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The dissertation examines the use of performance information by public managers. “Use” is conceptualized as purposeful utilization in order to steer, learn, and improve public services. The main research question is: Why do public managers use performance information? To answer this question, I systematically review the existing literature, identify research gaps and introduce the approach of my dissertation. The first part deals with manager-related variables that might affect performance information use but which have thus far been disregarded. The second part models performance data use by applying a theory from social psychology which is based on the assumption that this management behavior is conscious and reasoned. The third part examines the extent to which explanations of performance information use vary if we include others sources of “unsystematic” feedback in our analysis. The empirical results are based on survey data from 2011. I surveyed middle managers from eight selected divisions of all German cities with county status (n=954). To analyze the data, I used factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and structural equation modeling. My research resulted in four major findings: 1) The use of performance information can be modeled as a reasoned behavior which is determined by the attitude of the managers and of their immediate peers. 2) Regular users of performance data surprisingly are not generally inclined to analyze abstract data but rather prefer gathering information through personal interaction. 3) Managers who take on ownership of performance information at an early stage in the measurement process are also more likely to use this data when it is reported to them. 4) Performance reports are only one source of information among many. Public managers prefer verbal feedback from insiders and feedback from external stakeholders over systematic performance reports. The dissertation explains these findings using a deductive approach and discusses their implications for theory and practice.
The economic impact analysis contained in this book shows how irrigation farming is particularly susceptible when applying certain water management policies in the Australian Murray-Darling Basin, one of the world largest river basins and Australia’s most fertile region. By comparing different pricing and non-pricing water management policies with the help of the Water Integrated Market Model, it is found that the impact of water demand reducing policies is most severe on crops that need to be intensively irrigated and are at the same time less water productive. A combination of increasingly frequent and severe droughts and the application of policies that decrease agricultural water demand, in the same region, will create a situation in which the highly water dependent crops rice and cotton cannot be cultivated at all.
Current business organizations want to be more efficient and constantly evolving to find ways to retain talent. It is well established that visionary leadership plays a vital role in organizational success and contributes to a better working environment. This study aims to determine the effect of visionary leadership on employees' perceived job satisfaction. Specifically, it investigates whether the mediators meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader impact the relationship. I take support from job demand resource theory to explain the overarching model used in this study and broaden-and-build theory to leverage the use of mediators.
To test the hypotheses, evidence was collected in a multi-source, time-lagged design field study of 95 leader-follower dyads. The data was collected in a three-wave study, each survey appearing after one month. Data on employee perception of visionary leadership was collected in T1, data for both mediators were collected in T2, and employee perception of job satisfaction was collected in T3. The findings display that meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader play positive intervening roles (in the form of a chain) in the indirect influence of visionary leadership on employee perceptions regarding job satisfaction.
This research offers contributions to literature and theory by first broadening the existing knowledge on the effects of visionary leadership on employees. Second, it contributes to the literature on constructs meaningfulness at work, commitment to the leader, and job satisfaction. Third, it sheds light on the mediation mechanism dealing with study variables in line with the proposed model. Fourth, it integrates two theories, job demand resource theory and broaden-and-build theory providing further evidence. Additionally, the study provides practical implications for business leaders and HR practitioners.
Overall, my study discusses the potential of visionary leadership behavior to elevate employee outcomes. The study aligns with previous research and answers several calls for further research on visionary leadership, job satisfaction, and mediation mechanism with meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader.
In industrialized economies such as the European countries unemployment rates are very responsive to the business cycle and significant shares stay unemployed for more than one year. To fight cyclical and long-term unemployment countries spend significant shares of their budget on Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP). To improve the allocation and design of ALMP it is essential for policy makers to have reliable evidence on the effectiveness of such programs available. Although the number of studies has been increased during the last decades, policy makers still lack evidence on innovative programs and for specific subgroups of the labor market. Using Germany as a case study, the dissertation aims at contributing in this way by providing new evidence on start-up subsidies, marginal employment and programs for youth unemployed. The idea behind start-up subsidies is to encourage unemployed individuals to exit unemployment by starting their own business. Those programs have compared to traditional programs of ALMP the advantage that not only the participant escapes unemployment but also might generate additional jobs for other individuals. Considering two distinct start-up subsidy programs, the dissertation adds three substantial aspects to the literature: First, the programs are effective in improving the employment and income situation of participants compared to non-participants in the long-run. Second, the analysis on effect heterogeneity reveals that the programs are particularly effective for disadvantaged groups in the labor market like low educated or low qualified individuals, and in regions with unfavorable economic conditions. Third, the analysis considers the effectiveness of start-up programs for women. Due to higher preferences for flexible working hours and limited part-time jobs, unemployed women often face more difficulties to integrate in dependent employment. It can be shown that start-up subsidy programs are very promising as unemployed women become self-employed which gives them more flexibility to reconcile work and family. Overall, the results suggest that the promotion of self-employment among the unemployed is a sensible strategy to fight unemployment by abolishing labor market barriers for disadvantaged groups and sustainably integrating those into the labor market. The next chapter of the dissertation considers the impact of marginal employment on labor market outcomes of the unemployed. Unemployed individuals in Germany are allowed to earn additional income during unemployment without suffering a reduction in their unemployment benefits. Those additional earnings are usually earned by taking up so-called marginal employment that is employment below a certain income level subject to reduced payroll taxes (also known as “mini-job”). The dissertation provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of marginal employment on unemployment duration and subsequent job quality. The results suggest that being marginal employed during unemployment has no significant effect on unemployment duration but extends employment duration. Moreover, it can be shown that taking up marginal employment is particularly effective for long-term unemployed, leading to higher job-finding probabilities and stronger job stability. It seems that mini-jobs can be an effective instrument to help long-term unemployed individuals to find (stable) jobs which is particularly interesting given the persistently high shares of long-term unemployed in European countries. Finally, the dissertation provides an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of ALMP programs to improve labor market prospects of unemployed youth. Youth are generally considered a population at risk as they have lower search skills and little work experience compared to adults. This results in above-average turnover rates between jobs and unemployment for youth which is particularly sensitive to economic fluctuations. Therefore, countries spend significant resources on ALMP programs to fight youth unemployment. However, so far only little is known about the effectiveness of ALMP for unemployed youth and with respect to Germany no comprehensive quantitative analysis exists at all. Considering seven different ALMP programs, the results show an overall positive picture with respect to post-treatment employment probabilities for all measures under scrutiny except for job creation schemes. With respect to effect heterogeneity, it can be shown that almost all programs particularly improve the labor market prospects of youths with high levels of pretreatment schooling. Furthermore, youths who are assigned to the most successful employment measures have much better characteristics in terms of their pre-treatment employment chances compared to non-participants. Therefore, the program assignment process seems to favor individuals for whom the measures are most beneficial, indicating a lack of ALMP alternatives that could benefit low-educated youths.
Turning wind into power : effects of stakeholder networks on renewalbe energy governanace in India
(2011)
Wie hängen Vertrauen, Konsumeinstellungen und Verhalten bezüglich Fairtrade zusammen?
