Open Access

This paper discusses a model of vertical and horizontal product differentiation within the Dixit-Stiglitz framework of monopolistic competition. Firms compete not only in prices and horizontal attributes of their products, but also in the quality that can be controlled by R&D activities. Based upon the results of a general equilibrium model, intra-sectoral trade and the welfare implications of public intervention in terms of research promotion are considered. The analysis involves a numerical application to ten basic European industries.

"Sustainable development: enough for everyone, forever" is the definition of sustainability. Sustainable landscape development is the main goal of decision makers worldwide. Achieving this goal in the long term leads to achieving social, economic and environmental sustainability. Remote sensing has been playing an essential role in monitoring remote areas. This study has employed part of the role of remote sensing in supporting the direction of decision makers towards sustainable landscape development. The study has focused on some of the main elements affecting sustainable environment as stated in Agenda 21. These elements are land uses, specifically agricultural land uses, water quality, forests, and water hazards such as floods. Three research programs were undertaken to investigate the role of Terrasar-x imagery, as a source of remote sensing data, in monitoring the environment and achieving the previous stated elements. The investigation was intended to investigate the effectiveness of TSX imagery in identifying the cropping pattern of selected study areas by employing a pixel-based supervised maximum likelihood classifier, as published in Paper I, assessment of the efficiency of using TSX imagery in determining land use and the flood risk maps by applying an object-based decision tree classifier as published in Paper II, and determination of the potential of inferential statistics tests such as the two samples Z-test and multivariate analysis, for example Factor Analysis, for identifying the kind of forest canopy, based on the backscattering coefficient of TSX imagery of forest plots, as presented in Paper III. Papers I and II covered two pilot areas in the Lower Saxonian Elbe Valley Biosphere Reserve “das Biosphärenreservat „Niedersächsische Elbtalaue„ around Walmsburger Werder between Elbe-Kilometer 533 - 543 and Wehninger Werder between Elbe-Kilometer 505 - 520. Paper III focused on the Fuhrberger Feld water protection area near Hanover in Germany. The inputs for this research were mainly SAR Imagery and the ground truth data collected from field surveys, in addition to databases, geo-databases and maps. The study presented in Paper I used two filters to decrease speckle noise namely De-Grandi as multi-temporal speckle filter, and Lee as an adaptive filter. A multi-temporal classification method was used to identify the different crops using a pixel-based maximum likelihood classifier. The classification accuracy was assessed based on the external user accuracy for each crop, the external producer accuracy for each crop, the Kappa index and the external total accuracy for the entire classification. Three cropping pattern maps were produced namely the cropping pattern map of Wehninger Werder in 2011 and the cropping pattern maps of Walmsburger Werder in 2010 and in 2011. The study showed that image filtering was essential for enhancing the accuracy of crop classification. The multi-temporal filter De-Grandi enhanced the producer accuracy by about 10% compared to the Lee filter. Furthermore, gathering and utilizing large ground truth data greatly enhanced the accuracy of the classification. The research verified that using sequence images covering the growing season usually improved the classification results. The results exposed the effect of the polarization, where using VV-polarized data enabled on average 5% higher classification accuracy than the HH-polarized data, however using dual polarized data enhanced the classification accuracy by 3%. The study demonstrated that the majority of the classifications produced according to the crop calendar had higher total producer accuracy than using all acquisitions. The study demonstrated undertaken in Paper II applied the decision tree object-based classifier in determining the major land uses and the inundation extent areas in 2011 and 2013 using the Lee-filtered imagery. Based on the maps produced for the land uses and inundation areas, the hazard areas due to the floods in 2011 and 2013 were identified. The study illustrated that 95% of the inundated area was classified correctly, that 90% of vegetated lands were accurately determined, and around 80% of the forest and the residential areas were correctly recognized. The study demonstrated that the residential areas did not experience any hazards in both pilot areas, however some cultivated lands were fully or partially submerged in 2011. These fields are in the high flood zone and therefore are expected to be entirely submerged during future high floods. Although, these fields were flooded in January 2011, they were cultivated with maize and potatoes in summer 2011 and in subsequent years and consequently were inundated in June 2013 with high economic losses to the owners of these fields. The research undertaken in Paper III statistically analyzed the backscattering coefficient of the Lee-filtered TSX in some forest plots by the Factor Analysis and two sample Z-test. The study showed that Factor analysis tools succeeded in differentiating between the coniferous forest and the deciduous forest and mixed forest, but failed to discriminate between the deciduous and the mixed forest. On one hand, only one factor was extracted for each sample plot of the coniferous forest with approximately equal loadings during the whole acquisition period from March 2008 to January 2009. On the other hand, two factors were extracted for each deciduous or mixed forest sample plot, where one factor had high loadings during the leaf-on period from May to October, and the other one had high loadings during the leaf-off period from November to April. Furthermore, the research revealed that the two sample Z-test enabled not only differentiation between the deciduous and the mixed forest against the coniferous forest, but also discrimination between deciduous forest and the mixed forest. Statistically significant differences were observed between the mean backscatter values of the HH-polarized acquisitions for the deciduous forest and the mixed forest during the leaf-off period, but no statistically significant difference was found during the leaf-on period. Moreover, plot samples for the deciduous forest had slightly higher mean backscattering coefficients than those for the mixed forest during the leaf-off period.

