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Institutional and cultural determinants of speed of government responses during COVID-19 pandemic
(2021)
This article examines institutional and cultural determinants of the speed of government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We define the speed as the marginal rate of stringency index change. Based on cross-country data, we find that collectivism is associated with higher speed of government response. We also find a moderating role of trust in government, i.e., the association of individualism-collectivism on speed is stronger in countries with higher levels of trust in government. We do not find significant predictive power of democracy, media freedom and power distance on the speed of government responses.
Teamwork is ubiquitous in the modern workplace. However, it is still unclear whether various behavioral economic factors de- or increase team performance. Therefore, Chapters 2 to 4 of this thesis aim to shed light on three research questions that address different determinants of team performance.
Chapter 2 investigates the idea of an honest workplace environment as a positive determinant of performance. In a work group, two out of three co-workers can obtain a bonus in a dice game. By misreporting a secret die roll, cheating without exposure is an option in the game. Contrary to claims on the importance of honesty at work, we do not observe a reduction in the third co-worker's performance, who is an uninvolved bystander when cheating takes place.
Chapter 3 analyzes the effect of team size on performance in a workplace environment in which either two or three individuals perform a real-effort task. Our main result shows that the difference in team size is not harmful to task performance on average. In our discussion of potential mechanisms, we provide evidence on ongoing peer effects. It appears that peers are able to alleviate the potential free-rider problem emerging out of working in a larger team.
In Chapter 4, the role of perceived co-worker attractiveness for performance is analyzed. The results show that task performance is lower, the higher the perceived attractiveness of co-workers, but only in opposite-sex constellations.
The following Chapter 5 analyzes the effect of offering an additional payment option in a fundraising context. Chapter 6 focuses on privacy concerns of research participants.
In Chapter 5, we conduct a field experiment in which, participants have the opportunity to donate for the continuation of an art exhibition by either cash or cash and an additional cashless payment option (CPO). The treatment manipulation is completed by framing the act of giving either as a donation or pay-what-you-want contribution. Our results show that donors shy away from using the CPO in all treatment conditions. Despite that, there is no negative effect of the CPO on the frequency of financial support and its magnitude.
In Chapter 6, I conduct an experiment to test whether increased transparency of data processing affects data disclosure and whether the results change if it is indicated that the implementation of the GDPR happened involuntarily. I find that increased transparency raises the number of participants who do not disclose personal data by 21 percent. However, this is not the case in the involuntary-signal treatment, where the share of non-disclosures is relatively high in both conditions.
Retirement, fertility and sexuality are three key life stage events that are embedded in the framework of population economics in this dissertation. Each topic implies economic relevance. As retirement entry shifts labour supply of experienced workers to zero, this issue is particularly relevant for employers, retirees themselves as well as policymakers who are in charge of the design of the pension system. Giving birth has comprehensive economic relevance for women. Parental leave and subsequent part-time work lead to a direct loss of income. Lower levels of employment, work experience, training and career opportunities result in indirect income losses. Sexuality has decisive influence on the quality of partnerships, subjective well-being and happiness. Well-being and happiness, in turn, are significant key determinants not only in private life but also in the work domain, for example in the area of job performance. Furthermore, partnership quality determines the duration of a partnership. And in general, partnerships enable the pooling of (financial) resources - compared to being single. The contribution of this dissertation emerges from the integration of social and psychological concepts into economic analysis as well as the application of economic theory in non-standard economic research topics. The results of the three chapters show that the multidisciplinary approach yields better prediction of human behaviour than the single disciplines on their own. The results in the first chapter show that both interpersonal conflict with superiors and the individual’s health status play a significant role in retirement decisions. The chapter further contributes to existing literature by showing the moderating role of health within the retirement decision-making: On the one hand, all employees are more likely to retire when they are having conflicts with their superior. On the other hand, among healthy employees, the same conflict raises retirement intentions even more. That means good health is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for continued working. It may be that conflicts with superiors raise retirement intentions more if the worker is healthy. The key findings of the second chapter reveal significant influence of religion on contraceptive and fertility-related decisions. A large part of research on religion and fertility is originated in evidence from the US. This chapter contrasts evidence from Germany. Additionally, the chapter contributes by integrating miscarriages and abortions, rather than limiting the analysis to births and it gains from rich prospective data on fertility biography of women. The third chapter provides theoretical insights on how to incorporate psychological variables into an economic framework which aims to analyse sexual well-being. According to this theory, personality may play a dual role by shaping a person’s preferences for sex as well as the person’s behaviour in a sexual relationship. Results of econometric analysis reveal detrimental effects of neuroticism on sexual well-being while conscientiousness seems to create a win-win situation for a couple. Extraversions and Openness have ambiguous effects on romantic relationships by enhancing sexual well-being on the one hand but raising commitment problems on the other. Agreeable persons seem to gain sexual satisfaction even if they perform worse in sexual communication.