Dies ist die grundlegende Frage, mit der sich diese Arbeit beschäftigt. Lea Dirkwinkel analysiert die Fragestellung am Beispiel des Fairtrade-Labels, das als Symbol für das Produktzertifizierungssystem von Fairtrade International steht und das bekannteste Beispiel der Fairtrade-Bewegung darstellt.
Die Forschungsfrage wird einerseits zurückgeführt auf die Tatsache, dass die Qualität von Fairtrade-Gütern durch Konsumenten nicht erfasst werden kann, und andererseits durch die sogenannte Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Lücke begründet. Die Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Lücke beschreibt die kognitive Dissonanz zwischen positiven ethischen Einstellungen und Kaufintentionen sowie dem tatsächlichen Kaufverhalten und widerspricht traditionellen Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Modellen, die besagen, dass die Einstellung das Verhalten von Menschen bestimmt. Beide zuvor genannten Aspekte begründen in der Marketingtheorie die Relevanz von Vertrauen für den Konsum von Fairtrade-Produkten, aber auch anderen nachhaltigen Gütern.
Die Analyse basiert auf einer Online-Datenerhebung und erfolgte anhand der Kombination aus Conjoint Analyse und Strukturgleichungsanalyse. Die innovative methodische Vorgehensweise lieferte sowohl für die Marketingforschung als auch für die Praxis relevante Ergebnisse. Zum einem wird die wichtige Rolle von Vertrauen für den Fairtrade-Konsum bestätigt; zum anderen erklärt die Arbeit, wie sich Fairtrade-Vertrauen auswirkt. Das Vertrauen in das Fairtrade-Label stellt den Ausgangspunkt für Vertrauensbeziehungen zwischen Fairtrade und den Konsumenten dar und wird auf die zertifizierten Produkte übertragen.
Empfehlungen, die sich daraus ergeben, konzentrieren sich auf Maßnahmen, die das Vertrauen in Fairtrade-Labels stärken, z.B. durch die Reduzierung der Anzahl verschiedener Labels oder die verstärkte Kommunikation der Unabhängigkeit von Zertifizierungsorganisationen.
Public administrations confront fundamental challenges, including globalization, digitalization, and an eroding level of trust from society. By developing joint public service delivery with other stakeholders, public administrations can respond to these challenges. This increases the importance of inter-organizational governance—a development often referred to as New Public Governance, which to date has not been realized because public administrations focus on intra-organizational practices and follow the traditional “governmental chain.”
E-government initiatives, which can lead to high levels of interconnected public services, are currently perceived as insufficient to meet this goal. They are not designed holistically and merely affect the interactions of public and non-public stakeholders. A fundamental shift toward a joint public service delivery would require scrutiny of established processes, roles, and interactions between stakeholders.
Various scientists and practitioners within the public sector assume that the use of blockchain institutional technology could fundamentally change the relationship between public and non-public stakeholders. At first glance, inter-organizational, joint public service delivery could benefit from the use of blockchain. This dissertation aims to shed light on this widespread assumption. Hence, the objective of this dissertation is to substantiate the effect of blockchain on the relationship between public administrations and non-public stakeholders.
This objective is pursued by defining three major areas of interest. First, this dissertation strives to answer the question of whether or not blockchain is suited to enable New Public Governance and to identify instances where blockchain may not be the proper solution. The second area aims to understand empirically the status quo of existing blockchain implementations in the public sector and whether they comply with the major theoretical conclusions. The third area investigates the changing role of public administrations, as the blockchain ecosystem can significantly increase the number of stakeholders.
Corresponding research is conducted to provide insights into these areas, for example, combining theoretical concepts with empirical actualities, conducting interviews with subject matter experts and key stakeholders of leading blockchain implementations, and performing a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, followed by visualization of its results.
The results of this dissertation demonstrate that blockchain can support New Public Governance in many ways while having a minor impact on certain aspects (e.g., decentralized control), which account for this public service paradigm. Furthermore, the existing projects indicate changes to relationships between public administrations and non-public stakeholders, although not necessarily the fundamental shift proposed by New Public Governance. Lastly, the results suggest that power relations are shifting, including the decreasing influence of public administrations within the blockchain ecosystem. The results raise questions about the governance models and regulations required to support mature solutions and the further diffusion of blockchain for public service delivery.
Over the past decade, society has witnessed an increasing expansion of service economies as manufacturing (i.e., product-oriented) companies break free from their product-based business model and move toward more service-oriented value creation as a result of several economic, technological, and social changes. As they shift from products to (service) solutions, manufacturing companies pursue new strategic direction, inter alia, by extensively employing service business development activities.
The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the considerable (re-)emerging stream of service business development by providing vital insights for academia and management into important focus areas that have hardly, if at all, been (empirically) investigated in the existing literature before. Therefore, these findings can be vital to informing a differentiation in current and future marketing strategies in business practice.
First of all, this dissertation focuses on the extent to which service business development is transposed into business practice. Because scarce empirical-quantitative research has studied the current state of service business development across various industry and market sectors, this study analyzes a unique, manually collected dataset of 266 (product and service) business development activities. In so doing, this investigation contributes to literature by presenting a comprehensive, industry-wide status quo and trend report of service business development in practice.
Furthermore, given the surprisingly limited scientific attention paid to the question of how service business development is strategically configured and further applied to different environmental circumstances, this dissertation provides comprehensive theoretical and practical implications by analyzing in detail a sample of 137 service business developments of 66 product-oriented companies.
Lastly, manufacturers are recognizing that service-oriented value creation is moving toward a more collaborative process of co-creation as a promising measure to achieve competitive advantage, and even more as an appropriate response to complex business environments. Thus, an increasing number of companies around the world have recently introduced business models related to access-based services such as car-, scooter-, and bike-sharing systems. But despite the considerable advantages of access-based services as an alternative to ownership, these companies are now seeing that consumer adoption and (re-)usage rates remain insufficient. Owing to the lack of general and cross-national scientific knowledge, the purpose of this dissertation continues to explore which factors impede diffusion of related service business development activities from a consumer perspective and what kind of differences can be established between countries. Consequently, with a total of 1,443 participants, a cross-national survey was carried out in three countries, i.e., the United States, Germany, and China, to measure a vast number of different adoption barriers derived from a developed integrated framework that combines established theories within innovation and adoption behavior research.
