The investigation concentrates on the exhibit of the known church-reformer, philosoph, cardinal and bishop of Brixen Nicolaus von Cues (1401 - 1464) concerning Jews. As origin we take the Jewish decree/ -statute wich mostly was publicated at diocesian an provicial synodes when von Cusanus was papal legate 1451 / 52 in Germany. The legate statet a ban for usury respectively restrictions of money-lending and a duty for identification. Among the decree sermons and letters from the legate-time are consulted. Appropriate parts concerning Jews an Judaism from empirical- and church-reformatoric scripts, sermons and notes from Cusanus areconsulted because the decree cannot be understood without the context of the complete works. So it is possible to disprove the thesis of a subordinated and marginal role of Jews in the cusanian work. To circumscribe the decree's consequences the constituted jewish settlements at 1451 / 55 in the german Empire are represented at cartographical base. As recessing example for the reactions to the decree the policy of Nürnberg is taken. The detailed correspondence of the council documents it's declining attitude. A finishing profile-analysis affords the possibility of a discussion on translation an reception of the Jewdecree in german countrys that's effect has to be evaluated regionally an locally sophisticated , on the base of the administratively regulated spaces by the church.

The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonational systems on German have described two rising accent categories, e.g., L+H* and L*+H in the German ToBI system. L+H* has a high-pitched stressed syllable and a low leading tone aligned in the pre-tonic syllable; L*+H a low-pitched stressed syllable and a high trailing tone in the post-tonic syllable. There are indications for the existence of a third category which lies between these two categories, with both L and H aligned within the stressed syllable, henceforth termed (LH)*. In the present paper, we empirically investigate the distinctiveness of three rising-falling contours [L+H*, (LH)*, and L*+H, all with a subsequent low boundary tone] in German wh-questions. We employ an approach that addresses both the form and the function of the contours, also taking regional variation into account. In Experiment 1 (form), we used a delayed imitation paradigm to test whether Northern and Southern German speakers can imitate the three rising-falling contours in wh-questions as distinct contours. In Experiment 2 (function), we used a free association task to investigate whether listeners interpret the pragmatic meaning of the three contours differently. Imitation results showed that German speakers—both from the North and the South—reproduced the three contours. There was a small but significant effect of regional variety such that contours produced by speakers from the North were slightly more distinct than those by speakers from the South. In the association task, listeners from both varieties attributed distinct meanings to the (LH)* accent as opposed to the two ToBI accents L+H* and L*+H. Combined evidence from form and function suggests that three distinct contours can be found in the acoustic and perceptual space of German rising-falling contours.

Ziel der Studie war es, die Wirksamkeit zweier psychotherapeutischer Mikrointerventionen zur Emotionsregulation und zur progressiven Relaxation und die damit einhergehenden Veränderungen auf psychometrischer und elektrokortikaler Ebene zu untersuchen. Die Stichprobe bestand aus 65 klinischen Versuchspersonen der Warteliste der Poliklinischen Psychotherapieambulanz der Universität Trier. In einer EEG-Erhebung vor und nach den Mikrointerventionen wurden neben dem Ruhe-EEG ereigniskorrelierte Potentiale (EKPs) aufgezeichnet. Im EKP-Paradigma wurden die Probanden instruiert negativ-valente Bilder aus dem IAPS-System entweder anzuschauen oder die gezeigte Situation kognitiv zu einer weniger negativen Interpretation der Bilder umzudeuten. Nach der EEG-Aufzeichnung wurden die Probanden randomisiert einer standardisierten 90-minütigen psychotherapeutischen Intervention zum kognitiven Reframing bzw. zur progressiven Relaxation zugewiesen. Im Anschluss wurde die EEG-Erhebung mit dem Ruhe-EEG und dem EKP mit einem parallelisierten Pool negativ valenter Bilder erneut durchgeführt. Auf psychometrischer Ebene wurde u.a. der positive und negative Affekt mit dem PANAS im Verlauf der Untersuchung zu insgesamt vier Messzeitpunkten erfasst. Neben dem Alpha-Frequenzband des Ruhe-EEGs wurde bei den EKPs die P3 und das Späte Positive Potential (LPP) untersucht. Die Ergebnisse