Traditionell werden Zufallsstichprobenerhebungen so geplant, dass nationale Statistiken zuverlässig mit einer adäquaten Präzision geschätzt werden können. Hierbei kommen vorrangig designbasierte, Modell-unterstützte (engl. model assisted) Schätzmethoden zur Anwendung, die überwiegend auf asymptotischen Eigenschaften beruhen. Für kleinere Stichprobenumfänge, wie man sie für Small Areas (Domains bzw. Subpopulationen) antrifft, eignen sich diese Schätzmethoden eher nicht, weswegen für diese Anwendung spezielle modellbasierte Small Area-Schätzverfahren entwickelt wurden. Letztere können zwar Verzerrungen aufweisen, besitzen jedoch häufig einen kleineren mittleren quadratischen Fehler der Schätzung als dies für designbasierte Schätzer der Fall ist. Den Modell-unterstützten und modellbasierten Methoden ist gemeinsam, dass sie auf statistischen Modellen beruhen; allerdings in unterschiedlichem Ausmass. Modell-unterstützte Verfahren sind in der Regel so konstruiert, dass der Beitrag des Modells bei sehr grossen Stichprobenumfängen gering ist (bei einer Grenzwertbetrachtung sogar wegfällt). Bei modellbasierten Methoden nimmt das Modell immer eine tragende Rolle ein, unabhängig vom Stichprobenumfang. Diese Überlegungen veranschaulichen, dass das unterstellte Modell, präziser formuliert, die Güte der Modellierung für die Qualität der Small Area-Statistik von massgeblicher Bedeutung ist. Wenn es nicht gelingt, die empirischen Daten durch ein passendes Modell zu beschreiben und mit den entsprechenden Methoden zu schätzen, dann können massive Verzerrungen und / oder ineffiziente Schätzungen resultieren.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der zentralen Frage der Robustheit von Small Area-Schätzverfahren. Als robust werden statistische Methoden dann bezeichnet, wenn sie eine beschränkte Einflussfunktion und einen möglichst hohen Bruchpunkt haben. Vereinfacht gesprochen zeichnen sich robuste Verfahren dadurch aus, dass sie nur unwesentlich durch Ausreisser und andere Anomalien in den Daten beeinflusst werden. Die Untersuchung zur Robustheit konzentriert sich auf die folgenden Modelle bzw. Schätzmethoden:
i) modellbasierte Schätzer für das Fay-Herriot-Modell (Fay und Herrot, 1979, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc.) und das elementare Unit-Level-Modell (vgl. Battese et al., 1988, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc.).
ii) direkte, Modell-unterstützte Schätzer unter der Annahme eines linearen Regressionsmodells.