Three Essays on EFRAG
(2018)
This cumulative doctoral thesis consists of three papers that deal with the role of one specific European accounting player in the international accounting standard-setting, namely the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG). The first paper examines whether and how EFRAG generally fulfills its role in articulating Europe’s interests toward the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The qualitative data from the conducted interviews reveal that EFRAG influences the IASB’s decision making at a very early stage, long before other constituents are officially asked to comment on the IASB’s proposals. The second paper uses quantitative data and investigates the formal participation behavior of European constituents that seek to determine EFRAG’s voice. More precisely, this paper analyzes the nature of the constituents’ participation in EFRAG’s due process in terms of representation (constituent groups and geographical distribution) and the drivers of their participation behavior. EFRAG’s official decision making process is dominated by some specific constituent groups (such as preparers and the accounting profession) and by constituents from some specific countries (e.g. those with effective enforcement regimes). The third paper investigates in a first step who of the European constituents choose which lobbying channel (participation only at IASB, only at EFRAG, or at both institutions) and unveils in a second step possible reasons for their lobbying choices. The paper comprises quantitative and qualitative data. It reveals that English skills, time issues, the size of the constituent, and the country of origin are factors that can explain why the majority participates only in the IASB’s due process.
Buyer-seller negotiations have significant impact on a company’s profitability, which makes practitioners aim at maximizing their performance. One lever for increasing bargaining performance is to pursue a clearly defined aspiration, i.e. one’s most desired outcome. In this context, the author explores the role of such aspirations in the three negotiation phases: preparation, bargaining, and striking a deal. She investigates determinants of aspirations, unintended consequences such as unethical bargaining behavior, and the consequences of overly ambitious aspirations. As a result, she does not only close existing gaps in negotiation research, but also derives valuable implications for practitioners
This thesis puts the citizen-state interaction at its center. Building on a comprehensive model incorporating various perspectives on this interaction, I derive selected research gaps. The three articles, comprising this thesis, tackle these gaps. A focal role plays the citizens’ administrative literacy, the relevant competences and knowledge necessary to successfully interact with public organizations. The first article elaborates on the different dimensions of administrative literacy and develops a survey instrument to assess these. The second study shows that public employees change their behavior according to the competences that citizens display during public encounters. They treat citizens preferentially that are well prepared and able to persuade them of their application’s potential. Thereby, they signal a higher success potential for bureaucratic success criteria which leads to the employees’ cream-skimming behavior. The third article examines the dynamics of employees’ communication strategies when recovering from a service failure. The study finds that different explanation strategies yield different effects on the client’s frustration. While accepting the responsibility and explaining the reasons for a failure alleviates the frustration and anger, refusing the responsibility leads to no or even reinforcing effects on the client’s frustration. The results emphasize the different dynamics that characterize the nature of citizen-state interactions and how they establish their short- and long-term outcomes.
The public encounter
(2019)
This thesis puts the citizen-state interaction at its center. Building on a comprehensive model incorporating various perspectives on this interaction, I derive selected research gaps. The three articles, comprising this thesis, tackle these gaps. A focal role plays the citizens’ administrative literacy, the relevant competences and knowledge necessary to successfully interact with public organizations. The first article elaborates on the different dimensions of administrative literacy and develops a survey instrument to assess these. The second study shows that public employees change their behavior according to the competences that citizens display during public encounters. They treat citizens preferentially that are well prepared and able to persuade them of their application’s potential. Thereby, they signal a higher success potential for bureaucratic success criteria which leads to the employees’ cream-skimming behavior. The third article examines the dynamics of employees’ communication strategies when recovering from a service failure. The study finds that different explanation strategies yield different effects on the client’s frustration. While accepting the responsibility and explaining the reasons for a failure alleviates the frustration and anger, refusing the responsibility leads to no or even reinforcing effects on the client’s frustration. The results emphasize the different dynamics that characterize the nature of citizen-state interactions and how they establish their short- and long-term outcomes.
Seizing long-term growth opportunities is both a key goal of and a challenge for companies at the same time. Saturated markets and shorter product lifecycles have changed market dynamics over the past decades, in such a way that competition on price or quality leadership has receded into the background. Instead, firms increasingly depend on the successful development of new business fields and strong brands to retain customers and spur growth. Thus, the two pillars of business development and brand management have become core strategic functions.
By focusing on innovation – a key dimension of business development – this book analyzes the interrelations between innovation and brand management and the ways in which both functions can benefit from each other. Innovations are considered crucial for building brand equity and revitalizing brand images in the long term, while vice versa, branding could facilitate consumer adoption of a newly launched innovative product or service. Since a brand is a first quality signal, it could act as a vehicle for consumers to reduce the risks and uncertainty associated with a novel product from a consumer's perspective and encourage product trial.
This book empirically investigates whether such interdependencies exist and how managers can make use of them to best leverage their company’s innovation and branding efforts. In particular, the author examines the interplay between innovation and brand management by analyzing (1) how innovations impact consumer attitudes towards the (parent) brand and its brand images, (2) how branding an innovation facilitates its market success, and (3) how building brand equity can serve as a buffer against impacts from adverse events such as a product scandal.
Its findings are highly relevant from a managerial and a theoretical perspective. They provide managers with guidance on two key aspects of business development and innovation management: One, how is innovation employed in order to best enhance a brand's equity (e.g., to revitalize its brand image)? Two, how to choose whether to leverage an existing brand or to develop a new brand in order to facilitate consumer adoption of a new innovation?
A new model that links visionary leadership with team performance is
postulated. It is proposed that leader prototypicality will negatively
moderate the effect of visionary leadership on team goal monitoring and performance. This model underlines that teams will compensate for the less prototypicality of a visionary leader by engaging in more goal monitoring, which is a process that is conducive to team performance. A field study included 60 teams, 180 individuals, and 60 team leaders was conducted in Egypt. Parameters were collected on the individual level.
Aggregation measures (rwg, ICC1 & ICC2) were acceptable and the averages were calculated for each team. The proposed three-factor model exhibited a reasonable fit to the data, χ2(130) = 259.93, p-value0.01; CFI = 0.90; and RMSEA = 0.13). The hypothesized negative moderation effect of leader prototypicality on the relationship between visionary leadership and team goal monitoring was statistically significant (-0.16; s.e.= 0.06; t = -3.13; p <0.01; 95% CI: -0.31, -0.07). Results showed a significant index of moderated mediation (-0.07; s.e.= 0.05; 95% CI: -0.20, -0.01). As predicted, the indirect effect of visionary leadership on team performance mediated by team goal monitoring was more strongly positive when leader prototypicality was low (b = 0.27; s.e.= 0.16; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.68), rather than high (b = 0.13; s.e.= 0.10; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.45). A proposal for extending the dimensions of identity-based leadership is discussed. This dissertation makes four significant contributions to theory and research on leadership. First, the main contribution of this research lies in showing that visionary leadership is more strongly positively related to team performance when leader prototypicality is low, rather than high. Second, this dissertation provides a contribution toward overcoming the fragmentation in the leadership literature by desegregating the literature on visionary leadership and leader-team prototypicality. Third, team goal monitoring as a mechanism that explains the interactive effects of visionary leadership and leader prototypicality on team performance was identified. Fourth, this study tests the postulated research model in Egypt, a culture that has in the past received scant attention.
