Aktuelle Publikationen
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(2019): Effects of Acute Stress on Social Behavior in Women Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019, 99, pp. 137-144. ISSN 0306-4530. eISSN 1873-3360. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.031
Acute stress is known to increase prosocial behavior in men via a “tend-and-befriend” pattern originally proposed as a specifically female stress response alongside the fight-or-flight response. However, the direct effects of acute stress on women’s social behavior have not been investigated. Applying the Trier Social Stress Test for groups (TSST-G), 94 women were confronted with either a stress or control condition. We repeatedly measured their subjective stress responses, salivary cortisol, and heart rate, and investigated their level of trust, trustworthiness, sharing, punishment and non-social risk using social decision paradigms. We detected significant increases in all stress parameters, as well as the wish for closeness during the stress condition. Acute stress exposure elevated prosocial trustworthiness and sharing without affecting non-social risk behavior. These results are in line with findings on the effects of stress in men, and further validate the tend-and-befriend pattern as one possible behavioral response during stress in humans.
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In this dissertation, I present three economic experiments in the area of accounting written during my doctoral studies at the University of Konstanz. I will present the three articles in the chronological order in which I started working on the respective projects. The first project is on the implications of audit market regulations on the behavior of market members and the market structure. In this project different approaches discussed by standard setters and even legal principles (e.g. joint audits and audit firm rotation) are compared. The second study investigates the effect of IFRS16 on the evaluation process of knowledgeable non-professional investors. Employing the eye-tracking technique, we are able to show the changes in information acquisition, weighting, interpretation and finally evaluation caused by IFRS16, which is legally binding by 1 January 2019. My third project explores the methodological issues related to process tracking (i.e. eye-tracking and mouse-tracking) research. In this study we measure the influence of the tracking method used on the information acquisition process.
The first paper is entitled “The Effects of Mandatory Audit Firm Rotation and Joint Audits on Audit Quality and Market Structure: Experimental Evidence”. Starting with the financial crisis and the green papers issued in 2010, a regulatory debate about the restructuring of the auditor market emerged. Both, audit firm rotation and joint audits have played a prominent role in this debate. Whereas audit firm rotation is mandatory in the European Union since 2016, the regulator in the Unites States decided against this requirement. Academics and regulators also have frequently proposed joint audits, which are currently mandatory only in France. We present the results of a market experiment that compares the effects of both mandatory audit firm rotation and joint audits against two extremes: an unregulated market and a setting in which the experimental software matches those auditors providing the highest quality with the most dishonest clients. We compare across these settings the clients’ decisions to report truthfully, the auditors’ decisions on audit effort and reporting, the resulting quality of audited client reports, and audit market concentration. We find that the quality of audited client reports is lowest in an unregulated market, higher under rotation, even higher with joint audits, and highest with a matching based on reputation. A higher probability that auditors will exert a sufficient effort level and a higher degree of auditor independence explain the difference in the quality of audited client reports between joint audits and rotation. We also find that joint audits and audit firm rotation result in a lower degree of market concentration than observed in an unregulated market. From the regulator’s perspective, joint audits seem more advantageous than mandatory audit firm rotation.
In the second paper “The new Leases Standard, Information Processing, and Evaluation: Experimental Evidence from an Eye-Tracking Study” we used eye-trackers to study the effects of a legal change in the presentation format of financial statements on the evaluation process of knowledgeable non-professional investors. The IASB issued the standard IFRS 16 (Leases), which is legally binding by 1 January 2019. The former distinction between the recognition of operating and finance lease becomes invalid and the lessee must capitalize all of its leases by recognizing the present value of the unavoidable future lease payments (IFRS 16.24) and presenting them in the balance sheet as leased asset (right-of-use assets). Research has shown that the location of information influences the evaluation of financial statement users. Prior studies empirically examined legal changes on the presentation format ex post, while we use an experiment with eye-tracking technology to investigate the effects of the changed presentation format under IFRS 16 on the evaluation process of the financial statement before this standard is legally binding. We find that the changed presentation format of IFRS 16 increases the acquisition rate of the lease liabilities and the leased asset and increases the weight readers put on these numbers. Additionally, key metrics like long-term debt, assets, and total debt are interpreted comparably higher when the respective information is recognized rather than disclosed. These changes in the acquisition, in the weighting, and in the interpretation lead to an overall worse evaluation of the financial situation of the company whose financial statement is assessed. Comparing eye-tracking data with decision data allows us to distinguish between the intuitive and deliberate processes of individuals when assessing financial statements. We thus extend prior research on individuals’ decision-making processes by comparing decision data with evidence from individuals’ eye movements.
