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Programmed death 1 (PD-1) is known as an important factor for the development of tolerogenicity. This has been proven in chronic viral infections and different tumor models. To address the role of PD-1 and its ligand programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) in different stages of malignant melanoma, we investigated peripheral blood and tumor tissues in regard to overall survival (OS) and prognostic relevance. One hundred samples of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from HLA-A2(+) patients with malignant melanoma (Stages I-IV) were analyzed in seven color FACS combined with multimer analyses for the immunodominant epitope of Melan-A (peptide A2/Melan-A(p26-35mod) ). Corresponding formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues of primary tumor and distant organ metastases from 37 cases were analyzed by immunohistochemistry for Melan-A, PD-L1 and PD-1 expression. Compared to the total CD8(+) T cell population, PD-1 expression by A2/Melan-A(+) CD8(+) T cells was over-represented in melanoma stages III and IV (p0.001). Although elevation of PD-1(+) Melan-A(+) CD8(+) T cells had no significant influence on OS, a positive correlation was observed between PD-L1 expression on melanoma cells and OS (p = 0.05). Correlation of advanced tumor stage with increased A2/Melan-A-multimer(+) PD-1(+) T cells in the peripheral blood suggest that blocking of PD-1 could have therapeutic potential in advanced stage melanoma.

The Queen of England famously asked her economic advisers why none of them had seen it (the global financial crisis) coming. Obviously, the answer is complex, but it must include reference to the evolution of macroeconomic theory over the postwar period - from the Age of Keynes through the Friedmanian era and the return of Neoclassical economics in a particularly extreme form, and, finally, on to the New Monetary Consensus, with a new version of fine-tuning. The story cannot leave out the parallel developments in finance theory - with its efficient markets hypothesis - and in approaches to regulation and supervision of financial institutions. This paper critically examines these developments and returns to the earlier Keynesian tradition to see what was left out of postwar macro. For example, the synthesis version of Keynes never incorporated true uncertainty or unknowledge and thus deviated substantially from Keynes's treatment of expectations in chapters 12 and 17 of the General Theory. It essentially reduced Keynes to sticky wages and prices, with nonneutral money only in the case of fooling. The stagflation of the 1970s ended the great debate between Keynesians and Monetarists in favor of Milton Friedman's rules, and set the stage for the rise of a succession of increasingly silly theories rooted in pre-Keynesian thought. As Lord Robert Skidelsky (Keynes's biographer) argues, Rarely in history can such powerful minds have devoted themselves to such strange ideas. By returning to Keynes, this paper attempts to provide a new direction forward.

This review paper articulates the relationship between prediction market data and event studies, with a special focus on applications in political economy. Event studies have been used to address a variety of political economy questions - from the economic effects of party control of government to the importance of complex rules in congressional committees. However, the results of event studies are notoriously sensitive to both choices made by researchers and external events. Specifically, event studies will generally produce different results depending on three interrelated things: which event window is chosen, the prior probability assigned to an event at the beginning of the event window, and the presence or absence of other events during the event window. In this paper we show how each of these may bias the results of event studies, and how prediction markets can mitigate these biases.

This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model formulations in order to determine the performance levels of 16 departments of the University of Thessaly. Particularly, the constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) models have been applied alongside with bootstrap techniques in order to determine accurate performance measurements of the 16 departments. The study illustrates how the recent developments in efficiency analysis and statistical inference can be applied when evaluating institutional performance issues. The paper provides the efficient departments and the target values which need to be adopted from the inefficient departments in order to operate in the most productive scale size (MPSS). Moreover it provides bias corrected estimates alongside with their confidence intervals. The analysis indicates that there are strong inefficiencies among the departments, emphasizing the misallocation of resources or/and inefficient application of departments policy developments.

Dieser Beitrag rekonstruiert, wie im deutschen Sprachraum während der letzten 20 Jahre ein ganz bestimmter Ansatz zur Unternehmensethik entwickelt wurde. Rückblickend wird nachgezeichnet, (1) wie diese Unternehmensethik aus einer Wirtschaftsethik heraus entstanden ist, die als ökonomische Theorie der Moral konzeptualisiert wurde und (2) wie sie auf dieser Basis allmählich zu einer eigenständigen Subdisziplin ausgearbeitet worden ist. Vorausschauend wird überlegt, (3) wie sich diese Unternehmensethik im Rahmen des ordonomischen Forschungsprogramms zu einer allgemeinen Organisations- und Prozess-Ethik weiterentwickeln lässt. This article reconstructs the development of a specific approach to business ethics in the German literature during the last 20 years. Looking back, it sketches (1) how this business ethics evolved from economic ethics, i.e. an economic approach to moral theory, and (2) how this business ethics has been worked out as an independent subdiscipline besides economic ethics. (3) Looking forward, this article presents some thoughts how business ethics can be further developed within the ordonomic research program and how it can be elaborated as a general approach to an ethics of organizations and processes.