The Dynamics of M&A Strategy
(2010)
Sustainable urban growth
(2022)
This dissertation explores the determinants for sustainable and socially optimalgrowth in a city. Two general equilibrium models establish the base for this evaluation, each adding its puzzle piece to the urban sustainability discourse and examining the role of non-market-based and market-based policies for balanced growth and welfare improvements in different theory settings. Sustainable urban growth either calls for policy actions or a green energy transition. Further, R&D market failures can pose severe challenges to the sustainability of urban growth and the social optimality of decentralized allocation decisions. Still, a careful (holistic) combination of policy instruments can achieve sustainable growth and even be first best.
The ability of a company to innovate and to launch innovation is a critical competitive edge to remain competitive in the 21st century. Large organizations therefore increasingly recognize employees as a significant factor and critical source of innovation. Several studies assert the fact that every employee has to offer certain skills and knowledge and can contribute to innovation. Hence, every employee has a certain ‘entrepreneurial potential’. This potential can be expressed in the form of entrepreneurial behaviour and can occur in many ways, from monopersonal innovation championing to several small scale contributions, where several individuals team up for innovation. To support entrepreneurial behaviour of their employees, large organizations increasingly rely on Corporate Entrepreneurship. They set up organizational structures and venturing units, offer vehicles and tools to their employees to be more entrepreneurial. The evolvement of new tools and technologies thereby allow for new ways of employee involvement, also allowing for more radical innovation to be developed collaboratively. Yet, many of such offerings fail to achieve the desired outcome. While some employees immediately opt-in for innovation, others do not and their entrepreneurial potential remains untapped. This research explores how large organizations can better support their employees to express their entrepreneurial potential, thus moving from non-entrepreneurial behaviour or not wanting to be involved, to actually expressing entrepreneurial behaviour. The underlying research therefore is two-fold. While focusing on the individual level and the entrepreneurial behaviour of employees, this research also takes the organizational perspective into account in order to identify how non-entrepreneurial behaviour can be stimulated towards entrepreneurial behaviour. Using an empirical qualitative research design based on pragmatism and abduction, data is collected by means of qualitative interviews as well as a longitudinal use case setting. Grounded theory is then applied for analysis and sense making. The main outcome is a theoretical model of why employees are expressing or not expressing their entrepreneurial potential and how non-expression can potentially be triggered towards entrepreneurial behaviour. The results indicate that there is no one-size-fits all model of Corporate Entrepreneurship. This research therefore argues that organizations can achieve higher levels of entrepreneurial behaviour when addressing employees differently. By developing a theoretical model as well as suggestions of how this model can be applied in practice, this research contributes to theory and practice alike. This document closes suggesting future research areas around supporting employees to express their entrepreneurial potential.
Traditional organizations are strongly encouraged by emerging digital customer behavior and digital competition to transform their businesses for the digital age. Incumbents are particularly exposed to the field of tension between maintaining and renewing their business model. Banking is one of the industries most affected by digitalization, with a large stream of digital innovations around Fintech. Most research contributions focus on digital innovations, such as Fintech, but there are only a few studies on the related challenges and perspectives of incumbent organizations, such as traditional banks. Against this background, this dissertation examines the specific causes, effects and solutions for traditional banks in digital transformation − an underrepresented research area so far.
The first part of the thesis examines how digitalization has changed the latent customer expectations in banking and studies the underlying technological drivers of evolving business-to-consumer (B2C) business models. Online consumer reviews are systematized to identify latent concepts of customer behavior and future decision paths as strategic digitalization effects. Furthermore, the service attribute preferences, the impact of influencing factors and the underlying customer segments are uncovered for checking accounts in a discrete choice experiment. The dissertation contributes here to customer behavior research in digital transformation, moving beyond the technology acceptance model. In addition, the dissertation systematizes value proposition types in the evolving discourse around smart products and services as key drivers of business models and market power in the platform economy.
The second part of the thesis focuses on the effects of digital transformation on the strategy development of financial service providers, which are classified along with their firm performance levels. Standard types are derived based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), with facade digitalization as one typical standard type for low performing incumbent banks that lack a holistic strategic response to digital transformation. Based on this, the contradictory impact of digitalization measures on key business figures is examined for German savings banks, confirming that the shift towards digital customer interaction was not accompanied by new revenue models diminishing bank profitability. The dissertation further contributes to the discourse on digitalized work designs and the consequences for job perceptions in banking customer advisory. The threefold impact of the IT support perceived in customer interaction on the job satisfaction of customer advisors is disentangled.
In the third part of the dissertation, solutions are developed design-oriented for core action areas of digitalized business models, i.e., data and platforms. A consolidated taxonomy for data-driven business models and a future reference model for digital banking have been developed. The impact of the platform economy is demonstrated here using the example of the market entry by Bigtech. The role-based e3-value modeling is extended by meta-roles and role segments and linked to value co-creation mapping in VDML. In this way, the dissertation extends enterprise modeling research on platform ecosystems and value co-creation using the example of banking.
Start-up incentives targeted at unemployed individuals have become an important tool of the Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP) to fight unemployment in many countries in recent years. In contrast to traditional ALMP instruments like training measures, wage subsidies, or job creation schemes, which are aimed at reintegrating unemployed individuals into dependent employment, start-up incentives are a fundamentally different approach to ALMP, in that they intend to encourage and help unemployed individuals to exit unemployment by entering self-employment and, thus, by creating their own jobs. In this sense, start-up incentives for unemployed individuals serve not only as employment and social policy to activate job seekers and combat unemployment but also as business policy to promote entrepreneurship. The corresponding empirical literature on this topic so far has been mainly focused on the individual labor market perspective, however. The main part of the thesis at hand examines the new start-up subsidy (“Gründungszuschuss”) in Germany and consists of four empirical analyses that extend the existing evidence on start-up incentives for unemployed individuals from multiple perspectives and in the following directions:
First, it provides the first impact evaluation of the new start-up subsidy in Germany. The results indicate that participation in the new start-up subsidy has significant positive and persistent effects on both reintegration into the labor market as well as the income profiles of participants, in line with previous evidence on comparable German and international programs, which emphasizes the general potential of start-up incentives as part of the broader ALMP toolset. Furthermore, a new innovative sensitivity analysis of the applied propensity score matching approach integrates findings from entrepreneurship and labor market research about the key role of an individual’s personality on start-up decision, business performance, as well as general labor market outcomes, into the impact evaluation of start-up incentives. The sensitivity analysis with regard to the inclusion and exclusion of usually unobserved personality variables reveals that differences in the estimated treatment effects are small in magnitude and mostly insignificant. Consequently, concerns about potential overestimation of treatment effects in previous evaluation studies of similar start-up incentives due to usually unobservable personality variables are less justified, as long as the set of observed control variables is sufficiently informative (Chapter 2).