Das Unit-Level-Modell zur Mittelwertschätzung beruht auf einem linearen gemischten Gauss'schen Modell (engl. mixed linear model, MLM) mit blockdiagonaler Kovarianzmatrix. Im Gegensatz zu bspw. einem multiplen linearen Regressionsmodell, besitzen MLM-Modelle keine nennenswerten Invarianzeigenschaften, so dass eine Kontamination der abhängigen Variablen unvermeidbar zu verzerrten Parameterschätzungen führt. Für die Maximum-Likelihood-Methode kann die resultierende Verzerrung nahezu beliebig groß werden. Aus diesem Grund haben Richardson und Welsh (1995, Biometrics) die robusten Schätzmethoden RML 1 und RML 2 entwickelt, die bei kontaminierten Daten nur eine geringe Verzerrung aufweisen und wesentlich effizienter sind als die Maximum-Likelihood-Methode. Eine Abwandlung von Methode RML 2 wurde Sinha und Rao (2009, Canad. J. Statist.) für die robuste Schätzung von Unit-Level-Modellen vorgeschlagen. Allerdings erweisen sich die gebräuchlichen numerischen Verfahren zur Berechnung der RML-2-Methode (dies gilt auch für den Vorschlag von Sinha und Rao) als notorisch unzuverlässig. In dieser Arbeit werden zuerst die Konvergenzprobleme der bestehenden Verfahren erörtert und anschließend ein numerisches Verfahren vorgeschlagen, das sich durch wesentlich bessere numerische Eigenschaften auszeichnet. Schließlich wird das vorgeschlagene Schätzverfahren im Rahmen einer Simulationsstudie untersucht und anhand eines empirischen Beispiels zur Schätzung von oberirdischer Biomasse in norwegischen Kommunen illustriert.
Das Modell von Fay-Herriot kann als Spezialfall eines MLM mit blockdiagonaler Kovarianzmatrix aufgefasst werden, obwohl die Varianzen des Zufallseffekts für die Small Areas nicht geschätzt werden müssen, sondern als bereits bekannte Größen betrachtet werden. Diese Eigenschaft kann man sich nun zunutze machen, um die von Sinha und Rao (2009) vorgeschlagene Robustifizierung des Unit-Level-Modells direkt auf das Fay-Herriot Model zu übertragen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird jedoch ein alternativer Vorschlag erarbeitet, der von der folgenden Beobachtung ausgeht: Fay und Herriot (1979) haben ihr Modell als Verallgemeinerung des James-Stein-Schätzers motiviert, wobei sie sich einen empirischen Bayes-Ansatz zunutze machen. Wir greifen diese Motivation des Problems auf und formulieren ein analoges robustes Bayes'sches Verfahren. Wählt man nun in der robusten Bayes'schen Problemformulierung die ungünstigste Verteilung (engl. least favorable distribution) von Huber (1964, Ann. Math. Statist.) als A-priori-Verteilung für die Lokationswerte der Small Areas, dann resultiert als Bayes-Schätzer [=Schätzer mit dem kleinsten Bayes-Risk] die Limited-Translation-Rule (LTR) von Efron und Morris (1971, J. Amer. Statist. Assoc.). Im Kontext der frequentistischen Statistik kann die Limited-Translation-Rule nicht verwendet werden, weil sie (als Bayes-Schätzer) auf unbekannten Parametern beruht. Die unbekannten Parameter können jedoch nach dem empirischen Bayes-Ansatz an der Randverteilung der abhängigen Variablen geschätzt werden. Hierbei gilt es zu beachten (und dies wurde in der Literatur vernachlässigt), dass die Randverteilung unter der ungünstigsten A-priori-Verteilung nicht einer Normalverteilung entspricht, sondern durch die ungünstigste Verteilung nach Huber (1964) beschrieben wird. Es ist nun nicht weiter erstaunlich, dass es sich bei den Maximum-Likelihood-Schätzern von Regressionskoeffizienten und Modellvarianz unter der Randverteilung um M-Schätzer mit der Huber'schen psi-Funktion handelt.
Unsere theoriegeleitete Herleitung von robusten Schätzern zum Fay-Herriot-Modell zeigt auf, dass bei kontaminierten Daten die geschätzte LTR (mit Parameterschätzungen nach der M-Schätzmethodik) optimal ist und, dass die LTR ein integraler Bestandteil der Schätzmethodik ist (und nicht als ``Zusatz'' o.Ä. zu betrachten ist, wie dies andernorts getan wird). Die vorgeschlagenen M-Schätzer sind robust bei Vorliegen von atypischen Small Areas (Ausreissern), wie dies auch die Simulations- und Fallstudien zeigen. Um auch Robustheit bei Vorkommen von einflussreichen Beobachtungen in den unabhängigen Variablen zu erzielen, wurden verallgemeinerte M-Schätzer (engl. generalized M-estimator) für das Fay-Herriot-Modell entwickelt.