Gesellschaftstheoretiker wie der Soziologe Niklas Luhmann machen darauf aufmerksam, dass es in der modernen Gesellschaft zu systematischen Diskrepanzen zwischen Semantik und Sozialstruktur kommt. Solche Diskrepanzen – also Fälle, in denen Sozialstruktur und Semantik nicht zueinander passen – sind prinzipiell ambivalent. Mit ihnen verbinden sich Chancen und Risiken. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt unter der Bezeichnung „Ordonomik“ ein Forschungsprogramm vor, das solche Diskrepanzen gerade in ihrer Ambivalenz in den Mittelpunkt seiner Problemstellung rückt. Er entwickelt den ordonomischen Ansatz als eine institutionalistisch ausgerichtete Rational-Choice- Analyse der Interdependenz von Sozialstruktur und Semantik. Damit adaptiert er einen zentralen Gedanken der Luhmannschen Soziologie für eine dem methodologischen Individualismus verpflichtete Gesellschaftstheorie. Die Fruchtbarkeit dieser ordonomischen Methode zeigt sich insbesondere in der Reflexion normativer Semantiken. Dies wird in der Anwendung auf Begriffe des öffentlichen Diskurses – Freiheit, Solidarität, Verantwortung, Gerechtigkeit, Nachhaltigkeit und Corporate Citizenship – eingehend illustriert. Hierauf aufbauend skizziert der Artikel Folgerungen für die universitäre Lehre und identifiziert Ansatzpunkte für interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit. According to Niklas Luhmann's diagnosis of modernity, modern society is characterized by manifold, highly ambivalent discrepancies between semantics and social structure. Such discrepancies are ambivalent because they can both assist and impede societal development. Extending this Luhmannian argument, the article puts forward the research program of „ordonomics”. The ordonomic approach as developed here makes use of an institutional rational-choice analysis in order to systematically explore the interdependence between social structure and semantics. This approach is particularly powerful when applied to the discussion of normative categories. By this logic, the paper uses the ordonomic framework to critically reflect common notions of normative categories such as justice, solidarity, responsibility, sustainability, and corporate citizenship. Based on this analysis, the article spells out implications for the way teaching is carried out in the social sciences; it argues for a new framework of interdisciplinary cooperation and identifies potentials for mutual learning.

Dieser Beitrag stellt unter der Bezeichnung „Ordonomik“ ein Forschungsprogramm vor, das ursprünglich im Bereich der Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik entstanden ist und nunmehr allgemein gesellschaftstheoretisch als institutionalistisch ausgerichteter Rational- Choice-Ansatz zur Analyse von Interdependenzen (und Diskrepanzen) zwischen Sozialstruktur und Semantik entfaltet wird. Hierbei steht „Sozialstruktur“ für die Anreizwirkungen institutioneller Arrangements, während „Semantik“ als Sammelbegriff verwendet wird für Begriffe und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Denkkategorien. This article presents an “ordonomic” research program, the origins of which are to be found in discussions about economic ethics and business ethics. Ordonomics employs an institutional rational-choice approach that focuses on interdependencies (and discrepancies) between social structure and semantics. Here, the term “social structure” is used to denote the incentive properties of institutional arrangements, while “semantics” denotes our terms and language concepts as well as the underlying thought categories.

This paper points up the methodological inadequacy of the "student evaluation of teaching" as a research program. We do this by reference to three, interrelated arguments. The first is that the student evaluation of teaching cannot claim to capture the wisdom of a crowd because, as a research program, it fails to meet Surowiecki's conditions for the existence and articulation of the wisdom of a crowd. The second argument extends the first, by stating: (a) the "student evaluation of teaching" research program fails to provide the methodological controls needed to differentiate cause from effect, or put differently (b) the methodological underpinnings of this research program is tantamount to the misapplication of a closed-system paradigm to an open social system. The third argument has two parts. These are that this research program is predicated on: (a) a false analogy between the workings of a business and a university, and therefore (b) on a mischaracterization of the student-professor relationship. These three arguments, these three failures, suggest that the "student evaluation of teaching" research program is methodologically ill-conceived and incoherent, and therefore cannot, with any credulity, serve as a guide to the administration and governance of a university.

