Mila Winter, A Test of the Credit Suisse Real Estate Risk Profiler, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2010. (Master's Thesis)
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Marco Arcari, Do simple heuristics make us smart? - an analysis of gain-loss realization rules, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2010. (Master's Thesis)
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Angelo Ranaldo, Enzo Rossi, The reaction of asset markets to Swiss National Bank communication, Journal of International Money and Finance, Vol. 29 (3), 2010. (Journal Article)
In this paper we analyze high-frequency movements in Swiss asset markets in reaction to real-time communication by the Swiss National Bank. Our analysis of central bank communication encompasses monetary policy announcements, speeches and interviews. We examine the reactions of the currency market, the bond market and the stock exchange. The evidence suggests that speeches and interviews, along with monetary policy announcements, engender a significant price reaction. This paper sheds light on the relevance of communications other than monetary policy announcements. |
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Egon Franck, Stephan Nüesch, The Effect of Talent Disparity on Team Productivity in Soccer, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 31 (2), 2010. (Journal Article)
Theory predicts that the interaction type within a team moderates the impact of talent disparity
on team productivity. Using panel data from professional German soccer teams, we
test talent composition effects at different team levels characterized by different interaction
types. At the match level, complementarities are expected due to the continuous interaction
of the fielded players. If the entire squad is analyzed at the seasonal level,
substitutability emerges from the fact that only a (varying) selection of players can prove
their talent in the competition games. Holding average ability and unobserved team heterogeneity
constant, we find that the players selected to play on the competition team should
be rather homogeneous regarding their talent. However, if we relate talent differences
within the entire squad to the team’s league standing at the end of the season, talent disparity
turns out to be beneficial. |
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Karl Schmedders, F Kubler, Uniqueness of steady states in models with overlapping generations, Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 8 (2-3), 2010. (Journal Article)
In this paper we examine the likelihood of multiple real steady states in deterministic exchange economies with overlapping generations. There is a single good and a single agent per generation with constant relative risk aversion expected utility. In order to test for multiple equilibria we employ methods from computational algebraic geometry. In our examples, we find that multiplicity becomes less likely as the life span of agents increases but becomes more likely as the coefficient of risk aversion increases. For moderate values of risk aversion, multiplicity is very unlikely when agents live for five or more periods. (JEL: C61, C63, D50, D58) |
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Andrea Schenker-Wicki, Matthias Inauen, Maria Olivares, Unmastered risks: from crisis to catastrophe: an economic and management insight, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 63 (4), 2010. (Journal Article)
In contrast to sociology, economics, and above all, business economics has not yet discovered disaster management as a research topic even though this subject affects many areas of economics due to its interdisciplinary character. The enormous economic losses suffered by private parties, businesses and public institutions in crisis events, the huge amounts of money which are spent in disaster prevention, as well as the challenges that providing emergency management and disaster control present, contain many issues and have an increasing social and economic relevance. This article takes a close look at the concept of disaster from an economic and management point of view to mitigate the impact on human beings and environment. Based on the rational choice approach the study analyzes the state of preparedness that is mainly responsible for good or poor disaster prevention and presents a theoretical framework for a comprehensive disaster management including examples of practical applications. The conclusion outlines several important areas of future research in business economics. |
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J P Roiser, Klaas Enno Stephan, H E M den Ouden, K J Friston, E M Joyce, Adaptive and aberrant reward prediction signals in the human brain, NeuroImage, Vol. 50 (2), 2010. (Journal Article)
