission for banking”

In 1980, the monopoly commission submitted its third major opinion, "Merger Control Still Has High Priority", to the federal government. In addition to statistical evidence on the predominantly increasing business concentration in the industrial sector and among large firms, ventilation of the trend towards concentration in the press, of the application of the regulations concerning the supervision of abuses and merger control, and of the influences of international competition, the two-year report also deals with problems and the findings of studies immediately affecting the banking sector. One study, for instance, which covers interlacement of personnel in the hundred largest firms, shows that there is multiple membership of bank representatives in management control bodies, which results in numerous cases of interlocking directorships among large firms. The assessment of personnel interlacement from the standpoint of competition policy is still controversial. Special effects on competition due to interlocking via bank representatives might arise, if the banks, acting to safeguard their own interests in connection with their loan business, exert influence through their representatives either to combat risky competition strategies or to attain competitive advantages. A further point of significance for the banking business is the monopoly commission's proposal to introduce deconcentration possibilities as an instrument of competition policy. The banking sector is certainly directly affected as far as participations by banks in the shape of controlling interests in non-banks are concerned. It may be affected if, in the case of structure-conditioned abuses, the object is to counter personal interlacement between competitors simply because the banks contribute substantially to interlocking of firms by way of their personnel. In weighing up the various interests, however, it must be taken into account that the debate on deconcentration suggested by the monopoly commission aims at preserving functionally efficient competition and hence at safeguarding an essential Attribute of the market economy system.

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