Second, the thesis expands our knowledge about the longer-term business performance and potential of subsidized businesses arising from the start-up subsidy program. In absolute terms, the analysis shows that a relatively high share of subsidized founders successfully survives in the market with their original businesses in the medium to long run. The subsidy also yields a “double dividend” to a certain extent in terms of additional job creation. Compared to “regular”, i.e., non-subsidized new businesses founded by non-unemployed individuals in the same quarter, however, the economic and growth-related impulses set by participants of the subsidy program are only limited with regard to employment growth, innovation activity, or investment. Further investigations of possible reasons for these differences show that differential business growth paths of subsidized founders in the longer run seem to be mainly limited by higher restrictions to access capital and by unobserved factors, such as less growth-oriented business strategies and intentions, as well as lower (subjective) entrepreneurial persistence. Taken together, the program has only limited potential as a business and entrepreneurship policy intended to induce innovation and economic growth (Chapters 3 and 4).
And third, an empirical analysis on the level of German regional labor markets yields that there is a high regional variation in subsidized start-up activity relative to overall new business formation. The positive correlation between regular start-up intensity and the share among all unemployed individuals who participate in the start-up subsidy program suggests that (nascent) unemployed founders also profit from the beneficial effects of regional entrepreneurship capital. Moreover, the analysis of potential deadweight and displacement effects from an aggregated regional perspective emphasizes that the start-up subsidy for unemployed individuals represents a market intervention into existing markets, which affects incumbents and potentially produces inefficiencies and market distortions. This macro perspective deserves more attention and research in the future (Chapter 5).
Social networking sites
(2023)
Social networking site use and well-being - a nuanced understanding of a complex relationship
(2022)
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are ubiquitous and attract an enormous chair of the digital population. Their functionalities allow users to connect and interact with others and weave complex social networks in which social information is continuously disseminated between users. Besides the social value SNSs are generating, they likewise attract companies and allow for new forms of marketing, thereby creating considerable economic value alike. However, as SNSs grew in popularity, so did concerns about the impact of their use on social interactions in general and the well-being of individual users in particular. While existing scientific evidence points to both risk as well as benefits of SNS use, research still lacks a profound understanding of which aspects of SNSs enable an impact on well-being and which psychological processes on the part of the users underly and explain this relationship. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to an in-depth exploration of the relationship between SNS use and well-being and aims to answer how SNS use can impact well-being. Primarily, it focuses on the unique technological features that characterize SNSs and enable potential well- being alterations and on specific psychological processes on the part of the users, underlying and explaining the relationship. For this purpose, the thesis first introduces the concept of well- being. It continues by presenting SNSs’ unique technological features, divided into specifics of the content disseminated on SNSs and the network structure of SNSs. Further, the thesis introduces three classes of psychological processes assumed most relevant for the relationship between SNSs and well-being: other-focused, self-focused, and contrastive processes.. It is assumed that the course and quality of these common processes change in the SNS context and that a complex interplay between the unique features of SNSs and these processes determines how SNSs may ultimately affect users' well-being - both in positive and negative ways. The dissertation comprises seven research articles, each of which focusses on a particular set of SNS characteristics, their interplay with one or more of the proposed psychological processes, and ultimately the resulting effects on user well-being or its key resilience and risk factors. The seven articles investigate this relationship using different methodological approaches. Three articles are based on either systematic or narrative literature reviews, one applies an empirical cross-sectional research design, and three articles present an experimental investigation. Thematically, two articles revolve around SNS use’s effect on self-esteem. Three articles examine the specific role of the emotion of envy and its potential to establish and perpetuate a well-being-damaging social climate on SNSs. The two last articles of this thesis revolve around the established assumption that active and passive SNS use, as different modalities of SNS use, cause differential effects on users’ well-being due to the involvement of different psychological processes. The results of this thesis illustrate different ways how SNSs can affect users’ well-being. The results suggest that especially contrastive processes play a decisive role in explaining potential well-being risks for SNS users. Their interplay with certain SNS features seems to foster upward social comparisons and feelings of envy, potentially leading to a complex set of deleterious effects on users’ well-being. At the same time, the findings illuminate ways in which SNSs can benefit users and their self-esteem – especially when SNS use promotes self- focused and social-feedback-based other-focused processes. The thesis and their findings illustrate that the relationship between SNSs and well-being is complex. Therefore, a nuanced perspective, taking into consideration both the technological uniqueness of SNSs and the psychological processes they are enabling, is crucial to understand how these technologies affect their users in good and potentially harmful ways. On the one hand, the gathered insights contribute to research, providing novel insights into the complex relationship between SNS use and well-being. On the other hand, the results enable a focused and action-oriented derivation of recommendations for stakeholders such as individual users, policymakers, and platform providers. The findings of this thesis can help them to better combat SNS-related risks and ultimately ensure a healthy and sustainable environment for users - and thus also the economic values of SNSs - in the long term.
The first goal of the present work focuses on the need for different rationing methods of the The Global Change and Financial Transition (GFT) work- ing group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK): I provide a toolbox which contains a variety of rationing methods to be ap- plied to micro-economic disequilibrium models of the lagom model family. This toolbox consists of well known rationing methods, and of rationing methods provided specifically for lagom. To ensure an easy application the toolbox is constructed in modular fashion. The second goal of the present work is to present a micro-economic labour market where heterogenous labour suppliers experience consecu- tive job opportunities and need to decide whether to apply for employ- ment. The labour suppliers are heterogenous with respect to their qualifi- cations and their beliefs about the application behaviour of their competi- tors. They learn simultaneously – in Bayesian fashion – about their individ- ual perceived probability to obtain employment conditional on application (PPE) by observing each others’ application behaviour over a cycle of job opportunities.
Alexander Rhode investigates performance-oriented measures of Contracting Authorities in public tenders conducted within the EU. He finds that Contracting Authorities can improve their performance and attract more suppliers by publishing (as precise as possible) starting prices in the beginning of a tender. First, he reports that compared with private-sector negotiations, starting prices do not create entry barriers in public procurement. Second, he finds that increased numerical precision of starting prices is linearly correlated with better performance and a higher number of bids. In public procurement, suppliers tend to attribute increased credibility to precise starting prices which reduces their (perceived) entry risks.
The present dissertation investigates profit-maximizing behavior in different phases of the negotiation process. Over the last decades, research dealt in detail with behavior of negotiation actors with the aim of identifying performance enhancing factors. The majority of those studies focused on behavior within the main negotiation phase. This work, however, considers phases which are, so far, underrepresented in research but show an impact on the negotiation process and outcome. Those phases are the pre-negotiation, the first offer, and the main negotiation phase which is further divided by breaks into several rounds. Within these phases, traits of behavior are analyzed that can be used strategically in order to impact the negotiation outcome. The dissertation contains three papers, each one dealing with a specific strategy within one phase. The first paper investigates communication behavior in the pre-negotiation phase. Content analysis of a negotiation experiment shows that the employment of positive communication elements such as the generation of enthusiasm for an upcoming project results in an increase of agreements on entering a negotiation and also leads to a higher willingness to make concessions. The second paper explores the impact of a semantic first anchor, which does not contain a specific number but only gives a numerical direction, on the opponent’s concession behavior and the final outcome. By means of two scenario-based questionnaires and a negotiation experiment it is demonstrated that semantic offers reveal an anchoring effect and lead to better negotiation outcomes. The third paper deals with the introduction of breaks and their effect on the following negotiation process. Therefore, content and outcome of another negotiation experiment are investigated. The analysis shows that breaks evoke a dominant impression but can negatively impact the atmosphere and thereby also the outcome. Finally, the gathered insights are brought together and discussed. The dissertation closes with implications for practice, limitations of the work, and ideas for future research.
