Search

How does small-firm employment respond to exogenous labor productivity risk? We find that this depends on the capitalization of firms' local banks. The evidence comes from firms offering (quasi-) fixed employment to workers whose productivity depends on the weather. Weather risk reduces this employment, and the effect is stronger in regions where the regional banks have less equity capital. Bank capitalization also proxies for the extent to which the regional banks’ borrowers can obtain liquidity when the regions are hit by weather shocks. We argue that, as liquidity providers, well-capitalized banks support economic adaptation to climate change.

The importance of tropical forests in the global climate system is widely known. Through their high productivity they represent a significant global carbon reservoir. Preserving this function needs a continuous supply of nutrients, mainly nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). However, the availability and biogeochemical cycling of these nutrients is highly variable in space and time and the understanding of different nutrient loss pathways is still lacking. The influence of soil erosion on the availability of these nutrients in pristine forests of the tropics is not well understood. To gain a better mechanistic understanding of the aquatic loss processes of N and P, we monitored different headwater streams in three distinct tropical forests of the Congo Basin and determined the influence of soil erosion on soil N. This knowledge is important to assess the response of these ecosystems to changing climate and land use. To assess the importance of soil erosion in tropical forests and export of sediments and nutrients from drainage basins, the first part of the thesis focussed on the fundamental understanding of the dynamics and drivers of sediment export in headwater streams of a tropical lowland forest and a deciduous Miombo woodland. We used high temporal resolution turbidity data and analysed the turbidity-discharge hysteresis patterns during storm events. Although these forest systems are situated in very old and stable landscapes, the obtained sediment yields were substantial and comparable to forests in more geomorphic active sites of the tropics. Although the Miombo only experiences a five-month wet season, similar annual sediment export was found as for the lowland forest, due to the lower vegetation cover. Furthermore, results showed that storm events exported 30% and 68% of the annual sediment yield in the lowland and the Miombo, respectively. In Chapter three, it was shown that soil erosion and storm events also play a crucial role in aquatic nutrient export from these forest ecosystems. At both sites, N and P were dominantly exported in particulate or dissolved organic forms and the yields of those nutrient constituents were driven by intense discharge pulses due to storm events. This highlights the need to include samples of those events in a sampling campaign to get reliable annual export yields. This was not possible for the montane forest monitoring site (Chapter four), resulting in a large uncertainty in the sediment and nutrient yield estimates. However, best estimates of the long-term baseflow dataset highlighted the same trend to the importance of particulate and dissolved organic N and P export. Although these losses are significant, there is no indication that erosion leads to local nutrient limitations in the N and P rich montane and lowland forests. The goal of Chapter five was to evaluate if soil erosion influences soil N at the catchment scale. For this, stable isotope signatures of soil N have been analysed as an integrator of N cycling processes. Results showed that only in the Miombo woodland, stable isotopic signatures of soil N were influenced by topography and soil erosion, indicating erosional effects on N cycling. In the last part of this thesis, the influence of land use in the lowlands on aquatic sediment and nutrient export was examined. Results from a field campaign, during which baseflow was intensively sampled, revealed that there was significant higher export of dissolved organic N and particulate inorganic P, while the yields of nitrate were lower in an agricultural catchment compared to the pristine forest catchment. Continuous sensor measurements indicated that our findings most probably underestimated these differences because of the lack of storm event data. The results of this thesis highlight the importance of particulate N and P losses from pristine tropical forests and their inclusion in biogeochemical studies are important, even in so believed low erosive ecosystems. The predicted increase in rainfall intensity and the ongoing loss of primary forests will further enhance the importance of these processes. (SC - Sciences) -- UCL, 2022

Soil respiration is an important carbon flux and key process determining the net ecosystem production of terrestrial ecosystems. To address the lack of quantification and understanding of seasonality in soil respiration of tropical forests in the Congo Basin, soil CO2 fluxes and potential controlling factors were measured annually in two dominant forest types (lowland and montane) of the Congo Basin over 2 years at varying temporal resolution. Soil CO2 fluxes from the Congo Basin resulted in 3.45 ± 1.14 and 3.13 ± 1.22 µmol CO2 m−2 s−1 for lowland and montane forests, respectively. Soil CO2 fluxes in montane forest soils showed a clear seasonality with decreasing flux rates during the dry season. Montane forest soil CO2 fluxes were positively correlated with soil moisture, while CO2 fluxes in the lowland forest were not. Smaller differences of δ13C values of leaf litter, soil organic carbon (SOC), and soil CO2 indicated that SOC in lowland forests is more decomposed than in montane forests, suggesting that respiration is controlled by C availability rather than environmental factors. In general, C in montane forests was more enriched in 13C throughout the whole cascade of carbon intake via photosynthesis, litterfall, SOC, and soil CO2 compared to lowland forests, pointing to a more open system. Even though soil CO2 fluxes are similarly high in lowland and montane forests of the Congo Basin, the drivers of them seem to be different, i.e., soil moisture for montane forest and C availability for lowland forest., Biogeosciences, 17 (23), ISSN:1726-4170

