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Dealing with spam is very costly, and many organizations have tried to reduce spam-related costs by installing spam filters. Relying on modern econometric methods to reduce the selection bias of installing a spam filter, we use a unique data setting implemented at a German university to measure the costs associated with spam and the costs savings of spam filters. Our methodological framework accounts for effect heterogeneity and can be easily used to estimate the effect of other IS technologies implemented in organizations.
The majority of costs stem from the time that employees spend identifying and deleting spam, amounting to an average of approximately five minutes per employee per day. Our analysis, which accounts for selection bias, finds that the installation of a spam filter reduces these costs by roughly one third. Failing to account for the selection bias would lead to a result that suggests that installing a spam filter does not reduce working time losses.
However, cost savings only occur when the spam burden is high, indicating that spam filters do not necessarily reduce costs and are therefore no universal remedy. The analysis further shows that spam filters alone are a countermeasure against spam that exhibits only limited effectiveness because they only reduce costs by one third.
We propose a combined approach of propensity score matching with difference-in-differences methods for reducing selection biases of products being reviewed by critics. Critics' decision to review products may be driven by observable (e.g., star power) and unobservable (e.g., critics' individual preferences) factors, raising the question of reverse causality and selection biases. Our proposed approach enables to rigorously control for selection biases by observable and unobservable characteristics. We apply our methodological framework on data from the German book market and estimate the sales effect of a well-known TV critic. We identify substantial selection effects of individual critics, which result in serious underestimation of the short-term effect (up to 29 %) and the long-term effect (up to 37 %). The results emphasize the relevance of the proposed methodological framework by demonstrating that observable and unobservable factors drive selection effects.
We model migration across domestic labor markets (internal migration) as the outcome of a job search process in which job seekers form subjective beliefs about the return search effort that are related to their locus of control. Job seekers with an internal locus of control are predicted to search across larger geographic areas and migrate more frequently as a result. We empirically test the relationship between locus of control and the propensity to migrate using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We find that not only do individuals with an internal locus of control express more willingness to migrate, they do in fact also migrate more often.
Standard job search theory assumes that unemployed individuals have perfect information about the effect of their search effort on the job offer arrival rate. We present an alternative model that assumes that each individual has a subjective belief about the impact of her search effort on the job arrival. These beliefs depend in part on an individual's locus of control. We estimate the impact of locus of control on job search behavior using a data set of newly unemployed individuals in Germany. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find evidence that individuals with an internal locus of control search more and that individuals who believe that their future outcomes are determined by external factors have lower reservation wages.
Risk attitudes influence the complete life cycle of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become self-employed, the effects on survival are not as straightforward. Psychological research posits an inverse U-shaped relationship between risk attitudes and entrepreneurial survival. On the basis of experimentally validated data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we examine the extent to which risk attitudes influence survival rates in self-employment in Germany. The empirical results confirm that persons whose risk attitudes are in the medium range survive significantly longer as entrepreneurs than do persons with particularly low or high risk attitudes.
Experimental evidence reveals that there is a strong willingness to trust and to act in both positively and negatively reciprocal ways. So far it is rarely analyzed whether these variables of social cognition influence everyday decision making behavior. We focus on entrepreneurs who are permanently facing exchange processes in the interplay with investors, sellers, and buyers, as well as needing to trust others and reciprocate with their network. We base our analysis on the German Socio-Economic Panel with its recently introduced questions about trust, positive reciprocity, and negative reciprocity to examine the extent that these variables influence the entrepreneurial decision processes. More specifically, we analyze whether (i) the willingness to trust other people influences the probability of starting a business; (ii) trust, positive reciprocity, and negative reciprocity influence the exit probability of entrepreneurs; and (iii) willingness to trust and to act reciprocally influences the probability of being an entrepreneur versus an employee or a manager. Our findings reveal that, in particular, trust impacts entrepreneurial development. Interestingly, entrepreneurs are more trustful than employees, but much less trustful than managers.
Based on a large, representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent the personality of individuals influences the entry decision into and the exit decision from self-employment. We reveal that some traits, such as openness to experience, extraversion, and risk tolerance affect entry, but different ones, such as agreeableness or different parameter values of risk tolerance, affect exit from self-employment. Only locus of control has a similar influence on the entry and exit decisions. The explanatory power of all observed traits among all observable variables amounts to 30 %, with risk tolerance, locus of control, and openness having the highest explanatory power.
Why do entrepreneurship rates differ so markedly by gender? Using data from a large representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent personality traits, human capital, and the employment history influence the start-up decision and can explain the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Applying a decomposition analysis, we observe that the higher risk aversion among women explains a large share of the entrepreneurial gender gap. We also find an education effect contributing to the gender difference. In contrast, the Big Five model and the current employment state have effects in the opposite direction, meaning that the gender gap in entrepreneurial entry would be even larger if women had the same scores and the same employment status as men. (JEL codes: L26, J16, D81, J24, M13).
Offering unemployed individuals a subsidy to become self-employed is a widespread active labor market policy strategy. Previous studies have illustrated its high effectiveness to help participants escaping unemployment and improving their labor market prospects compared to other unemployed individuals. However, the examination of start-up subsidies from a business perspective has only received little attention to date. Using a new dataset based on a survey allows us to compare subsidized start-ups out of unemployment with regular business founders, with respect to not only personal characteristics but also business outcomes. The results indicate that previously unemployed entrepreneurs face disadvantages in variables correlated with entrepreneurial ability and access to capital. Nineteen months after start-up, the subsidized businesses experience higher survival, but lag behind regular business founders in terms of income, business growth and innovation. Moreover, we show that expected deadweight effects related to start-up subsidies occur on a (much) lower scale than usually assumed.