Vienna University of Economics and Business
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Increased Company Performance through Macroeconomics Sales Forecasting: A Case Study
Get PDFTraditional planning in the business environment is used to allocate and coordinate resources mainly on basis of company-internal data. Thereby, a general weakness is that macroeconomic changes, due to business cycles, are not taken into consideration and the chance to take advantage of the associated effects on the revenues of an individual enterprise is missed. Including a macroeconomic trend analysis in business planning fosters the objectivity to create a solid basis for a corporate decision-making process. This paper deals with the Economic Trend Outlook Model which allows to consider macroeconomic influences on the company-specific capacity planning. In doing so, a company can turn into a proactive organization that makes use of advanced trend information and improves the individual forecasting accuracy. Thus this paper describes the method behind this strategy and introduces a stepwise approach using the examples of two company cases
Tax-Rate Biases in Tax Decisions: Experimental Evidence
No full textThis paper investigates how decision biases affect individuals’ tax decisions. We conduct four laboratory experiments with 303 students and 62 experienced tax professionals and find a systematic tax-rate bias in decisions under time constraints. More specifically, decision makers overestimate the relevance of less complex tax-rate information compared to more complex tax-base information, leading to suboptimal decision-making. We also find support for the theory of rational inattention as increasing the size of the tax-base effect mitigates the decision bias. However, we find that tax decisions are unaffected by participants’ professional experience: Students and highly experienced tax professionals are similarly prone to biased decision-making. Overall, our findings suggest that time constraints impede the use of complex information which can result in suboptimal tax planning.Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Serie
ooRexx and Web Servers
Get PDFIn today's world Java based web servers (Apache Tomcat, IBM WebSphere, etc.) have come to play a major role for businesses and organizations. Java web servers support Java Server Pages (JSP) that allow for extending the available features via "tag libraries". This presentation introduces a bird eye's view of Java web servers, how to set up web applications in that environment and a tag library that allows web content to be produced with Rexx in this context. This presentation should allow Rexx programmers to set up and configure a Java web server on their own such that one can start to immediately create web applications with Rexx
Systemic Immune-Inflammation Index (SII) Predicts Poor Survival in Pancreatic Cancer Patients Undergoing Resection
Get PDFBackground: The systemic immune-inflammation index based on peripheral neutrophil, lymphocyte, and platelet counts has
shown a prognostic impact in several malignancies. The aim of this study was to determine the prognostic role of systemic immune-inflammation index in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma undergoing resection.
Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent surgical resection at the department of surgery at the Medical University of Vienna between 1995 and 2014 were included into this study. The systemic immune-inflammation index was calculated by the formula platelet*neutrophil/lymphocyte. Optimal cutoffs were determined using Youden's index. Uni-and multivariate analyses were calculated by the Cox proportional hazard regression model for overall survival.
Results Three hundred twenty-one patients were included in this study. Clinical data was achieved from a prospective patient database. In univariate survival analysis, elevated systemic immune-inflammation index was found to be significantly associated with shortened patients' overall survival (p = 0.007). In multivariate survival analysis, systemic immune-inflammation index
remained an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (p = 0.004). No statistical significance could be found for platelet
to lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in multivariate analysis. Furthermore, area under the curve analysis showed a higher prognostic significance for systemic immune-inflammation index, compared to platelet to lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio.