This paper-based dissertation aims to contribute to the open innovation (OI) and technology management (TM) research fields by investigating their mechanisms, and potentials at the operational level. The dissertation connects the well-known concept of technology management with OI formats and applies these on specific manufacturing technologies within a clearly defined setting.
Technological breakthroughs force firms to continuously adapt and reinvent themselves. The pace of technological innovation and their impact on firms is constantly increasing due to more connected infrastructure and accessible resources (i.e. data, knowledge). Especially in the manufacturing sector it is one key element to leverage new technologies to stay competitive. These technological shifts call for new management practices.
TM supports firms with various tools to manage these shifts at different levels in the firm. It is a multifunctional and multidisciplinary field as it deals with all aspects of integrating technological issues into business decision-making and is directly relevant to a number of core business processes. Thus, it makes sense to utilize this theory and their practices as a foundation of this dissertation. However, considering the increasing complexity and number of technologies it is not sufficient anymore for firms to only rely on previous internal R&D and managerial practices. OI can expanse these practices by involving distributed innovation processes and accessing further external knowledge sources. This expansion can lead to an increasing innovation performance and thereby accelerate the time-to-market of technologies.
Research in this dissertation was based on the expectations that OI formats will support the R&D activities of manufacturing technologies on the operational level by providing access to resources, knowledge, and leading-edge technology. The dissertation represents uniqueness regarding the rich practical data sets (observations, internal documents, project reviews) drawn from a very large German high-tech firm. The researcher was embedded in an R&D unit within the operational TM department for manufacturing technologies. The analyses include 1.) an exploratory in-depth analysis of a crowdsourcing initiative to elaborate the impact on specific manufacturing technologies, 2.) a deductive approach for developing a technology evaluation score model to create a common understanding of the value of selected manufacturing technologies at the operational level, and 3.) an abductive reasoning approach in form of a longitudinal case study to derive important indicator for the in-process activities of science-based partnership university-industry collaboration format. Thereby, the dissertation contributed to research and practice 1.) linkages of TM and OI practices to assimilate technologies at the operational level, 2.) insights about the impact of CS on manufacturing technologies and a related guideline to execute CS initiatives in this specific environment 3.) introduction of manufacturing readiness levels and further criteria into the TM and OI research field to support decision-makers in the firm in gaining a common understanding of the maturity of manufacturing technologies and, 4.) context-specific important indicators for science based university-industry collaboration projects and a holistic framework to connect TM with the university-industry collaboration approach
The findings of this dissertation illustrate that OI formats can support the acceleration of time-to-market of manufacturing technologies and further improve the technical requirements of the product by leveraging external capabilities. The conclusions and implications made are intended to foster further research and improve managerial practices to evolve TM into an open collaborative context with interconnectivities between all internal and external involved technologies, individuals and organizational levels.
Companies have a keen interest in developing skilled negotiators in order to improve their negotiation outcome. A crucial determinant of the negotiation outcome are negotiation styles that represent the negotiator’s actual behavior during the negotiation process. In this context, the author examines the variation in negotiation styles throughout the negotiation process, points out the relevance of the negotiator’s characteristics and situational context as determinants of negotiation styles, and emphasizes the importance not only of actual but also of perceived negotiation behavior. As a result, existing negotiation research is advanced as new perspectives on negotiation styles are offered to improve a negotiator’s performance.
In recent years, entire industries and their participants have been affected by disruptive technologies, resulting in dramatic market changes and challenges to firm’s business logic and thus their business models (BMs). Firms from mature industries are increasingly realizing that BMs that worked successfully for years have become insufficient to stay on track in today’s “move fast and break things” economy. Firms must scrutinize the core logic that informs how they do business, which means exploring novel ways to engage customers and get them to pay. This can lead to a complete renewal of existing BMs or innovating completely new BMs.
BMs have emerged as a popular object of research within the last decade. Despite the popularity of the BM, the theoretical and empirical foundation underlying the concept is still weak. In particular, the innovation process for BMs has been developed and implemented in firms, but understanding of the mechanisms behind it is still lacking. Business model innovation (BMI) is a complex and challenging management task that requires more than just novel ideas. Systematic studies to generate a better understanding of BMI and support incumbents with appropriate concepts to improve BMI development are in short supply. Further, there is a lack of knowledge about appropriate research practices for studying BMI and generating valid data sets in order to meet expectations in both practice and academia.
This paper-based dissertation aims to contribute to research practice in the field of BM and BMI and foster better understanding of the BM concept and BMI processes in incumbent firms from mature industries. The overall dissertation presents three main results. The first result is a new perspective, or the systems thinking view, on the BM and BMI. With the systems thinking view, the fuzzy BM concept is clearly structured and a BMI framework is proposed. The second result is a new research strategy for studying BMI. After analyzing current research practice in the areas of BMs and BMI, it is obvious that there is a need for better research on BMs and BMI in terms of accuracy, transparency, and practical orientation. Thus, the action case study approach combined with abductive methodology is proposed and proven in the research setting of this thesis. The third result stems from three action case studies in incumbent firms from mature industries employed to study how BMI occurs in practice. The new insights and knowledge gained from the action case studies help to explain BMI in such industries and increase understanding of the core of these processes.
By studying these issues, the articles complied in this thesis contribute conceptually and empirically to the recently consolidated but still increasing literature on the BM and BMI. The conclusions and implications made are intended to foster further research and improve managerial practices for achieving BMI in a dramatically changing business environment.
It is the intention of this study to contribute to further rethinking and innovating in the Microcredit business which stands at a turning point – after around 40 years of practice it is endangered to fail as a tool for economic development and to become a doubtful finance product with a random scope instead. So far, a positive impact of Microfinance on the improvement of the lives of the poor could not be confirmed. Over-indebtment of borrowers due to the pre-dominance of consumption Microcredits has become a widespread problem. Furthermore, a rising number of abusive and commercially excessive practices have been reported.
In fact, the Microfinance sector appears to suffer from a major underlying deficit: there does not exist a coherent and transparent understanding of its meaning and objectives so that Microfinance providers worldwide follow their own approaches of Microfinance which tend to differ considerably from each other.
In this sense the study aims at consolidating the multi-faced and very often confusingly different Microcredit profiles that exist nowadays. Subsequently, in this study, the Microfinance spectrum will be narrowed to one clear-cut objective, in fact away from the mere monetary business transactions to poor people it has gradually been reduced to back towards a tool for economic development as originally envisaged by its pioneers.
Hence, the fundamental research question of this study is whether, and under which conditions, Microfinance may attain a positive economic impact leading to an improvement of the living of the poor.