This doctoral thesis contributes to the vibrant discourse on boundary-crossing collaboration in the German teacher education system. It offers theoretical advancements, programmatic guidelines, and empirical findings which advocate for a transdisciplinary perspective. In order to do so, the framing paper critically links persistent challenges and current reform processes in the teacher education system with theoretical foundations and conceptual positions of transdisciplinarity. Against this backdrop, four articles provide further insights on: a) how to expand the prevalent systematic of innovation and transfer approaches (top-down, bottom-up, cooperative) by a transdisciplinary perspective, b) outlining guiding principles for the realization of transdisciplinary collaboration in the context of a boundary-crossing research and development project, c) providing empirical findings on effect relationships between transdisciplinary dimensions of integration characteristics, and d) identifying empirical types of actors based on specific assessment patterns towards these characteristics. Keywords Boundary-Crossing Collaboration; Innovation and Transfer Strategies; Integration; Teacher Education; Theory-Practice Interrelation; Transdisciplinarity

The global food system faces many complex challenges, and there is general agreement that a transformation is needed. While localizing food has been proposed as a means to this end, changing global food supply chains may also lead to sustainable food systems. Because most food systems today have an international dimension and are likely to remain connected, on one way or another, to other ones across the globe, it is necessary to find solutions to problems such as exploitation or environmental degradation. Current approaches such as Fairtrade certification often result, however, only in incremental change, and it is not clear how the current system could be transformed to make it sustainable. Addressing this challenge and the related gap in the literature, this study examines the emerging practices of small intermediary food businesses, which act between agricultural producers and consumers, and may have the potential to advance sustainability in international food supply. Including a systematic review of the literature on food systems change (Study#1), this dissertation adopts a transformational sustainability research methodology, which is solutionoriented, aims to integrate system, target and transformation knowledge, and is characterized by a transdisciplinary research practice. It conceptualizes challenges of international food supply and empirically investigates entrepreneurial solution approaches to address these challenges (Study#2). Two transdisciplinary research projects with small coffee businesses located in Germany, Mexico, and the U.S. were conducted to examine how these approaches could be implemented (Study#3, Study#4, Workshop reports 1+2). This study shows that challenges in international food supply chains can be conceptualized as negative effects of large geographical and relational distances. It also identifies five entrepreneurial solution approaches specified by twelve sustainability-oriented design principles to address these negative effects. Creating relational proximity between supply chain actors, that is, strong relationships based on knowledge and care, seems to be a key factor to advance sustainability in international food supply.The results also suggest that by building such strong relationships and changing the fundamental principles of international food trade (e.g. putting people before profits), small intermediary businesses could be important agents in food system transformations. The findings also highlight the importance of collaboration with peers in local networks, in which new sustainable business practices could be shared and disseminated. Transdisciplinary collaborations involving both researchers and small food businesses could result in innovative solutions and, ultimately, a transformation of food systems. Although the small-sized businesses examined here are already highly committed to sustainability, this study has important implications for researchers and practitioners, including individual entrepreneurs, who aim to advance sustainability in international food supply.