The third paper “Data Collection in Information Search Processes” focuses on the methodological issues related to research on information search processes. Using mouse-tracking techniques like Mouselab, MouselabWeb, or Flashlight as an alternative to eye-tracking experiments has become popular in the past decades. Several studies on the question of whether the technique used has an effect on the decision observed have been published. In contrast, we investigate whether the technique used for recording information search processes influences the search process itself. We show that both – the occlusion of information and the necessity of using the mouse cursor to uncover information – influence the information search process of participants and significantly change key metrics used to describe this process. Conducting an experiment using the city size task, we are able to show that participants obliged to use a Mouselab alike framework with occluded informational cues changes an intuitive search behavior into a deliberate informational search process. Additionally, the direction of information search is influenced by the necessity of unveiling information via mouse cursor movement. While the outcome in our task is not influenced by the method used for process tracing, the metrics deduced from the recorded process data is highly depending on the method of choice. Moreover, the choice of information differs, when a Mouselab design is used. Thus, our findings challenge the assumption that mouse-tracking and eye-tracking are technologies to collect process data that are directly comparable. -
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This paper measures the influence of "say on pay" (SoP) - mandatory shareholder votes on top-management compensation - on the market value of corporate voting rights. By exploiting the staggered introduction of SoP regulations across ten major European economies, we show by difference-in-differences (DiD) regressions that the value of voting rights at annual shareholder meetings - extracted from prices of liquid options - has increased for firms with excessive CEO pay, while it has decreased for other companies. Surprisingly, shareholders tend to value advisory SoP votes but not the stricter binding votes. Thus, the option to signal dissent with current compensation via SoP votes is not per se valuable and can actually translate into net costs for shareholders. Finally, the effect of mandatory SoP on voting values is concentrated on the year of introduction and fades out over time. Placebo regressions support the accuracy of our DiD research design.
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(2019): Beruflichkeit und „meritokratische Logik“ : Konvergenzen und Divergenzen aus bildungspolitischer und komparativer Sicht SEIFRIED, Jürgen, ed., Klaus BECK, ed., Bernd-Joachim ERTELT, ed., Andreas FREY, ed.. Beruf, Beruflichkeit, Employability. Bielefeld: wbv, 2019, pp. 47-68. Wirtschaft - Beruf - Ethik. 35. ISBN 978-3-7639-5465-0
Der Beitrag thematisiert das Problem der Geltendmachung einer angemessenen sozialen Anerkennung beruflicher Bildungswege in Deutschland und Kanada. Hierbei kann offensichtlich nicht von einer unüberbrückbaren Kluft zwischen dem Berufsprinzip und dem „meritokratischen Prinzip“ gesprochen werden, sondern in den kulturell verschiedenen Ländern gibt es durchaus Tendenzen einer Annäherung zwischen dem „Beruflichen“ und dem „Allgemeinen“, die in jüngerer Zeit an Bedeutung gewonnen haben.
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(2019): Höhere Berufsbildung am Beispiel Kanada EULER, Dieter, ed. and others. Neue Wege für Studium und Berufsbildung : Studienintegrierende Ausbildung. Essen: Edition Stifterverband, 2019, pp. 52-57. ISBN 978-3-922275-85-5
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Employee referral programs (ERPs) are randomly introduced in a grocery chain. Larger referral bonuses increase referrals and decrease referral quality, though the increase in referrals from having an ERP is modest. However, the overall effect of having an ERP is substantial, reducing attrition by roughly 15% and decreasing firm labor costs by up to almost 3%. This occurs, partly, because referrals stay longer than nonreferrals, but, mainly, because all workers stay longer in treated than control stores, even among stores where no referrals are made. The most-supported mechanism for these indirect effects is that workers value being involved in hiring.