Theories of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia hypothesize a role for aberrant reinforcement signaling driven by dysregulated dopamine transmission. Recently, we provided evidence of aberrant reward learning in symptomatic, but not asymptomatic patients with schizophrenia, using a novel paradigm, the Salience Attribution Test (SAT). The SAT is a probabilistic reward learning game that employs cues that vary across task-relevant and task-irrelevant dimensions; it provides behavioral indices of adaptive and aberrant reward learning. As an initial step prior to future clinical studies, here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural basis of adaptive and aberrant reward learning during the SAT in healthy volunteers. As expected, cues associated with high relative to low reward probabilities elicited robust hemodynamic responses in a network of structures previously implicated in motivational salience; the midbrain, in the vicinity of the ventral tegmental area, and regions targeted by its dopaminergic projections, i.e. medial dorsal thalamus, ventral striatum and prefrontal cortex (PFC). Responses in the medial dorsal thalamus and polar PFC were strongly correlated with the degree of adaptive reward learning across participants. Finally, and most importantly, differential dorsolateral PFC and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) responses to cues with identical reward probabilities were very strongly correlated with the degree of aberrant reward learning. Participants who showed greater aberrant learning exhibited greater dorsolateral PFC responses, and reduced MTG responses, to cues erroneously inferred to be less strongly associated with reward. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for different theories of associative learning. |
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Bruno Frey, Auszeichnungen statt Leistungslöhne, Forschung und Lehre, Vol. 4, 2010. (Journal Article)
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Tobias Moser, Design and Implementation of a Multiplayer Peer-to-Peer Game for Android Mobile Devices, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2010. (Master's Thesis)
Current generation smartphones obviously outperform the older generations: they have improved hardware characteristics like bigger screens, better resolution, and faster CPU. Besides of being able to connect to several network types (GSM, GPRS, 3G, Wifi), they also provide other interesting features, such as multi-touch screen, GPS, accelerometer, compass, camera, etc. Finally, for most smartphones, there is a possibility for users to write and deploy their own applications. This procedure is especially easy when the target is an open platform. Google Android is one such platform, where the whole operating system is open source and application writing is supported by the programming language Java. Goal of this thesis is to design and implement a working prototype for a multiplayer game. The prototype should run on the Android Framework and expose its features. To connect players, a peer-to-peer approach shall be used. This thesis presents the different phases of developing the GeoQuiz game. With GeoQuiz, multiple players can compete against each other and compare their knowledge. Different types of questions out of the topic of geography make this game unique and fun to play. The TomP2P library has been used to provide a basic network. The thesis describes in detail the design process and the emerging models. With the help of those models, the implementation is analyzed and concrete problems are discussed. The result is a working prototype of the game. The thesis ends with a conclusion and discusses open points which could be improved. |
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Alejandro Hernandez Arieta, Konstantinos Dermitzakis, Dana Damian, Sensory feedback for body awareness in prosthetic applications, April 2010. (Other Publication)
With the ability to feel through artificial limbs, users regain more function and increasingly see the prosthetics as parts of their own bodies. |
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Urs Birchler, Stefano Gagliardi, Welche Rolle das Bankgeheimnis spielt, In: Handelszeitung, 13, p. 43, 31 March 2010. (Newspaper Article)
Der Druck aus dem Ausland auf das Schweizer Bankgeheimnis trifft auch die unabhängigen Vermögensverwalter. Besonders die in der Westschweiz und im Tessin ansässigen Unternehmen verwalten viele Vermögen von Kunden mit Domizil im Ausland. |
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Managing Ubiquitous Communications and Services, Edited by: Declan O'Sullivan, Tom Pfeifer, Burkhard Stiller, IEEE, Mannheim, Germany, 2010-03-29. (Edited Scientific Work)
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E M Aulich, Wissen sammeln anstatt kopieren, In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 72, p. 83, 27 March 2010. (Newspaper Article)
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Andreas Scherer, Corporate Social Responsibility Put to the Test. What are the Responsibilities at Local, National & Global Levels? Lessons Learnt for International Business Ethics, In: presentation at the Lasalle Ethik Forum 2010 Ethics in Business and the Economy in the Face of the Crisis. 2010. (Conference Presentation)