General Mental Ability, the Big Five, and several context specific variables are studied in regard to their relationship with two criteria of expatriate success, namely, adjustment and job performance. Interviews and standardized tests were conducted with a sample of 66 German and Austrian expatriates in South Korea. Results show no relationship with General Mental Ability for neither of the two criteria. Hypotheses for Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability were partially confirmed; Extraversion emerged to be negatively related to other-ratings of adjustment. Several context specific variables were found to be related to the criteria. Drawing from the study’s results, recommendations for future studies in the expatriate domain are provided.

This dissertation concerns the question of how economics can contribute to the analysis of trade-offs between values (or normative objectives). The analysis is illustrated for the case of policies that pursue the goal of sustainability. Methodologically, this is done by reflecting economic concepts in light of philosophical theories and using generic models to analyze trade-offs between particular values. In sum, the work shows how economics can help in analyzing the factual relationships between values by clarifying the set of feasible acts and outcomes. The first paper of this cumulative dissertation concerns the question what a general definition of efficiency with respect to normative objective implies about relationships between two values. In order to conceptualize relationships between values carefully, the analysis distinguishes instrumental from intrinsic values and discusses the question whether there is one intrinsic value (value monism) or many intrinsic values (value pluralism). Next, a small economic model is used to show that there can be different relationships between values such as win-win relationships and trade-offs in value-efficient states if there are three or more values. Further, the distinction between Pareto-efficiency (based on individual preferences) and value-efficiency (which can also include non-preference values) is used to study relationships between values. The second paper uses the definition of sustainability as inter- and intragenerational justice to discuss the relationship between these two objectives. The general aim of this paper is to discuss what economic concepts can contribute to the discussion of tradeoffs between justices. For this, a syntax of the concept of justice is employed, different relationships between justices are defined and economic concepts such as scarcity, efficiency and opportunity costs are transferred to the justice context. One result from this analysis is that there must be a trade-off between these two justices in such respective efficient outcomes. The third paper concerns an intertemporal mechanism leading to the well-known equity-efficiency trade-off in an intergenerational setting. For this, two central characteristics of intergenerational policy making are taken into account: irreversibility and ignorance (or unawareness). A pertinent example is the irreversible use of fossil fuels before and after the discovery of the effect of CO2 emissions on climate change. The trade-off between Pareto-efficiency and intergenerational equity that results from these two characteristics is shown in a model with two non-overlapping generations which use a non-renewable resource. In the model there is initial unawareness about an intergenerational externality from resource use that is only discovered after the irreversible use of the resource. A central result of the paper is the trade-off between intergenerational equity and efficiency that emerges if initially unknown sustainability problems arise after irreversible policies have been enacted. The fourth paper concerns the question what the concept of merit goods can contribute to discussions of sustainability. For this, the history of the concept is discussed, then merit goods are defined and connected to the philosophical literature on different conceptions of well-being. In the next step different challenges and opportunities of merit good arguments are discussed for the sustainability context. For example, it becomes clear that merit good arguments concern conceptions of well-being and do not directly concern the aspect of intergenerational distribution in sustainability problems.