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(2019): Incumbency Dominance in Letters to the Editor : Field Experimental Evidence Political Communication. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2019, 36(3), pp. 337-356. ISSN 0195-7473. eISSN 1091-7675. Available under: doi: 10.1080/10584609.2018.1540447
This article reports the results of a randomized field experiment conducted three weeks before the 2017 federal election in Germany. Four different versions of a letter to the editor were sent to all the German daily newspapers that handle letters to the editor independently. The versions differed in the subject matter of the letter, the chancellor Angela Merkel versus the main challenger Martin Schulz, and in the evaluation of this subject, positive versus negative. The experiment was designed to test for three different types of media bias: political bias, negativity bias, and incumbency dominance. We find no political bias in the decisions to print letters, and no statistically significant negativity bias. We do observe incumbency dominance: letters about the chancellor were 40% more likely to be printed.
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(2019): Labor Reallocation and Convergence : Evidence from East Germany Society for Economic Dynamics 2019 Meeting Papers. 2019, 139
In 1992, East Germans’ nominal wages were about half of West Germans’. By 1996, the gap reduced to a third, and today is about a quarter. We use matched employer-employee data for the universe of (male) Germans with social security records to study the determinants of this steep convergence. Our main result is that about half of the total convergence is driven by an improvement in the allocation of East German labor across firms. The bulk of this is driven by improvements in within-region reallocation in earlier years, while migration of East Germans toWestern firms steadily grows to explain more in recent years. Before 1991, both East German firms and workers were exposed to a distorted labor market under the planned economy of the German Democratic Republic. After reunification, both firms and workers were exposed to the same labor market policies as in West Germany, while workers were also allowed to freely move across the (former) border. The evidence suggests that the competitive labor market succeeded in quickly unraveling most of the misallocation generated by the planned economy. Consistent with this hypothesis, older birth-cohorts, who were exposed to distorted labor markets for a longer period, were the ones to gain the most immediately following reunification.
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(2019): Dual universities and dual study programs in German higher education : Will they replace apprenticeships in some occupational sectors? DEISSINGER, Thomas, ed., Ursel HAUSCHILDT, ed., Philipp GONON, ed. and others. Contemporary apprenticeship reforms and reconfigurations : conference proceedings. Wien: LIT, 2019, pp. 209-215. Bildung und Arbeitswelt. 35. ISBN 978-3-643-91114-8
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dc.contributor.editor: Holtsch, Doreen; Oepke, Maren
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(2019): Banking-on-the-Average Rules CESifo Economic Studies. Oxford University Press (OUP). 2019, 65(2), pp. 131-153. ISSN 1610-241X. eISSN 1612-7501. Available under: doi: 10.1093/cesifo/ify023
In this article, we introduce a new way to determine requirements for bank capital: banking-on-the-average rules. Under these rules, a bank’s required level of equity capital is monotonically increasing in the realized equity capital of its peers. In a simple model, we illustrate the workings of banking-on-the-average rules. We show that in booms, these rules can prevent banks from taking excessive risks. Moreover, they alleviate the socially harmful procyclicality of conventional equity-capital rules, which may induce banks to cut back excessively on lending. Finally, we argue that under these rules, prudent banks can impose prudence on other banks. In addition, banking-on-the-average rules ensure the build-up of bank equity capital in booms and thus avoid excessive leverage.