La grammatica si rivolge agli apprendenti del livello A1/A2 del Quadro comune di riferimento europeo, ma può essere utilizzata anche dai apprendenti dei livelli più alti, che intendono migliorare o approfondire le proprie conoscenze di base della grammatica tedesca. Il testo, strutturato secondo il principio di alternanza tra spiegazioni ed esercizi, si basa sull’approccio comunicativo all’apprendimento, offre pertanto sia nelle spiegazioni che negli esercizi esempi contestualizzati, situati all’interno dei dialoghi o delle situazioni definite.

The paper describes the exchange program in between the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee and the University of Potsdam in the field of economics. It discusses in detail the development of the program, including the problems and challenges. Additionally a brief description of the curriculum is presented. Then the future possibilities of the Transatlantic Degree Program (TDP) are discussed and the influences and problems of the Bologna process analysed.

In der Londoner U-Bahn warnen die Worte „Mind the gap!“ vor der Lücke zwischen Bahn und Bahnsteigkante. Auch die Diskrepanz zwischen Sozialstruktur und Semantik kann zum Stolperstein werden. Wenn Semantiken ihre Passgenauigkeit verlieren und den gesellschaftlichen Diskurs mit Kategorien versorgen, die den Blick auf die sozialstrukturell relevanten Probleme und Lösungsmöglichkeiten tendenziell verstellen, sind nicht nur Denk -, sondern auch Handlungsblockaden vorprogrammiert. Der Beitrag stellt unter der Bezeichnung „Ordonomik“ ein Forschungsprogramm vor, das systematisch auf diese Problemstellung fokussiert. Er entwickelt den ordonomischen Ansatz als eine institutionalistisch ausgerichtete Rational-Choice-Analyse der Interdependenz von Sozialstruktur und Semantik. Damit adaptiert er einen zentralen Gedanken der Luhmannschen Soziologie für eine dem methodologischen Individualismus verpflichtete Gesellschaftstheorie. Die Fruchtbarkeit dieser ordonomischen Methode zeigt sich insbesondere in der Reflexion normativer Semantiken. Dies wird in der Anwendung auf Begriffe des öffentlichen Diskurses – Freiheit, Solidarität, Verantwortung, Gerechtigkeit, Nachhaltigkeit und Corporate Citizenship – eingehend illustriert. Hierauf aufbauend skizziert der Artikel Folgerungen für die universitäre Lehre und identifiziert Ansatzpunkte für interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit. On the London Underground, you can hear the words “mind the gap” as a warning of the sometimes significant gap between the train door and the station platform. If unnoticed, this gap poses a serious danger of tripping. The same is true for the potential gap between social structure and semantics. As social structures rapidly change, the adjustment of semantics often lags behind. Yet, if the semantic categories used in society are no longer compatible with its social structure, it will be difficult to effectively identify and address the relevant societal problems. Extending this Luhmannian argument, the article puts forward the research program of „ordonomics”. The ordonomic approach as developed here makes use of an institutional rational-choice analysis in order to systematically explore the interdependence between social structure and semantics. This approach is particularly powerful when applied to the discussion of normative categories. By this logic, the paper uses the ordonomic framework to critically reflect common notions of normative categories such as justice, solidarity, responsibility, sustainability, and corporate citizenship. Based on this analysis, the article spells out implications for the way teaching is carried out in the social sciences; it argues for a new framework of interdisciplinary cooperation and identifies potentials for mutual learning.

Nearly 75 years ago, John Hicks introduced and formalized the concept of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour and its relation to derived demand. The resulting formula has proven very useful in understanding the derived demand for productive factors, the distribution of factor incomes, and Marshall's Four Rules. This short paper notes that a slip occurred in the original derivation, presents a modified formula, and shows that Marshall's First Rule is no longer generally valid.