Since the middle of the 20th century, human society experiences a “Great Acceleration” manifesting in historically remarkable growth rates that create severe sustainability problems. The globally exploding potentials of information and knowledge exchange have been and are vital drivers for this acceleration. Society has now come to the point that it requires a “Great Transformation” towards sustainability to ensure the viability of the planet for a vital society. The energy transition plays a central role for this transformation. In this context, human society has developed a comparably good understanding of the necessary infrastructural changes of this transition. For transforming the patterns of energy production and use in an energy transition as part of the “Great Transformation”, this process of change now needs to strengthen its focus on information, communication, and knowledge systems. Human society needs to establish a knowledge system that has the potential to create usable knowledge for sustainability solutions. This requires organizing a communication system that is sufficiently complex, interconnected, and, at the same time, efficient for integrating reflexive, open-ended, inter- and transdisciplinary learning, evaluation, and knowledge co-production processes across multiple levels. This challenge opens a wide field of research. This cumulative dissertation contributes to research in this direction by applying a systemic sustainability perspective on the content and organization of communication in the field of research on sustainable energy and the operational level of municipal climate action as part of the energy transition. Regarding sustainability, this thesis uses strong sustainability and its principles as a frame for evaluating the content of communication. Regarding the systemic perspective, the thesis particularly relies on the following theories: (i) the human-environment system model by R. Scholz as an overarching framework regarding interactions between humans and nature, (ii) social systems theory by N. Luhmann to reflect the complexity of society, (iii) knowledge management to consider the human character of knowledge and a practice-oriented perspective, and (iv) management cybernetics, in particular, the Viable System Model by S. Beer as a framework to analyze and assess organizational structures. Furthermore, the thesis leverages the potential of text mining as a method to identify and visualize patterns in texts that reflect prevalent paradigms in communication. The thesis applies the above conceptual and methodological basis in three case studies. Case Study 1 investigates the measures proposed in 16 municipal climate action plans of regional centers in Lower Saxony, Germany. It uses a text mining approach in the form of an Summary interpretation network analysis. It analyzes how different societal subsystems are connected at the semantic level and to what extent sustainability principles can be recognized. Case Study 2 analyzes and reflects paradigms and discursive network structures in international scientific publications on sustainable energy. The study investigates 26533 abstracts published from 1990 to 2016 using a text mining approach, in particular topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation. Case Study 3 turns again to the cases of municipal climate action in Lower Saxony examined in Case Study 1. It examines the involvement of climate action managers of these cities in multilevel knowledge processes. Using design principles for knowledge systems, it evaluates to what extent knowledge is managed in this field across levels for supporting the energy transition and to what extent local innovation potential is leveraged or supported. The three case studies show that international research on sustainable energy and municipal climate action in Germany provide promising contributions to achieve a transformation towards sustainability but do not fully reflect the complexity of society and still support a growth paradigm, in contrast to a holistic sustainability paradigm. Further, the case studies show that research and local action are actively engaging with the diversity of energy technologies but are lagging in dealing with the socio-epistemic (communication) system, especially with regard to achieving cohesion. Using the example of German municipalities, Case Studies 1 and 3 highlight the challenges of achieving coherent local action for sustainability and bottom-up organizational learning due to incomplete or uncoordinated multilevel knowledge exchange. At the same time, the studies also point out opportunities for supporting the required coherent multilevel learning processes based on local knowledge. This can be achieved, for instance, by strengthening the coordinating role of intermediary organizational units or establishing closer interactions between the local operational units and the national level. The thesis interprets and synthesizes the results of the three case studies from its systemic sustainability perspective. On this basis, it provides several generalized recommendations that should be followed for establishing viable communication systems, especially but not exclusively in policy-making: Systemic holism: Consider matter, energy, and information flows as an integrated triplet in the context of scales, structures, and time in the various subsystems. Knowledge society: Focus on the socio-epistemic (communication) system, e.g., using the perspective of knowledge systems and associated design principles considering, for instance, working environments across horizontal and vertical levels, knowledge forms and types, and knowledge processes. Sufficiency communication: Emphasize sufficiency approaches, make it attractive, and find differentiated ways for communicating them. Multilevel cohesion and innovation: Achieve cohesion between the local and higher levels and leverage local innovations while avoiding isolated local action. Organizational interface design: Define the role of organizational units by the interactions they create at the interfaces with and between societal subsystems. Local transdisciplinarity: Support local transdisciplinary approaches integrating various subsystems, especially industry, while coordinating these approaches from a higher level for leveraging local innovation. Digital public system: Exploit existing digital technologies or infrastructures in the public system and recognize the value of data in the public sphere for achieving cohesion. Beyond the above recommendations, this thesis suggests that potential for further research lies in: Advancing nature-inspired systemic frameworks. Understanding the structure and creation of human knowledge. Developing text mining methodologies towards solution-oriented approaches.

Web 2.0 is a common term in the Internet field nowadays. On the consumer market services like Youtube or MySpace, which stand for the Internet of the second generation, have attracted attention. Web 2.0, which is sometimes also called participation web, already motivates millions of people to contribute. Web 2.0 could also be used to improve enterprise information technology. Therefore the use of Web 2.0 concepts in an enterprise context seems worth considering.