The study is structured in five parts: the three main parts (II.-IV.) are surrounded by an introduction (I.) and conclusion (V.). In part II., the Microfinance sector is analysed critically aiming to identify the challenges persisting as well as their root causes. In the third part, a change to the macroeconomic perspective is undertaken in oder to learn about the potential and requirements of small-scale finance to enhance economic development, particularly within the economic context of less developed countries. By consolidating the insights gained in part IV., the elements of a new concept of Microfinance with the objecitve to achieve economic development of its borrowers are elaborated.
Microfinance is a rather sensitive business the great fundamental idea of which is easily corruptible and, additionally, the recipients of which are predestined victims of abuse due to their limited knowledge in finance. It therefore needs to be practiced responsibly, but also according to clear cut definitions of its meaning and objectives all institutions active in the sector should be devoted to comply with. This is especially relevant as the demand for Microfinance services is expected to rise further within the years coming. For example, the recent refugee migration movement towards Europe entails a vast potential for Microfinance to enable these people to make a new start into economic life. This goes to show that Microfinance may no longer mainly be associated with a less developed economic context, but that it will gain importance as a financial instrument in the developed economies, too.
Bad governance causes economic, social, developmental and environmental problems in many developing countries. Developing countries have adopted a number of reforms that have assisted in achieving good governance. The success of governance reform depends on the starting point of each country – what institutional arrangements exist at the out-set and who the people implementing reforms within the existing institutional framework are. This dissertation focuses on how formal institutions (laws and regulations) and informal institutions (culture, habit and conception) impact on good governance. Three characteristics central to good governance - transparency, participation and accountability are studied in the research.
A number of key findings were: Good governance in Hanoi and Berlin represent the two extremes of the scale, while governance in Berlin is almost at the top of the scale, governance in Hanoi is at the bottom. Good governance in Hanoi is still far from achieved. In Berlin, information about public policies, administrative services and public finance is available, reliable and understandable. People do not encounter any problems accessing public information. In Hanoi, however, public information is not easy to access. There are big differences between Hanoi and Berlin in the three forms of participation. While voting in Hanoi to elect local deputies is formal and forced, elections in Berlin are fair and free. The candidates in local elections in Berlin come from different parties, whereas the candidacy of local deputies in Hanoi is thoroughly controlled by the Fatherland Front. Even though the turnout of voters in local deputy elections is close to 90 percent in Hanoi, the legitimacy of both the elections and the process of representation is non-existent because the local deputy candidates are decided by the Communist Party.
The involvement of people in solving local problems is encouraged by the government in Berlin. The different initiatives include citizenry budget, citizen activity, citizen initiatives, etc. Individual citizens are free to participate either individually or through an association.
Lacking transparency and participation, the quality of public service in Hanoi is poor. Citizens seldom get their services on time as required by the regulations. Citizens who want to receive public services can bribe officials directly, use the power of relationships, or pay a third person – the mediator ("Cò" - in Vietnamese).
In contrast, public service delivery in Berlin follows the customer-orientated principle. The quality of service is high in relation to time and cost. Paying speed money, bribery and using relationships to gain preferential public service do not exist in Berlin.
Using the examples of Berlin and Hanoi, it is clear to see how transparency, participation and accountability are interconnected and influence each other. Without a free and fair election as well as participation of non-governmental organisations, civil organisations, and the media in political decision-making and public actions, it is hard to hold the Hanoi local government accountable.
The key differences in formal institutions (regulative and cognitive) between Berlin and Hanoi reflect the three main principles: rule of law vs. rule by law, pluralism vs. monopoly Party in politics and social market economy vs. market economy with socialist orientation.
In Berlin the logic of appropriateness and codes of conduct are respect for laws, respect of individual freedom and ideas and awareness of community development. People in Berlin take for granted that public services are delivered to them fairly. Ideas such as using money or relationships to shorten public administrative procedures do not exist in the mind of either public officials or citizens.
In Hanoi, under a weak formal framework of good governance, new values and norms (prosperity, achievement) generated in the economic transition interact with the habits of the centrally-planned economy (lying, dependence, passivity) and traditional values (hierarchy, harmony, family, collectivism) influence behaviours of those involved.
In Hanoi “doing the right thing” such as compliance with law doesn’t become “the way it is”.
The unintended consequence of the deliberate reform actions of the Party is the prevalence of corruption. The socialist orientation seems not to have been achieved as the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.
Good governance is not achievable if citizens and officials are concerned only with their self-interest. State and society depend on each other. Theoretically to achieve good governance in Hanoi, institutions (formal and informal) able to create good citizens, officials and deputies should be generated. Good citizens are good by habit rather than by nature.
The rule of law principle is necessary for the professional performance of local administrations and People’s Councils. When the rule of law is applied consistently, the room for informal institutions to function will be reduced.
Promoting good governance in Hanoi is dependent on the need and desire to change the government and people themselves. Good governance in Berlin can be seen to be the result of the efforts of the local government and citizens after a long period of development and continuous adjustment.
Institutional transformation is always a long and complicated process because the change in formal regulations as well as in the way they are implemented may meet strong resistance from the established practice. This study has attempted to point out the weaknesses of the institutions of Hanoi and has identified factors affecting future development towards good governance. But it is not easy to determine how long it will take to change the institutional setting of Hanoi in order to achieve good governance.
Information as an envirommental policy instrument : a case study for the economics of Eco-Labeling
(2007)
Accurately solving classification problems nowadays is likely to be the most relevant machine learning task. Binary classification separating two classes only is algorithmically simpler but has fewer potential applications as many real-world problems are multi-class. On the reverse, separating only a subset of classes simplifies the classification task. Even though existing multi-class machine learning algorithms are very flexible regarding the number of classes, they assume that the target set Y is fixed and cannot be restricted once the training is finished. On the other hand, existing state-of-the-art production environments are becoming increasingly interconnected with the advance of Industry 4.0 and related technologies such that additional information can simplify the respective classification problems. In light of this, the main aim of this thesis is to introduce dynamic classification that generalizes multi-class classification such that the target class set can be restricted arbitrarily to a non-empty class subset M of Y at any time between two consecutive predictions.
This task is solved by a combination of two algorithmic approaches. First, classifier calibration, which transforms predictions into posterior probability estimates that are intended to be well calibrated. The analysis provided focuses on monotonic calibration and in particular corrects wrong statements that appeared in the literature. It also reveals that bin-based evaluation metrics, which became popular in recent years, are unjustified and should not be used at all. Next, the validity of Platt scaling, which is the most relevant parametric calibration approach, is analyzed in depth. In particular, its optimality for classifier predictions distributed according to four different families of probability distributions as well its equivalence with Beta calibration up to a sigmoidal preprocessing are proven. For non-monotonic calibration, extended variants on kernel density estimation and the ensemble method EKDE are introduced. Finally, the calibration techniques are evaluated using a simulation study with complete information as well as on a selection of 46 real-world data sets.