Conclusion: A high systemic immune-inflammation index is an independent, preoperative available prognostic factor in patients with resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and is superior to platelet to lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio for predicting overall survival in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma patients
On the relevance of double tax treaties
Get PDFThis paper investigates the effects of double tax treaties (DTTs) on foreign direct investment (FDI) after controlling for their relevance in the presence of treaty shopping. DTTs cannot be considered a bilateral issue, but must be viewed as a network. We define tax distance as the cost of channelling corporate income from one country to another and, by considering treaty shopping through intermediate jurisdictions, we calculate the shortest (i.e. the cheapest) distance between any two countries. We show that relevant tax treaties-which reduce the direct tax distance both over domestic law and the entire existing treaty network-will increase FDI by about 18%
The Economics of Color: A Null Result
Get PDFColor research has a long tradition in psychology, consumer behavior, and marketing research. The literature suggests that exposure to colors influences mood and emotions of humans as well as their attitudes towards products. This paper makes two contributions. First, we review the existing literature in science and psychology on the effects of environmental colors (red and blue) on physiological functions, mood, and consumer/economic decision-making, insofar it may be potentially relevant to experimental and behavioral economists. Second, we conduct a laboratory experiment with a typical experimental economics subject pool testing the effects of environmental colors red and blue on decision-making in an incentivized Ultimatum Game experiment. We find no statistically significant effect. However, we also cannot replicate previous results of exposure to colors red and blue on mood as measured by established questionnaire instruments. Our results suggest that experimental economists do not need to worry about the potential confound of colors in economic decision-making.Series: Department of Strategy and Innovation Working Paper Serie
We just estimated twenty million fiscal multipliers
Get PDFWe analyse the role played by data and specification choices as determinants of the size ofthe fiscal multipliers obtained using structural vector autoregressive models. The results, based on over twenty million fiscal multipliers estimated for European countries, indicate that many seemingly harmless modelling choices have a significant effect on the size and precision of fiscal multiplier estimates. In addition to the structural shock identification strategy, these modelling choices include the definition of spending and taxes, the national accounts system employed, the use of particular interest rates or inflation measures, or whether data are smoothed prior to estimation. The cumulative effects of such arguably innocuous methodological choices can lead to a change in the spending multipliers of as much as 0.4 points
Tone from the Top in Risk Management: A Complementarity Perspective on How Control Systems Influence Risk Awareness
Get PDFPrompted by the weaknesses of standardized risk management approaches in the aftermath of the
2008 financial crisis, scholars, regulators, and practitioners alike emphasize the importance of
creating a risk-aware culture in organizations. Recent insights highlight the special role of tone
from the top as crucial driver of risk awareness. In this study, we take a systems-perspective on
control system design to investigate the role of tone from the top in creating risk awareness. In
particular, we argue that both interactive and diagnostic use of budgets and performance measures
interact with tone from the top in managing risk awareness. Our results show that interactive control
strengthens the effect of tone from the top on risk awareness, while tone from the top and diagnostic
control are, on average, not interrelated with regard to creating risk awareness. To shed light on the
boundary conditions of the proposed interdependencies, we further investigate whether the
predicted interdependencies are sensitive to the level of perceived environmental uncertainty. We
find that the effect of tone from the top and interactive control becomes significantly stronger in a
situation of high perceived environmental uncertainty. Most interestingly, tone from the top and
diagnostic control are complements with regard to risk awareness in settings of low perceived
environmental uncertainty and substitutes at high levels of perceived environmental uncertainty.Series: Department of Strategy and Innovation Working Paper Serie
The Human Energy and Fatigue Constructs in Relation to Information and Communication Technologies: A Conceptual Framework
Get PDFInformation and communication technologies (ICTs) are generally assumed to save time and energy, yet user fatigue due to ICT use is assumed to be on the rise. The question about the effects of ICT use on human energy has sparked increased research interest in recent years, however, the course is complicated by the fact that the conceptualization of human energy is extremely diverse. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide a conceptual framework and classification of the subjective energy and fatigue concepts and reflect on the theoretical embedding of technology within the theories on subjective energy. We also reflect on the new phenomena of social networking sites (SNS) exhaustion and SNS fatigue. With this, we aim to provide a conceptual baseline for future research on the relationship between ICT use and subjective energy of ICT users.Series: Working Papers / Institute for IS & Societ
Evolutionary macroeconomic assessment of employment and innovation impacts of climate policy packages
Get PDFClimate policy has been mainly studied with economic models that assume representative, rational agents. Such policy aims, though, at changing carbon-intensive consumption and production patterns driven by bounded rationality and other-regarding preferences, such as status and imitation. To examine climate policy under such alternative behavioral assumptions, we develop a model tool by adapting an existing general-purpose macroeconomic multi-agent model. The resulting tool allows testing various climate policies in terms of combined climate and economic performance. The model is particularly suitable to address the distributional impacts of climate policies, not only because populations of many agents are included, but also as these are composed of different classes of households. The approach accounts for two types of innovations, which improve either the carbon or labor intensity of production. We simulate policy scenarios with distinct combinations of carbon taxation, a reduction of labor taxes, subsidies for green innovation, a price subsidy to consumers for less carbon-intensive products, and green government procurement. The results show pronounced differences with those obtained by rational-agent model studies. It turns out that a supply-oriented subsidy for green innovation, funded by the revenues of a carbon tax, results in a significant reduction of carbon emissions without causing negative effects on em ployment. On the contrary, demand-oriented subsidies for adopting greener technologies, funded in the same manner, result in either none or considerably less re- duction of carbon emissions and may even lead to higher unemployment. Our study also contributes insight on a potential double dividend of shifting taxes from labor to carbon