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(2019): Digitale Systeme zur Unterstützung von Lehrpersonen : Eine kategoriengeleitete Sichtung generischer und anwendungsspezifischer Systemfunktionen Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik. Steiner. 2019, 115(1), pp. 39-65. ISSN 0172-2875. eISSN 2366-2433. Available under: doi: 10.25162/zbw-2019-0002
Der Beitrag kategorisiert den Funktionsumfang von 66 digitalen Unterstützungssystemen für Lehrkräfte und bewertet deren Unterstützungspotential unter systematischer Bezugnahme auf berufstypische Tätigkeiten. Die systemspezifischen Funktionsbeschreibungen der identifizierten Unterstützungssysteme werden hierzu einer strukturierenden Inhaltsanalyse unterzogen, die entsprechend zweier literaturgestützter Klassifikationsraster sowohl eine Einstufung nach generischen Systemfunktionen als auch eine anwendungsorientierte Zuordnung zu Tätigkeitsfeldern von Lehrpersonen erlaubt. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass Daten- und Dokumentenmanagementfunktionen in ihrer Häufigkeit deutlich vor Kollaborations- und/oder Kommunikationsfunktionen sowie vor Entscheidungsunterstützungsfunktionen rangieren. Kreuzklassifikationen mit den berufstypischen Tätigkeitsfeldern von Lehrkräften offenbaren, dass diese Funktionen vorrangig für administrative Aufgaben sowie für die organisatorische Vorbereitung, Durchführung und Nachbereitung von Unterricht zur Verfügung stehen. Unterrepräsentiert erscheinen gegenwärtig Systeme, die Lehrpersonen durch Möglichkeiten der gezielten Analyse und Aufbereitung von inhalts- und schülerbezogenen Informationen beim Treffen begründeter pädagogisch-diagnostischer Entscheidungen unterstützen.
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(2019): Art. 959: A. Bilanz: I. Zweck der Bilanz, Bilanzierungspflicht und Bilanzierungsfähigkeit PFAFF, Dieter, ed., Stephan GLANZ, ed., Thomas STENZ, ed., Florian ZIHLER, ed.. Rechnungslegung nach Obligationenrecht : veb.ch Praxiskommentar mit Berücksichtigung steuerrechtlicher Vorschriften. Zürich: Verlag SKV, 2019, pp. 293-319. ISBN 978-3-286-50936-8
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(2019): Die Rechnungslegung von Bistümern im Wandel STEFANI, Ulrike, ed., Reiner KLINZ, ed.. Rechnungslegung in katholischen Bistümern. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler, 2019, pp. 3-14. ISBN 978-3-658-22790-6. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-22791-3_1
Die Öffentlichkeit erwartet von den deutschen Bistümern die Transparenz ihrer finanziellen und wirtschaftlichen Lage. Die Rechnungslegung der deutschen Bistümer hat sich daher in den letzten Jahren stark verändert. Vieles wurde auf den Weg gebracht. Die Buchführung wurde von der Kameralistik auf die Doppik umgestellt, Vermögensgegenstände und Schulden wurden inventarisiert und in einer Eröffnungsbilanz erfasst, die Rechnungslegung wurde dem Handelsrecht angeglichen, es wurden Jahresabschlüsse mit Bilanz und Ergebnisrechnung aufgestellt, das Controlling wurde angepasst, alle Buchhaltungsprozesse und Abschlussprozesse wurden verändert. Es bleibt abzuwarten, ob mit der aktuellen Berichterstattung die Fragen der Öffentlichkeit beantwortet werden können.
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(2019): Testing out-of-sample portfolio performance International Journal of Forecasting. 2019, 35(2), pp. 540-554. ISSN 0169-2070. eISSN 1872-8200. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.09.010
This paper studies the quality of portfolio performance tests based on out-of-sample returns. By disentangling the components of the out-of-sample performance, we show that the observed differences are driven largely by the differences in estimation risk. Our Monte Carlo study reveals that the puzzling empirical findings of inferior performances of theoretically superior strategies result mainly from the low power of these tests. Thus, our results provide an explanation as to why the null hypothesis of equal performance of the simple equally-weighted portfolio compared to many theoretically-superior alternative strategies cannot be rejected in many out-of-sample horse races. Our findings turn out to be robust with respect to different designs and the implementation strategies of the tests.
For the applied researcher, we provide some guidance as to how to cope with the problem of low power. In particular, we make use of a novel pretest-based portfolio strategy to show how the information regarding performance tests can be used optimally.