This thesis sheds light on the heterogeneous hedging behavior of airlines. The focus lies on financial hedging, operational hedging and selective hedging. The unbalanced panel data set includes 74 airlines from 39 countries. The period of analysis is 2005 until 2014, resulting in 621 firm years. The random effects probit and fixed effects OLS models provide strong evidence of a convex relation between derivative usage and a firm’s leverage, opposing the existing financial distress theory. Airlines with lower leverage had higher hedge ratios. In addition, the results show that airlines with interest rate and currency derivatives were more likely to engage in fuel price hedging. Moreover, the study results support the argument that operational hedging is a complement to financial hedging. Airlines with more heterogeneous fleet structures exhibited higher hedge ratios.
Also, airlines which were members of a strategic alliance were more likely to be hedging airlines. As alliance airlines are rather financially sound airlines, the positive relation between alliance membership and hedging reflects the negative results on the leverage
ratio. Lastly, the study presents determinants of an airlines’ selective hedging behavior. Airlines with prior-period derivative losses, recognized in income, changed their hedge portfolios more frequently. Moreover, the sample airlines acted in accordance with herd behavior theory. Changes in the regional hedge portfolios influenced the hedge portfolio of the individual airline in the same direction.
The formerly communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (transitional economies in Europe and the Soviet Union – for example, East Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia) and transitional economies in Asia – for example, China, Vietnam had centrally planned economies, which did not allow entrepreneurship activities. Despite the political-socioeconomic transformations in transitional economies around 1989, they still had an institutional heritage that affects individuals’ values and attitudes, which, in turn, influence intentions, behaviors, and actions, including entrepreneurship.
While prior studies on the long-lasting effects of socialist legacy on entrepreneurship have focused on limited geographical regions (e.g., East-West Germany, and East-West Europe), this dissertation focuses on the Vietnamese context, which offers a unique quasi-experimental setting. In 1954, Vietnam was divided into the socialist North and the non-socialist South, and it was then reunified under socialist rule in 1975. Thus, the intensity of differences in socialist treatment in North-South Vietnam (about 21 years) is much shorter than that in East-West Germany (about 40 years) and East-West Europe (about 70 years when considering former Soviet Union countries).
To assess the relationship between socialist history and entrepreneurship in this unique setting, we survey more than 3,000 Vietnamese individuals. This thesis finds that individuals from North Vietnam have lower entrepreneurship intentions, are less likely to enroll in entrepreneurship education programs, and display lower likelihood to take over an existing business, compared to those from the South of Vietnam. The long-lasting effect of formerly socialist institutions on entrepreneurship is apparently deeper than previously discovered in the prominent case of East-West Germany and East-West Europe as well.
In the second empirical investigation, this dissertation focuses on how succession intentions differ from others (e.g., founding, and employee intentions) regarding career choice motivation, and the effect of three main elements of the theory of planned behavior (e.g., entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) in transition economy – Vietnam context. The findings of this thesis suggest that an intentional founder is labeled with innovation, an intentional successor is labeled with roles motivation, and an intentional employee is labeled with social mission. Additionally, this thesis reveals that entrepreneurial attitude and perceived behavioral control are positively associated with the founding intention, whereas there is no difference in this effect between succession and employee intentions.
Structured Eurobonds - Optimal Construction, Impact on the Euro and the Influence of Interest Rates
(2020)
Structured Eurobonds are a prominent topic in the discussions how to complete the monetary and fiscal union. This work sheds light on several issues going hand in hand with the introduction of common bonds. At first a crucial question is on the optimal construction, e.g. what is the optimal common liability. Other questions that arise belong to the time after the introduction. The impact on several exchnage rates is examined in this work. Finally an approximation bias in forward-looking DSGE models is quantified which would lead to an adjustment of central bank interest rates and therefore has an impact on the other two topics.
Entrepreneurial ventures are associated with economic growth, job creation, and innovation. Most entrepreneurial ventures need external funding to succeed. However, they often find it difficult to access traditional forms of financing, such as bank loans. To overcome this hurdle and to provide entrepreneurial ventures with badly-needed external capital, many types of entrepreneurial finance have emerged over the past decades and continue to emerge today. Inspired by these dynamics, this postdoctoral thesis contains five empirical studies that address novel questions regarding established (e.g., venture capital, business angels) and new types of entrepreneurial finance (i.e., initial coin offerings).
