Alexander Lill, André Meyer, Thomas Fritz, On the Helpfulness of Answering Developer Questions on Discord with Similar Conversations and Posts from the Past, Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering, 2024. (Journal Article)
 
A big part of software developers’ time is spent finding answers to their coding-task-related questions. To answer their questions, developers usually perform web searches, ask questions on Q&A websites, or, more recently, in chat communities. Yet, many of these questions have frequently already been answered in previous chat conversations or other online communities. Automatically identifying and then suggesting these previous answers to the askers could, thus, save time and effort. In an empirical analysis, we first explored the frequency of repeating questions on the Discord chat platform and assessed our approach to identify them automatically. The approach was then evaluated with real-world developers in a field experiment, through which we received 142 ratings on the helpfulness of the suggestions we provided to help answer 277 questions that developers posted in four Discord communities. We further collected qualitative feedback through 53 surveys and 10 follow-up interviews. We found that the suggestions were considered helpful in 40% of the cases, that suggesting Stack Overflow posts is more often considered helpful than past Discord conversations, and that developers have difficulties describing their problems as search queries and, thus, prefer describing them as natural language questions in online communities. |
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Francesco D’Ercole, Alexander Wagner, The green energy transition and the 2023 Banking Crisis, Finance Research Letters, Vol. 58, 2023. (Journal Article)
 
This study examines the stock price reactions of environmentally responsible stocks during the onset of the 2023 banking crisis, triggered by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Our findings indicate that stocks poised to benefit from the shift to a low-carbon economy underperformed during the 2023 crisis. This suggests that investors anticipate a slowdown in climate tech development due to distress in the banking sector. Our results underscore the significance of considering not only the influence of the climate crisis on financial stability, but also the pivotal role that financial stability plays in ensuring a successful energy transition. |
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Pascal Flurin Meier, Raphael Flepp, Egon Franck, Replication: Do coaches stick with what barely worked? Evidence of outcome bias in sports, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 99, 2023. (Journal Article)
 
We replicate the finding of Lefgren et al. (2015) showing that professional basketball coaches in the NBA discontinuously change their starting lineup more often after narrow losses than after narrow wins. This result is consistent with outcome bias because such narrow outcomes are conditionally uninformative. As our paper shows, this pattern is not restricted to the NBA; we also find evidence of outcome bias in the top women’s professional basketball league and college basketball. Finally, we show that outcome bias in coaching decisions generalizes to the National Football League (NFL). We conclude that outcome bias is credible and robust, although it has weakened over time in some instances. |
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José M Jorquera Valero, Pedro M Sánchez Sánchez, Manuel Gil Pérez, Alberto Huertas Celdran, Gregorio Martínez Pérez, Cutting-Edge Assets for Trust in 5G and Beyond: Requirements, State-of-the-Art, Trends & Challenges, ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 55 (11), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
In 5G and beyond, the figure of cross-operator/domain connections and relationships grows exponentially among stakeholders, resources, and services, being reputation-based trust models one of the capital technologies leveraged for trustworthy decision-making. This work studies novel 5G assets on which trust can be used to overcome unsuitable decision-making and address current requirements. First, it introduces a background and general architecture of reputation-based trust models. Afterward, it analyzes pivotal 5G assets on which trust can enhance their performance. Besides, this article performs a comprehensive review of the current reputation models applied to 5G assets and compares their properties, features, techniques, and results. Finally, it provides current trends and future challenges to conducting forthcoming research in the area. |
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Daniel Fasnacht, Offene und digitale Ökosysteme: Mehrwert durch Branchen- und Technologiekonvergenz, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, Berlin, 2023-11-02. (Book/Research Monograph)

In the digital paradigm, collaborative value creation takes place across organisational boundaries while the consumer moves to the centre. Value will be created in the future through the combination of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, the internet of things, blockchain, cloud and quantum computing, and the customer journey will span different sectors. The golden triangle of digital ecosystems includes commerce, social media, and finance. Companies that understand the benefits of the platform economy can achieve exponential growth and become winners of the digital transformation. They can share knowledge and resources across organisational boundaries, react quickly to market changes and find the balance between existing businesses and new markets. The future of work and leadership in open and digital ecosystems requires rethinking and new dynamic capabilities such as openness, agility, and ambidexterity. The book is based on years of research. It expands traditional management models with pragmatic strategy and action concepts, which are explained with diverse practical examples of tech companies from the USA, cross-industry ecosystems from China and healthcare platforms from Switzerland. |
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Ralph Ossa, Robert W Staiger, Alan O Sykes, Standing in international investment and trade disputes, Journal of International Economics, Vol. 145, 2023. (Journal Article)
 
