Pandemic control measures, headscarf bans for elementary school students, and the ban on assisted suicide testify to the fact that constitutional courts deal with highly sensitive social conflicts. Laura Pavlidis, a researcher at the WU Institute for Austrian and European Public Law, examines the legitimacy of the constitutional court’s interpretive power.

The more newsroom structures determine corporate communications, the greater the importance of flexibility, flat hierarchies and individual autonomy, agile project teams, and a trial-and-error culture in the communications department. This is the result of a study by Jens Seiffert-Brockmann (Vienna University of Economics and Business) in cooperation with researchers from the University of Vienna. WU has selected the professor of business communication at the Department of Foreign Language Business Communication and head of the Institute for Communication Management and Media as Researcher of the Month.

Global pandemics, migration, climate change: Complex problems cannot be tackled by individual organizations and collectives all by themselves. Collaboration is imperative. Dennis Jancsary has teamed up with fellow WU researchers Renate E. Meyer and Markus A. Höllerer and Douglas Creed (University of Rhode Island) to investigate how city administrations are trying to motivate different stakeholder groups to work together to make cities more resilient in the face of major challenges. In recognition of his work, WU is naming Dennis Jancsary Researcher of the Month.

The William F. Sharpe Award for Scholarship in Financial Research is presented by the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA). The Award recognizes researchers who have most contributed to our understanding of important areas of financial economics.

Risks and returns, price equilibria, or systemic risk – if a situation involves multiple criteria or actors, concepts such as the Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimality can help in decision-making. So far, the Nash and Pareto concepts have been regarded as inherently different. Birgit Rudloff, deputy head of the Institute for Statistics and Mathematics at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), has now shown, however, that the two concepts coincide under certain conditions. If the Pareto optimization problem for any non-cooperative game is constructed in a specific way, the set of all Pareto optimal solutions coincides with the set of all Nash equilibria. This insight makes it possible to apply Pareto optimality methods and algorithms to Nash equilibria.

One of the most effective strategies in the fight against the pandemic is also one of the cheapest: FFP2 masks are an effective means for curbing the spread of COVID-19. So why are we seeing such a strong anti-mask sentiment in the population? How can people be convinced to wear the much-maligned piece of cloth? Researchers at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) have come up with an unconventional suggestion: They recommend personalizing face masks.

Multinational companies and their top management have a special role to play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A team of researchers from WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Copenhagen Business School has found that women in upper management at major companies have a particularly positive effect on the achievement of the SDGs.

For the first time, Earth observation satellite images allow researchers to make a comprehensive assessment of the global impact of mining activities. Victor Maus from WU’s Institute for Ecological Economics led the mapping of 100,000 km² of mining areas around the world. The result: Land of high value for biodiversity conservation and climate stability is most impacted by mining: This applies to 29% (29,171 km²) of the global mining area. The researchers also found that tropical and subtropical forests correspond to 60% (8,533 km²) of the area of forest removed for mining between 2000 to 2019.

Politicians, regulators, and pundits have criticized banks' financial reporting as a key culprit of the problem in the financial crisis 2008–2009 and have called for changes. But is the criticism really justified? What changes are necessary? In a recent study, Professor Christian Laux from the Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and his co-authors examine the disclosure and recognition of losses of international banks during the financial crisis. The authors also investigate the consequences of a regulation that reduces the impact of losses on banks’ required regulatory capital. The evidence is important to guide standard setting and recent debates in bank regulation.

The International Political Economy Society (IPES) has honored Jonas Bunte, professor of international political economy at WU Vienna, for his book “Raise the Debt: How Developing Countries Choose Their Creditors.”

We give credit to the people behind WU Vienna’s outstanding research achievements.