geben Hinweise darauf, dass die psychotherapeutischen Mikrointerventionen zu differentiellen Effekten auf psychometrischer und elektrokortikaler Ebene führten. Auf der psychometrischen Ebene zeigte sich bei den Teilnehmern der Entspannungsintervention direkt nach der Intervention eine Abnahme des negativen Affekts, während sich dies bei den Teilnehmern der Reframing-Intervention erst im Verlauf der zweiten EEG-Messung mit dem Umdeuten der negativ valenten Bilder zeigte. Auf der elektrokortikalen Ebene waren die Ergebnisse weniger einheitlich. Durch die Entspannungs-Intervention konnte im Verlauf der Untersuchung eine Zunahme der P3-Amplituden festgestellt werden, während die Reframing-Teilnehmer über die Messzeitpunkte eine Abnahme der P3-Amplituden aufwiesen. Dies könnte so interpretiert werden, dass durch das Erlernen des Reframings das emotionale Arousal reduziert werden konnte. Bei dem LPP waren hingegen keine differentiellen Effekte der Mikrointerventionen nachweisbar. Bei beiden Interventionen kam es zu einer Zunahme der LPP-Amplituden. Bei der Analyse der Alpha-Aktivität des Ruhe-EEGs wurde bei den Entspannungs-Teilnehmern im Vergleich zu den Reframing-Teilnehmern nach der Mikrointervention eine größere Alpha-Aktivität gefunden. Diese Unterschiede wurden am deutlichsten in der linken Hemisphäre sowie in den zentralen und parietalen Hirnregionen. Eine höhere Alpha-Aktivität geht mit einer niedrigeren kortikalen Aktivität einher, so dass man davon ausgehen kann, dass die Entspannungs-Teilnehmer diese Hirnregionen während der Intervention weniger ausgeprägt nutzten. Zusammenfassend geben die Befunde erste Hinweise auf eine differentielle Wirkung der beiden Mikrointerventionen.

The classic Capital Asset Pricing Model and the portfolio theory suggest that investors hold the market portfolio to diversify idiosyncratic risks. The theory predicts that expected return of assets is positive and that reacts linearly on the overall market. However, in reality, we observe that investors often do not have perfectly diversified portfolios. Empirical studies find that new factors influence the deviation from the theoretical optimal investment. In the first part of this work (Chapter 2) we study such an example, namely the influence of maximum daily returns on subsequent returns. Here we follow ideas of Bali et al. (2011). The goal is to find cross-sectional relations between extremely positive returns and expected average returns. We take account a larger number of markets worldwide. Bali et al. (2011) report with respect to the U.S. market a robust negative relation between MAX (the maximum daily return) and the expected return in the subsequent time. We extent substantially their database to a number of other countries, and also take more recent data into account (until end of 2009). From that we conclude that the relation between MAX and expected returns is not consistent in all countries. Moreover, we test the robustness of the results of Bali et al. (2011) in two time-periods using the same data from CRSP. The results show that the effect of extremely positive returns is not stable over time. Indeed we find a negative cross-sectional relation between the extremely positive returns and the average returns for the first half of the time series, however, we do not find significant effects for the second half. The main results of this chapter serve as a basis for an unpublished working paper Yuan and Rieger (2014b). While in Chapter 2 we have studied factors that prevent optimal diversification, we consider in Chapter 3 and 4 situations where the optimal structure of diversification was previously unknown, namely diversification of options (or structured financial products). Financial derivatives are important additional investment form with respect to diversification. Not only common call and put options, but also structured products enable investors to pursue a multitude of investment strategies to improve the risk-return profile. Since derivatives become more and more important, diversification of portfolios with dimension of derivatives is of particularly practical relevance. We investigate the optimal diversification strategies in connection with underlying stocks for classical rational investors with constant relative risk aversion (CRRA). In particular, we apply Monte Carlo method based on the Black-Scholes model and the Heston model for stochastic volatility to model the stock market processes and the pricing of the derivatives. Afterwards, we compare the benchmark portfolio which consists of derivatives on single assets with derivatives on the index