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Gerhard Schwabe, B Schenk, C Bretscher, Bedarfsermittlung und Informationsaggregation bei der Bürgerberatung 2.0, In: Fachtagung Verwaltungsinformatik und Fachtagung Rechtsinformatik 2010, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, 2010-03-25. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
In komplexen Lebenslagen benötigen Bürger selbst in Zeiten des Internets eine persönliche Beratung. In Mystery Shoppings zeigte sich, dass die Kommunen bisher keinem strukturierten Beratungsprozess folgen, wie man ihn von kommerziellen Dienstleistern kennt. In diesem Paper wird der in dem Pilotprojekt Bürgerberatung 2.0 entwickelte Bürgerberatungsprozess vorgestellt. Dieses Paper konzentriert sich dabei auf zwei Phasen des Prozesses: Die Bedarfserhebung und die Informationsaggregation. Eine Bedarfserhebung ist in komplexen Lebenslagen notwendig, wenn Bürger zwar ihre Situation beschreiben, aber mangels Vorwissen nicht gezielt Fragen stellen können. Die Informationsaggregation fügt die in einer Suche gefundenen Einzelinformationen so zu einem Gesamtbild, dass der Bürger dann auch handlungsfähig ist. Hierfür wird ein Strukturierungsansatz der relevanten Informationen zu IT-gestützter Bürgerberatung für das Beispiel der Beratung schwangerer Frauen vorgestellt. Diese Informationsstrukturen wurden in einem Prototyp umgesetzt und in einer deutschen Kommune evaluiert. Die durchgehend positiven Evaluierungsergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Bürgerinnen eine Bürgerberatung handlungsfähig verlassen, wenn die Ergebnisse einer gemeinsamen Informationssuche mit dem Berater nach den fünf Strukturierungsdimensionen „Themen“, „Orte“, „Zeit“, „Ressourcen“ und „Aktivität“ aggregiert werden. |
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Bruno Frey, Eidg. Glücks-Matura, In: Weltwoche, 12, p. 34, 24 March 2010. (Newspaper Article)
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David Seidl, R MacIntosh, D MacLean, A rules-based approach to strategy workshops: A case study of strategic change and continuity, In: BOSS Conference. 2010. (Conference Presentation)
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Egon Franck, Urs Meister, Fragiler Schweizer Telekommarkt. Ungewisse Auswirkungen der Konsolidierung auf den Wettbewerb, In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 68, p. 31, 23 March 2010. (Newspaper Article)
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Christian Tilgner, Declarative Scheduling in Highly Scalable Systems, In: EDBT '10: Proceedings of the 2010 EDBT/ICDT Workshops, 2010-03-22. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
In modern architectures based on Web Services or Cloud Computing, a very large number of user requests arrive concurrently and has to be scheduled for execution constrained by correctness criteria, service-level agreements etc. The state of the art is to develop hand-coded schedulers, though this tails great costs, long development times, reduced developer productivity and inflexibility of mapping frequently changing requirements. In this paper, we present our approach for a scheduler component that can be programmed using declarative rules. Instead of handling one request at a time, we propose to treat sets of requests as data collections and to employ database query processing techniques to produce high-quality schedules in an efficient manner. Our declarative scheduler will allow for a more flexible and productive way to define existing scheduling protocols, service level agreements and novel application specific consistency protocols. First results presented here are encouraging and motivate for further investigation. |
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E Wende, Gerhard Schwabe, Tom Philip, Exploring the media mix during IT-Offshore transition phase - an opportunity for a better knowledge transfer, In: Fourth Global Sourcing Workshop, 2010-03-22. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Offshore outsourced IT projects continue to gain relevance in the globalized world scenario. The temporal, geographical and cultural distances involved during the development of software between distributed team members result in communication challenges. As software development involves the coding of knowledge, the management of knowledge and its transfer remain critical for the success of the project. For effective knowledge transfer between geographically dispersed teams the ongoing selection of communication medium or the media channel mix becomes highly significant. Although there is an abundance of theory dealing with knowledge transfer and media channel selection during offshore outsourcing projects, the specific role of cultural differences in the media mix is often overlooked. As a first step to rectify this, this paper presents an outsourcing case study with emphasis on the chosen media channels and the problems that arose from differences in culture. The case study is analyzed in light of several theoretical models and suggestions for extending current theory are also presented. |
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