Macedonian economy has been an underdeveloped economy for a number of years. Formal aspects of the organizational culture were not introduced in the local organizations. However, through the decades, the concept of strong culture, based on the values of the leaders, has been present. The goal of...

Management scientists have been trying to identify the impact of various external and internal aspects on organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Some of them focused on cultural, psychological and “internal sociological issues, others on environmental issues, market trends, and strategic...

The concept of job satisfaction has intrigued a debate that has extended outside the academic community and into the business and government sphere. Both academics and public managers agree that the existence of participative management improves job satisfaction of public administration...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...

The continuing trend of increasing frequency and severity of losses from natural and man-made-catastrophes during the last decades has drawn attention to catastrophe risk management. Considering the loss potential of catastrophic events, the private insurance markets' capacity does not seem to...