A pluralist approach to economics is both necessary from anacademic as well a policy point of view. From an academicviewpoint pluralism can be understood as the outcome ofcompetition and specialization in the search for new ideasthat can deal with imperfections of the real world. From apolicy point of view a diversity of view is also desirableas it helps to spread the risk of large mistakes in policychoices. However, the present-day teaching practices andtextbooks are by and large not well suited to deal with apluralist approach. Possible routes of that can help to enrichteaching and curricula are: (1) teaching the art of economicpolicy; (2) stress teaching economics by learning from the past;(3) teach by becoming imperialist so that a conversationbetween discipline gets underway; (4) merge business andgeneral economics as the dividing line between the two isnowadays quite thin; (5) practice Reality Economics; and(6) teach basic principles (especially in the bachelors stage)in a ‘Socratesian’ manner, i.e. let students learn economicsby doing (e.g. by experimental economics or interviewingbusinessmen).

The recruitment of human peripheral blood leukocytes to sites of infection and inflammation requires the surface expression of Sialyl Lewis x glycoconjugates (SLex) on white blood cells and their interaction with E- and P-selectins on activated endothelial cells. Human ST3Gal III, ST3Gal IV and ST3Gal VI genes code for a2,3?sialyltransferases potentially involved in the biosynthesis of the SLex epitope. In order to characterize these a2,3-sialyltransferases we have cloned and sequenced RNA transcripts of these genes. Our clones have revealed an unexpected heterogeneity in transcript isoforms. Among our ST3Gal IV clones we isolated nine alternatively spliced transcripts covering the coding region of the human ST3Gal IV gene. Five of these isotranscripts have not been described before. Within our ST3Gal III clones we isolated 26 different transcripts from peripheral blood leukocytes and fetal brain, which showed a wide variety of deletions from 45 to 896 nucleotides, and insertions of 26 to 173 nucleotides. Among the insertions we identified two new exons (E3, E6). Eight of the ST3Gal III isotranscripts coded for potentially active enzymes. ST3GalVI en mening??In order to investigate if the alternatively spliced isotranscripts were specific for human peripheral blood leukocytes, we analyzed by RT-PCR and laser-induced fluorescent capillary electrophoresis (LIF-CE) the expression in twenty-one human tissues. We found a highly tissue specific expression of both ST3Gal III and ST3Gal IV isotranscripts. For the ST3Gal III gene, neural and muscular tissues showed the most complex patterns and were distinctly different from all other tissues examined.We stably transfected HEK 293 cells with six of the potentially enzymatically active isoforms of ST3Gal III. Structural differences in the isoenzymes were limited to exon losses in the stem regions of these enzymes. Crude cell extracts from all transfected clones showed a2,3-sialyltransferase activities preferentially towards the type 1-chain disaccharide precursor (Galb1,3GlcNAc) but with different efficiencies and with varying specificities for the type 2-chain (Galb1,4GlcNAc) and Galb1,3GalNAc precursors. Other splice variants of ST3Gal III, unlikely to express enzymatic activities, but clearly exhibiting a very tissue specific expression, may have other biological functions but this remains to be clarified.The RT-PCR-LIF-CE technique, as we have used it, has an unique capacity to identify alternatively spliced transcripts with minor sequence differences as well as sufficient reproducibility and sensitivity for qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis of gene transcripts not provided by other methods. We have shown that redundancy of critical sialyltransferase activities not only appears between different genes but also between different isoenzymes obtained through alternative splicing of the coding sequence of such genes.

This study examines high school effects on the labor market success of young adults, above and beyond individual and family characteristics. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples: the National Longitudinal Study and the High School and Beyond study and the 5th and 4th follow-up studies respectively. We employ multi-level models and adjust for selection into the labor force. Our findings reveal that there are differential, enduring school effects on future earnings for individuals attending different schools.

Ökonomische Analyse des Rechts (ÖAR) beschäftigt sich mit den Wirkungen von Rechtsnormen, gerichtlichen Entscheidungen und Verwaltungsakten in der Lebenswirklichkeit. Sie bewertet diese Folgen mit Hilfe des Kriteriums der ökonomischen Effizienz und macht Vorschläge, wie Recht zu gestalten ist, damit ökonomisch effiziente Ergebnisse erzielt werden. Zum Forschungsgegenstand der ÖAR zählen alle Gebiete des Privatrechts, des öffentlichen Rechts und des Strafrechts sowie die jeweiligen Verfahrensrechte. In diesem Beitrag werden die vier Forschungsstränge der modernen ÖAR nachgezeichnet: * Das Coase-Theorem, einer der Hauptsätze der ÖAR, wird in Abschnitt 3.1.1 behandelt. * Die möglichen Verfahren, Risiken effizient zu verteilen und Verfügungsrechte zu schützen, sind Gegenstand von Abschnitt 3.1.2. * Die Theorie der Verfügungsrechte wird im Abschnitt 1.1.5 als Teil der grundlegenden Konzepte (Unterkapitel 1.1) diskutiert. * Je ein ganzes Unterkapitel sind der Ökonomik der Kriminalität (4.1) und des Zivilprozesses (4.2) gewidmet. Diese Liste kann als Lesehinweis für diejenigen dienen, die nicht den ganzen Beitrag durcharbeiten wollen. Auf jeden Fall sollte man sich aber mit den grundlegenden Methoden der ökonomischen Analyse des Rechts vertraut gemacht haben (Kapitel 1).