Using unique new data and a recently introduced non-linear decomposition technique this paper shows that the huge difference in the propensity to export between West and East German plants is to a large part due to differences in firm size and human capital intensity.

The smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia support a unique biodiversity with great importance to local livelihoods and high global conservation value. These landscapes, however, are severely threatened by deforestation, forest degradation and the adverse effects of farmland management regimes. These changes have fundamentally altered the structure of the landscapes and threaten their biodiversity and ecosystem services. Managing biodiversity and related services in such rapidly changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the effects of land use change and the reliance of local communities on biodiversity. This dissertation examines woody plant biodiversity patterns and services and presents several recommendations regarding biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. Using a social-ecological systems approach, I conducted four studies on the complex interactions of local people and woody plant diversity. First, I investigated the effects of human-induced forest degradation on woody plant species. My results suggest that forest biodiversity has been affected by the combined effects of coffee management intensity, landscape context and history at the local and landscape level. Specifically, richness of forest specialist species significantly has decreased with coffee management intensity and in secondary compared to old growth forests, but increased with current distance from forest edge in both primary and secondary forests. These findings highlight the need to maintain undisturbed forest sites to conserve forest biodiversity. Second, I examined legacy effects of past agricultural land use on woody plant biodiversity. My results show that historical distance seems to be the most important variable affecting woody plant composition and distribution in farmland sections of the landscapes. I found evidence for immigration credits for generalist and pioneer species but not for extinction debts for forest specialist species which might be rapidly paid off in farmland. The results suggest not only an unrecognized conservation value of old farmland but also a disturbing loss of forest specialist species. To slow this trend, it is necessary to shift to a cultural landscape development approach and to restore forest specialist species in the landscapes. Third, I evaluated the supply of potential multiple ecosystem services and the relationships between the diversity of woody plant and ecosystem service in the three major land use types, namely forests with and without coffee management and farmland. The results revealed a high multifunctionality of landscapes and showed that ecosystem services significantly increase with woody plant diversity in all types of land use. These findings suggest that the woody plant diversity and multifunctionality in southwestern Ethiopian landscapes has to be maintained. Fourth, I explored farmers’ woody plant use to assess their dependency on and maintenance of woody plants and also considered the influence of property rights and management in this context. I found that local farmers used 95 species for eleven major purposes from all major land uses across the landscapes. I also found that most of the widely used tree species regenerated successfully throughout the landscapes, including in farmland. Local people felt, however, that their property and tree use rights were limited, especially in forests, and that some of the most widely used plant species, including important timber species, appeared to have been overharvested in forests. The results suggest that many species are important for local livelihoods, but a perceived low sense of property rights also seems to adversely affect the management of woody plants, particularly in forests. By focusing on woody plants and their ecosystem services to local people, this dissertation documents a dramatic loss of native forest biodiversity and rapid changes in the cultural landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. This study also reveals low levels of perceived property and tree use rights by local people, particularly when it comes to forests, and the present overharvesting of important tree species in forests in particular. This dissertation also highlights current value of the multifunctionality of the landscapes examined here, the increase in ecosystem services diversity with increasing woody plant biodiversity and the importance of woody plant species for local livelihoods. Overall, my findings suggest the need for preservation of intact forest sites and for cultural landscapes development to safeguard biodiversity and multifunctionality of the landscapes in the future. This, in turn, requires holistic and integrated approaches that involve local people and recognize their basic needs of woody plants and their property rights to foster the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Maintaining primary forests in and using cultural landscape approaches to the rapidly changing rural setting of southwestern Ethiopia would also contribute to the global effort to halt biodiversity loss.

Using OLS and quantile regression methods and rich cross-section data sets for western and eastern Germany, this paper demonstrates that the impact of works council presence on labor productivity varies between manufacturing and services, between plants that are or are not covered by collective bargaining, and along the conditional distribution of labor productivity. No productivity effects of works councils are found for the service sector and in manufacturing plants not covered by collective bargaining. Besides demonstrating that it is important to look at evidence based on more than one data set, our empirical findings point to the efficacy of supplementing OLS with quantile regression estimates when investigating the behavior of heterogeneous plants.