Building on this, classifier calibration is applied as part of decomposition-based classification that aims to reduce multi-class problems to simpler (usually binary) prediction tasks. For the involved fusing step performed at prediction time, a new approach based on evidence theory is presented that uses classifier calibration to model mass functions. This allows the analysis of decomposition-based classification against a strictly formal background and to prove closed-form equations for the overall combinations. Furthermore, the same formalism leads to a consistent integration of dynamic class information, yielding a theoretically justified and computationally tractable dynamic classification model. The insights gained from this modeling are combined with pairwise coupling, which is one of the most relevant reduction-based classification approaches, such that all individual predictions are combined with a weight. This not only generalizes existing works on pairwise coupling but also enables the integration of dynamic class information.
Lastly, a thorough empirical study is performed that compares all newly introduced approaches to existing state-of-the-art techniques. For this, evaluation metrics for dynamic classification are introduced that depend on corresponding sampling strategies. Thereafter, these are applied during a three-part evaluation. First, support vector machines and random forests are applied on 26 data sets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. Second, two state-of-the-art deep neural networks are evaluated on five benchmark data sets from a relatively recent reference work. Here, computationally feasible strategies to apply the presented algorithms in combination with large-scale models are particularly relevant because a naive application is computationally intractable. Finally, reference data from a real-world process allowing the inclusion of dynamic class information are collected and evaluated. The results show that in combination with support vector machines and random forests, pairwise coupling approaches yield the best results, while in combination with deep neural networks, differences between the different approaches are mostly small to negligible. Most importantly, all results empirically confirm that dynamic classification succeeds in improving the respective prediction accuracies. Therefore, it is crucial to pass dynamic class information in respective applications, which requires an appropriate digital infrastructure.
Inequalities in health are a prevalent feature of societies. And as societies, we condemn inequalities that are rooted in immutable circumstances such as gender, race, and parental background. Consequently, policy makers are interested in measuring and understanding the causes of health inequalities rooted in circumstances. However, identifying causal estimates of these relationships is very ambitious for reasons such as the presence of confounders or measurement error in the data. This thesis contributes to this ambitious endeavour by addressing these challenges in four chapters.
In the first Chapter, I use 25 years of rich health information to describe three features of intergenerational health mobility in Germany. First, we describe the joint permanent health distribution of the parents and their children. A ten percentile increase in parental permanent health is associated with a 2.3 percentile increase in their child’s health. Second, a percentile point increase in permanent health ranks is associated with a 0.8% to 1.4% increase in permanent income for, both, children, and parents, respectively. Non-linearities in the association between permanent health and income create incentives to escape the bottom of the permanent health distribution. Third, upward mobility in permanent health varies with parental socio-economic status.
In the second Chapter, we estimate the effect of maternal schooling on children’s mental health in adulthood. Using the Socio-Economic Panel and the mental health measure based on the SF-12 questionnaire, we exploit a compulsory schooling law reform to identify the causal effect of maternal schooling on children’s mental health. While the theoretical considerations are not clear, we do not find that the mother’s schooling has an effect on the mental health of the children. However, we find a positive effect on children’s physical health operating mainly through physical functioning. In addition, albeit with the absence of a reduced-form effect on mental health, we find evidence that the number of friends moderates the relationship between maternal schooling and their children’s mental health.
In the third Chapter, against a background of increasing violence against non-natives, we estimate the effect of hate crime on refugees’ mental health in Germany. For this purpose, we combine two datasets: administrative records on xenophobic crime against refugee shelters by the Federal Criminal Office and the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees. We apply a regression discontinuity design in time to estimate the effect of interest. Our results indicate that hate crime has a substantial negative effect on several mental health indicators, including the Mental Component Summary score and the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 score. The effects are stronger for refugees with closer geographic proximity to the focal hate crime and refugees with low country-specific human capital. While the estimated effect is only transitory, we argue that negative mental health shocks during the critical period after arrival have important long-term consequences.
In the last Chapter of this thesis, we investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed – particularly women– in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are 35% more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. We do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, e.g., the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship.
There are numerous situations in which people ask for something or make a request, e.g. asking a favor, asking for help or requesting compliance with specific norms. For this reason, how to ask for something in order to increase people’s willingness to fulfill such requests is one of the most important question for many people working in various different fields of responsibility such as charitable giving, marketing, management or policy making.
This dissertation consists of four chapters that deal with the effects of small changes in the decision-making environment on altruistic decision-making and compliance behavior. Most notably, written communication as an influencing factor is the focus of the first three chapters. The starting point was the question how to devise a request in order to maximize its chance of success (Chapter 1). The results of the first chapter originate the ideas for the second and third chapter. Chapter 2 analyzes how communication by a neutral third-party, i.e. a text from the experimenters that either reminds potential benefactors of their responsibility or highlights their freedom of choice, affects altruistic decision-making. Chapter 3 elaborates on the effect of thanking people in advance when asking them for help. While being not as closely related to the other chapters as the three first ones are, the fourth chapter deals as well with the question how compliance (here: compliance with norms and rules) is affected by subtle manipulations of the environment in which decisions are made. This chapter analyzes the effect of default settings in a tax return on tax compliance.
In order to study the research questions outlined above, controlled experiments were conducted. Chapter 1, which analyzes the effect of text messages on the decision to give something to another person, employs a mini-dictator game. The recipient sends a free-form text message to the dictator before the latter makes a binary decision whether or not to give part of her or his endowment to the recipient. We find that putting effort into the message by writing a long note without spelling mistakes increases dictators’ willingness to give. Moreover, writing in a humorous way and mentioning reasons why the money is needed pays off. Furthermore, men and women seem to react differently to some message categories. Only men react positively to efficiency arguments, while only women react to messages that emphasize the dictator’s power and responsibility.
Building on this last result, Chapter 2 attempts to disentangle the effect of reminding potential benefactors of their responsibility for the potential beneficiary and the effect of highlighting their decision power and freedom of choice on altruistic decision-making by studying the effects of two different texts on giving in a dictator game. We find that only men react positively to a text that stresses their responsibility for the recipient by giving more to her or him, whereas only women seem to react positively to a text that emphasizes their decision power and freedom of choice.
Chapter 3 focuses on the compliance with a request. In the experiment, participants are asked to provide a detailed answer to an open question. Compliance is measured by the effort participants spend on answering the question. The treatment variable is whether or not they see the text “thanks in advance.” We find that participants react negatively by putting less effort into complying with the request in response to the phrase “thanks in advance.”
Chapter 4 studies the effect of prefilled tax returns with mostly inaccurate default values on tax compliance. In a laboratory experiment, participants earn income by performing a real-effort task and must subsequently file a tax return for three consecutive rounds. In the main treatment, the tax return is prefilled with a default value, resulting from participants’ own performance in previous rounds, which varies in its relative size. The results suggest that there is no lasting effect of a default value on tax honesty, neither for relatively low nor relatively high defaults. However, participants who face a default that is lower than their true income in the first round evade significantly and substantially more taxes in this round than participants in the control treatment without a default.