of these assets. First we compute the utility improvement of an investment in the risk-free assets and plain-vanilla options for CRRA investors in various scenarios. Furthermore, we extend our analysis to several kinds of structured products, in particular capital protected notes (CPNs), discount certificates (DCs) and bonus certificates (BCs). We find that the decision of an investor between these two diversification strategies leads to remarkable differences. The difference in the utility improvement is influenced by risk-preferences of investors, stock prices and the properties of the derivatives in the portfolio. The results will be presented in Chapter 3 and are the basis for a yet unpublished working paper Yuan and Rieger (2014a). To check furthermore whether underlyings of structured products influence decisions of investors, we discuss explicitly the utility gain of a stock-based product and an index-based product for an investor whose preferences are described by cumulative prospect theory (CPT) (Chapter 4, compare to Yuan (2014)). The goal is that to investigate the dependence of structured products on their underlying where we put emphasis on the difference between index-products and single-stock-products, in particular with respect to loss-aversion and mental accounting. We consider capital protected notes and discount certificates as examples, and model the stock prices and the index of these stocks via Monte Carlo simulations in the Black-Scholes framework. The results point out that market conditions, particularly the expected returns and volatility of the stocks play a crucial role in determining the preferences of investors for stock-based CPNs and index-based CPNs. A median CPT investor prefers the index-based CPNs if the expected return is higher and the volatility is lower, while he prefers the stock-based CPNs in the other situation. We also show that index-based DCs are robustly more attractive as compared to stock-based DCs for CPT investors.

This thesis is comprised of three projects, all of which are fundamentally connected to the choices that individuals make about stock investments. Differences in stock market participation (SMP) across countries are large and difficult to explain. The second chapter focuses on differences between Germany (low SMP) and East Asian countries (mostly high SMP). The study hypothesis is that cultural differences regarding social preferences and attitudes towards inequality lead to different attitudes towards stock markets and subsequently to different SMPs. Using a large-scale survey, it is found that these factors can, indeed, explain a substantial amount of the country differences that other known factors (financial literacy, risk preferences, etc.) could not. This suggests that social preferences should be given a more central role in programs that aim to enhance SMP in countries like Germany. The third chapter documented the importance of trust as well as herding for stock ownership decisions. The findings show that trust as a general concept has no significant contribution to stock investment intention. A thorough examination of general trust elements reveals that in group and out-group trust have an impact on individual stock market investment. Higher out group trust directly influences a person's decision to invest in stocks, whereas higher in-group trust increases herding attitudes in stock investment decisions and thus can potentially increase the likelihood of stock investments as well. The last chapter investigates the significance of personality traits in stock investing and home bias in portfolio selection. Findings show that personality traits do indeed have a significant impact on stock investment and portfolio allocation decisions. Despite the fact that the magnitude and significance of characteristics differ between two groups of investors, inexperienced and experienced, conscientiousness and neuroticism play an important role in stock investments and preferences. Moreover, high conscientiousness scores increase stock investment desire and portfolio allocation to risky assets like stocks, discouraging home bias in asset allocation. Regarding neuroticism, a higher-level increases home bias in portfolio selection and decreases willingness to stock investment and portfolio share. Finally, when an investor has no prior experience with portfolio selection, patriotism generates home bias. For experienced investors, having a low neuroticism score and a high conscientiousness and openness score seemed to be a constant factor in deciding to invest in a well-diversified international portfolio