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Preferences for Biodiversity-Promoting Private Garden Designs: A Basket-Based Choice Experiment
No full textAbstract
This study introduces the basket-based choice experiment (BBCE) as suggested by Caputo and Lusk (2022) into the field of environmental economics and management. The application is a survey to assess garden owners’ preferences for installing design elements conducive to biodiversity conservation in private gardens. In addition to showcasing this approach in the context of environmental management, the present application of the BBCE adds two new methodological features to this approach. First, an experimental design is used to provide context attributes for each basket-based choice task to assess the extent to which policy levers set by local councils can affect how garden owners design their gardens. Second, the econometric model to analyse the resulting basket-based choice data is augmented by a latent class structure to accommodate the empirical finding that a substantial share of respondents never chose to add any new element to their gardens (i.e. chose an empty basket). Results show that the policy instruments have mixed effects on the element-specific choice probabilities, with financial support for new garden elements exhibiting the strongest effect on demand. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how prediction can be used to assess the uptake of biodiversity friendly garden elements as a function of policy instruments.D12;Q57;Q5
A Note on the Use of Syndicated Loan Data
No full textABSTRACT
Syndicated loan data provided by DealScan is an essential input in banking research to answer urging questions on bank lending, e.g., in the presence of financial or geopolitical shocks or climate change. However, many data options raise the question of how to choose the estimation sample. We employ a standard regression framework analyzing bank lending during the financial crisis of 2007/08 to study how conventional but varying usages of DealScan affect the estimates. The key finding is that the direction of coefficients remains relatively robust. However, statistical significance depends on the data and sampling choice, and we provide guidelines for applied research
Party manifestos
No full textParty manifestos are one of the most consistent and comprehensive sources to study parties’ policy preferences. Written before an election in an oftentimes democratic process within the party they present the parties’ self-ascribed and unified policy positions. They normally cover a broad range of policy topics, while especially emphasizing those issues most salient to the party. Manifestos have four main functions: Parties use them to communicate their policy preferences to prospective voters and competing parties; they serve as guidelines for parliamentarians; and they contribute to the party’s unity and self-reflection. While some critics emphasize that manifestos only have a small readership, research has shown that the media does a good job in communicating manifesto content. Even more importantly voters should care what is written in manifestos, as the policy preferences and pledges made in manifestos have a huge impact during coalition building and on the policy output of government parties
Reintegrating older long-term unemployed workers: The impact of temporary job guarantees
No full textLong-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity in eligibility, we find that participation increased regular, unsubsidized employment by 43 percentage points two years after the program ended. The gains are driven by transitions into new firms and industries, rather than continued subsidized employment, and we find no evidence of displacement effects for non-participants or spillovers to family members. The program had no measurable short-run health effects
Mitigating escalation of commitment through error management climate and the devil’s advocate approach
No full textAbstract
Using an experimental setting, we examine the circumstances under which the devil’s advocate method reduces decision-makers’ tendencies to continue failing projects—known as escalation of commitment (EoC). We propose that a firm’s error management climate (EMC) affects the effectiveness of the devil’s advocate approach. First, we assess how an open EMC (learning from errors) versus a blame EMC (preventing errors) influences escalation tendencies. Our findings reveal that an open EMC has a two-fold effect resulting in no overall difference in escalation levels between the two levels of EMC. By analyzing key drivers of EoC, we provide process evidence revealing that an open EMC both encourages admitting failure and increases risk-taking, with these opposing effects canceling each other out. Second, we demonstrate that implementing a devil’s advocate reduces escalating behavior in both EMCs. Our process evidence reveals how the devil’s advocate effectively reduces escalation in both EMC types by countering the goal-substitution effect and overweighing of positive information. These results have practical relevance for firms considering the devil’s advocate as a management control tool to prevent project escalation.M14;M4
Harvesting Effect and Extreme Temperature-Related Mortality in Italy
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It is well-established that deaths peak in winter and show throughs in summer. However, it remains unclear how mortality patterns will unfold as the climate warms, bringing fewer cold days and more hot days. One concern is “harvesting,” where a short-term surge in deaths among the most vulnerable people is then followed by a period with fewer deaths than usual because those individuals would have died soon anyway. Under global warming, it is possible that higher mortality rates in summer will result not only from an increase in extreme heat events but also from a seasonal shift in excess deaths that would have previously occurred in winter. Combining mortality data from the Italian Statistical Office with temperature data from the Copernicus Data Store for Italy at the provincial level from 2011 to 2019, we employ Poisson regression models to estimate the effects of temperature extremes on mortality among individuals aged 60 and above. The results reveal that temperatures outside the comfort zone, both lower and higher, are associated with increased monthly mortality rates, with the strongest effects seen in the most extreme temperature ranges. We find evidence of a harvesting effect, particularly for moderately warm days (≥ 85th to < 95th percentile). However, even after high winter mortality, extremely hot days still lead to significant increases in deaths—especially among individuals aged 80 and above. This suggests that while some short-term mortality displacement occurs, it is not enough to offset the full impact of extreme heat, highlighting the continued vulnerability of older populations
Blockchain-based reputation systems for business-to-business services: designing a reputation mechanism to reduce information asymmetry in professional consulting
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Reputation systems to rate companies’ performances remain largely unexplored in research and are scarcely used in business-to-business (B2B) practice. Such systems are essential for businesses seeking trustworthy partners, as they help reduce information asymmetry, lower buyers' transaction risks, and allow high-quality service providers to justify premium pricing. Unlike traditional review-based systems in the business-to-consumer (B2C) context, we propose a B2B reputation mechanism in which buyers commit to a rating payment before a transaction. Once the buyer finalizes the rating, this payment is executed and recorded on a blockchain as an immutable, secure ledger. Our system mimics natural trust-building mechanisms with ratings that are (1) monetary-based, (2) stake-based, (3) non-aggregated, (4) involve counter-ratings, (5) selectively sellable, (6) individually comparable, (7) stored on a blockchain, (8) and monitored by a third instance. This system provides a novel approach to fostering trust in B2B transactions by reducing information asymmetry and transaction risk. We illustrate the mechanism’s application in the consulting sector. Our analysis has identified 23 institutional trust and distrust dimensions that promote establishing institutional trust through the proposed mechanism. Qualitative interviews suggest that, while complex and challenging to apply, this mechanism can foster trust in B2B transactions. Given the low maturity in the application domain—rating professional business services with business reputation systems—and solution domain—using monetary stakes for ratings, this system stands as a potential invention
PharmaXR: Ein arbeitswissenschaftlicher Projektbericht zur menschengerechten Einführung von Virtual Reality in betrieblicher Aus- und Fortbildung und organisationalem Wandel
No full textA generalised comparison of Pareto/NBD based forecasts using MCMC, maximum likelihood, and heuristics
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This study is the first generalised effort to compare the forecasting efficacy of different Pareto/NBD model-based forecasts. Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC)-based estimates, Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE), and heuristics are applied to four different types of forecasts: (1) predicting the future number of purchases a single customer makes within a given period, (2) identifying active customers who will make at least one purchase within a given period, (3) identifying the customers who will belong to the top segments of the customer base, and (4) predicting the timing of a customer's next purchase. The results show that the model-based forecasts outperform the heuristics regarding predictive power and accuracy for the first three types of forecasts. MCMC yields slightly better results than MLE and it can additionally convince with confidence intervals for the number of future purchases. Forecasting the timing of a customer’s next purchase yields deviations that are too large to be used in practice.C11;C15;C52;C53;C6