With two-thirds to three-quarters of all companies, family firms are the most common firm type worldwide and employ around 60 percent of all employees, making them of considerable importance for almost all economies. Despite this high practical relevance, academic research took notice of family firms as intriguing research subjects comparatively late. However, the field of family business research has grown eminently over the past two decades and has established itself as a mature research field with a broad thematic scope. In addition to questions relating to corporate governance, family firm succession and the consideration of entrepreneurial families themselves, researchers mainly focused on the impact of family involvement in firms on their financial performance and firm strategy. This dissertation examines the financial performance and capital structure of family firms in various meta-analytical studies. Meta-analysis is a suitable method for summarizing existing empirical findings of a research field as well as identifying relevant moderators of a relationship of interest.
First, the dissertation examines the question whether family firms show better financial performance than non-family firms. A replication and extension of the study by O’Boyle et al. (2012) based on 1,095 primary studies reveals a slightly better performance of family firms compared to non-family firms. Investigating the moderating impact of methodological choices in primary studies, the results show that outperformance holds mainly for large and publicly listed firms and with regard to accounting-based performance measures. Concerning country culture, family firms show better performance in individualistic countries and countries with a low power distance.
Furthermore, this dissertation investigates the sensitivity of family firm performance with regard to business cycle fluctuations. Family firms show a pro-cyclical performance pattern, i.e. their relative financial performance compared to non-family firms is better in economically good times. This effect is particularly pronounced in Anglo-American countries and emerging markets.
In the next step, a meta-analytic structural equation model (MASEM) is used to examine the market valuation of public family firms. In this model, profitability and firm strategic choices are used as mediators. On the one hand, family firm status itself does not have an impact on firms‘ market value. On the other hand, this study finds a positive indirect effect via higher profitability levels and a negative indirect effect via lower R&D intensity. A split consideration of family ownership and management shows that these two effects are mainly driven by family ownership, while family management results in less diversification and internationalization.
Finally, the dissertation examines the capital structure of public family firms. Univariate meta-analyses indicate on average lower leverage ratios in family firms compared to non-family firms. However, there is significant heterogeneity in mean effect sizes across the 45 countries included in the study. The results of a meta-regression reveal that family firms use leverage strategically to secure their controlling position in the firm. While strong creditor protection leads to lower leverage ratios in family firms, strong shareholder protection has the opposite effect.
This dissertation investigates corporate acquisition decisions that represent important corporate development activities for family and non-family firms. The main research objective of this dissertation is to generate insights into the subjective decision-making behavior of corporate decision-makers from family and non-family firms and their weighting of M&A decision-criteria during the early pre-acquisition target screening and selection process. The main methodology chosen for the investigation of M&A decision-making preferences and the weighting of M&A decision criteria is a choice-based conjoint analysis. The overall sample of this dissertation consists of 304 decision-makers from 264 private and public family and non-family firms from mainly Germany and the DACH-region. In the first empirical part of the dissertation, the relative importance of strategic, organizational and financial M&A decision-criteria for corporate acquirers in acquisition target screening is investigated. In addition, the author uses a cluster analysis to explore whether distinct decision-making patterns exist in acquisition target screening. In the second empirical part, the dissertation explores whether there are differences in investment preferences in acquisition target screening between family and non-family firms and within the group of family firms. With regards to the heterogeneity of family firms, the dissertation generated insights into how family-firm specific characteristics like family management, the generational stage of the firm and non-economic goals such as transgenerational control intention influences the weighting of different M&A decision criteria in acquisition target screening. The dissertation contributes to strategic management research, in specific to M&A literature, and to family business research. The results of this dissertation generate insights into the weighting of M&A decision-making criteria and facilitate a better understanding of corporate M&A decisions in family and non-family firms. The findings show that decision-making preferences (hence the weighting of M&A decision criteria) are influenced by characteristics of the individual decision-maker, the firm and the environment in which the firm operates.