Die Einführung des Lehrplans 21 stellt nicht nur Anforderungen an die Schulen, sondern auch an die PH Zürich als Weiterbildungsanbieterin: Welche Weiterbildungsformate sind dafür geeignet, schulische Lernprozesse zu unterstützen? In diesem Bericht werden aus einer Schulentwicklungsperspektive die wichtigsten Ergebnisse aus fünf Teilprojekten zusammengetragen, in denen Daten im Zusammenhang mit den eigens für die Umsetzung des Lehrplans 21 kreierten Online-Lerneinheiten erhoben wurden. Daraus resultieren Erkenntnisse darüber, inwiefern und unter welchen schulischen Bedingungen neue/digitale Weiterbildungsinstrumente wie Online-Lerneinheiten Schulentwicklungsprozesse begünstigen oder kaum eine Wirkung entfalten. Damit möchte dieser Bericht einen Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung digitaler Weiterbildungsformate leisten., +repphzhbib2020F

Diese kumulative Dissertation untersucht in drei Kapiteln den Effekt von Risiko auf Firmenentscheidungen und die Fähigkeit von Firmen, Risiken mit ihren Stakeholdern zu teilen. Die betrachteten Firmen sind Skihotels in österreichischen Skigebieten. Das erste Kapitel ist eine umfassende Studie zur Risikoteilung zwischen Skihotels und ihren Stakeholdern. Es gibt zwei hauptsächliche Ergebnisse. Erstens wird gezeigt, dass Unternehmer Wetterrisiko mit ihren Arbeitnehmern teilen, selbst aber kein Wetterrisiko tragen. Dieses Ergebnis ist in Widerspruch zur Vorstellung des Unternehmers als Risikoträger. Das zweite Ergebnis ist, dass Firmen Wetterrisiko mit ihrer Hausbank teilen. Das zweite Kapitel untersucht anhand von Banken in österreichischen Skigebieten die Rolle des Interbankenmarkt. Die Banken in Skigebieten sind Liquiditätsschocks ausgesetzt, die durch touristisch bedingte Nachfrageschocks erzeugt werden. Der Effekt dieser Schocks auf die Kredittätigkeit ist Gegenstand dieser Studie. Das Ergebnis der Studie ist, dass Banken mehr Kapital auf dem Interbankenmarkt beschaffen, wenn sie ihren Kunden in der Realwirtschaft in Folge eines Nachfrageschocks Liquidität gewähren müssen. Das dritte Kapitel untersucht, wie die Beschäftigung von kleinen Firmen auf Risiko in der Arbeitsproduktivität reagiert. Ein Ergebnis ist, dass das abhängig ist von der Kapitalisierung des lokalen Bankenmarktes. Es wird gezeigt, dass eine Zunahme in transitiven Arbeitsproduktivitätsrisiko die Bereitschaft der Firmen verringert Arbeitnehmer einzustellen. Dieser Effekt ist umso stärker, je schlechter lokale Banken kapitalisiert sind. Es scheint, als würde ein Mangel an Kapital in Bankensektor die Fähigkeit von Skihotels mindern, Arbeitsproduktivität einzugehen., This thesis contains three chapters that empirically study the impact of risk on firm level decisions and firms’ ability to share risks with their stakeholders. The firms that are studied in all three papers are hotels in Austrian ski resorts. The first chapter provides a comprehensive study of the risk sharing between Austrian ski hotels and their stakeholders. We obtain two main results. The first main finding is that the entrepreneurs share snow-induced sales risk with their workers, while the dividend payments to the entrepreneurs are not affected by these exogenous shocks to firms’ sales. This finding opposes the view of the entrepreneur as a risk taker. We find that hotels insure their workers against weather-induced sales shocks only if the shocks are highly temporary during the winter-season. The second main result is that entrepreneurs share exogenous sales risk with their house-banks. The second chapter empirically analyzes interbank lending using a sample of banks in Austrian ski resorts. The banks are subject to liquidity shocks due to weather-induced demand shocks in ski tourism. We analyze the effect of these shocks on interbank lending and borrowing. In our analysis, we use snow in ski resorts as an instrumental variable for the possibly endogenous demand shocks. The analysis reveals that banks reduce their net lending to other banks at times when they need to provide liquidity to their non-bank customers. The third chapter empirically studies how small-firm employment respond to labor productivity risk. We show that this depends on the equity capital of local banks. We find that an increase in the risk of transitory productivity shocks reduces firms’ willingness to commit to employing workers. This effect is stronger if local banks have less equity capital. It appears that a lack of bank equity reduces firms’ capacity to take labor productivity risk.

Sinnstrukturen des Leistungssports und deren soziokulturelle Genese sowie gesellschaftliche Verflechtungen werden, anhand kultursoziologischer Erörterungen und einer empirischen Untersuchung an Sportgymnasien, untersucht.