Communication is at the center of any business transaction. Unfortunately until recently, communication has rarely been assigned its proper relevance in traditional business studies at German universities. This paper attempts to demonstrate why communication science can and should be an integral part of all business studies. Without understanding the pertinent communication principles, it will not be possible to fully understand specific business relationships. With understanding, more effective and efficient use of communication in business relationships will become possible. This paper, therefore, briefly outlines the role of communication in some areas of business and then proceeds to sketch a succinct communication model to illustrate how communication affects business relationships. The paper ends with a concrete example, namely that of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, of how communication science may be integrated as a distinct subject into the curriculum of business studies. Kommunikation stand schon immer im Mittelpunkt jeder Wirtschafts- und Geschäftsbe-ziehung. Leider wurde der Kommunikation bis vor kurzem jedoch keine eigenständige Rolle in wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Curricula an deutschen Universitäten zugesprochen. Dieses Arbeitspapier versucht darzulegen, warum Kommunikationswissenschaft ein integraler Teil aller wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Curricula sein sollte. Denn ohne ein wahres Verständnis der relevanten Prinzipien der Kommunikation ist es nicht möglich, viele Wirtschafts- und Geschäftsbeziehungen tiefgreifend zu verstehen. Demzufolge beschreibt dieses Arbeitspapier in knappen Zügen die Bedeutung der Kommunikation für einige Bereiche der Wirtschaft, um dann im Rahmen einer kurzen Beschreibung des Kommunikationsmodells darzulegen, wie die Kommunikation diese Beziehungen beeinflusst. Anhand des Beispiels der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften an der TU Bergakademie Freiberg wird abschließend erläutert, wie die Kommunikationswissenschaft in ein wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Curriculum integriert werden kann.

While the IS/LM-AS/AD model is still the central tool of macroeconomic teaching in most macroeconomic textbooks, it has been criticised by several economists. Colander [1995] has demonstrated that the framework is logically inconsistent, Romer [2000] has shown that it is unable to deal with a monetary policy that uses the interest rate as its operating target, Walsh [2001] has criticised that it is not well suited for an analysis of inflation targeting. In our paper we start with a short discussion of the main flaws of the IS/LM-AS/AD model. We present the BMW model as an alternative framework, which develops the Romer approach into a very simple, but comprehensive macroeconomic model. In spite of its simplicity it can deal with issues like inflation targeting, monetary policy rules, and central bank credibility. We extend the model to an open-economy version as a powerful alternative to the IS/LM-based Mundell-Fleming (MF) model. The main advantage of the open-economy BMW model is its ability to discuss the role of inflation and the determination of flexible exchange rates while the MF model is based on fixed prices and constant exchange rates. This working paper is an extended and more theoretical version of Würzburg Economic Paper No. 34. Besides describing the derivation of optimal interest rate rules and the concept of loss functions more in detail, it also discusses simple interest rate rules in an open economy as well as a strategy of managed floating within the same theoretical framework. Additionally, we explore the stabilizing properties of simple interest rate rules.

This paper investigates the properties of knowledge production in academic research using a panel of 17 OECD countries reaching from 1989 to 1996. The production process is modelled using capital and labour as inputs and the number of published international journal articles and/or the number of graduates as outputs. First, we test for the existence of economies of scale in academic research. Our results give indication for decreasing returns to scale in the production of new academic knowledge. This empirical result might contribute to the recent controversy on the properties of the innovation technology used in endogenous growth models. Second, we determine efficiency scores for each individual country. For the estimation of efficiencies we apply parametric and non-parametric methods. Although results differ slightly with the method used, a stable efficiency ranking is found.