International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements. A prominent and controversial difference arises with respect to the issue of “standing”: Who has the right to complain to adjudicators about a violation of the agreement? While trade agreements limit standing to the member governments (state-to-state dispute settlement), investment agreements routinely extend standing to private investors as well (investor-state dispute settlement). We develop parallel models of trade and investment agreements and employ them to study this difference. We find that the difference in standing between trade and investment agreements can be understood as deriving from the fundamentally different problems that these agreements are designed to solve. Our analysis also identifies some important qualifications to the case for including investor-state dispute settlement provisions in investment agreements, thereby offering a potential explanation for the strong political controversy associated with these provisions. |
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Chiara Zisler, Damiano Pregaldini, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Opening doors for immigrants: The role of occupational skills and workplace-based cultural skills for a successful labor market entry, In: Swiss VET Conference. 2023. (Conference Presentation)

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Dietmar Harhoff, Patrick Lehnert, Curdin Pfister, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Innovation effects and knowledge complementarities in a diverse research landscape, In: Swiss VET Conference. 2023. (Conference Presentation)

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Nadine Strauß, Jonathan Krakow, Marc Chesney, It’s the News, Stupid! The Relationship Between News Attention, Literacy, Trust, Greenwashing Perceptions and Sustainable Finance Investment in Switzerland, Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Vol. 13 (4), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
Although sustainable finance (SF) has become a leading trend in the financial industry, little is known about how attention to news on SF, trust in the industry, and recent accusations of greenwashing affect the likelihood to invest in SF products. Based on a survey of a representative sample of Swiss citizens, we find that more attention to news about SF and trust in SF are positively related to the likelihood of investing in SF, whereas greenwashing perceptions are negatively related. Furthermore, attention to SF and economic news are positive predictors of sustainable finance literacy (SFL), whereas attention to SF news is negatively associated with greenwashing perception of SF. Collectively, these findings imply that engaging citizens with SF investments, particularly information seeking on SF news and trust in SF rather than SFL, need to be fostered. The Implications of the communication practices of the SF industry and policy implications are discussed. |
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Cornel Nesseler, Carlos Gomez Gonzalez, Petr Parshakov, Helmut Max Dietl, Examining discrimination against Jews in Italy with three natural field experiments, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 106, 2023. (Journal Article)
 
We use three natural field experiments to examine anti-Semitism in Italy by sending email inquiries to amateur football clubs, landlords, and employers and comparing the response rates to emails sent with Jewish- and non-Jewish-sounding names. Italy is an interesting country as discrimination was heterogeneous and geographically unevenly distributed during World War II. We analyze if today's anti-Semitism in Italy is geographically correlated to the deportations and killings of Jews during the Holocaust. The results show significant discrimination when looking for football club and an apartment, but not when seeking a job. We find markedly different results for women. Comparing areas with different societal and economic implications provides us with a more informed perspective about the extent of discrimination. |
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Patricia Pálffy, Patrick Lehnert, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Social norms and gendered occupational choices of men and women: Time to turn the tide?, Industrial Relations, Vol. 62 (4), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
We analyze the relationship between social gender norms and adolescents' occupational choices by combining regional votes on constitutional amendments on gender equality with job application data from a large job board for apprenticeships. The results show that adolescent males in regions with stronger traditional social gender norms are more likely to apply for typically male occupations. This finding does not hold for females, suggesting that incentivizing men to break the norms and choose gender-atypical occupations (e.g., in healthcare) can be even more effective in accelerating advancement toward gender equality in the labor market than incentivizing women to choose STEM occupations. |
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Simona Nistor, Steven Ongena, The Impact of Policy Interventions on Systemic Risk across Banks, Journal of Financial Services Research, Vol. 64 (2), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
What is the impact of policy interventions on the systemic risk of banks? To answer this question, we analyze a comprehensive sample that combines an original set of bank-specific bailout events with the balance sheets of key affected and nonaffected European banks between 2005 and 2014. We find a positive and significant association of guarantees with systemic risk that is somewhat weaker in the long run when the regulator appoints members to the supervisory board. The short run association between recapitalizations and systemic risk is also positive for large and less capitalized banks, while in the long run, recapitalizations are linked with reduced systemic importance, especially for less profitable banks and in cases when the regulator limits management pay. Liquidity injections are positively linked with systemic risk, but the long-run effect is mitigated for small or better capitalized banks. In the short run, injecting liquidity is associated with reduced systemic risk when the regulator imposes restrictions on supervisory board composition or on management pay or capital payouts. |
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Daniel Fasnacht, D. Proba, Inter-Organizational Agility as Driving Force for Innovation, SAGE Open , Vol. forthcoming, 2023. (Journal Article)

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Nadine Kammerlander, Jochen Menges, Dennis Herhausen, Petra Kipfelsberger, Heike Bruch, How family CEOs affect employees’ feelings and behaviors: A study on positive emotions, Long Range Planning, Vol. 56 (5), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
Research suggests that firms with family CEOs differ from other types of businesses, yet surprisingly little is known about how employees in these firms feel and behave compared to those working in other firms. We draw from family science and management research to suggest that family CEOs, because of their emotion-evoking double role as family members and business leaders, are, on average, more likely to infuse employees with positive emotions, such as enthusiasm and excitement, than hired professional CEOs. We suggest that these emotions spread through firms by way of emotional contagion during interactions with employees, thereby setting the organizational affective tone. In turn, we hypothesize that in firms with family CEOs the voluntary turnover rate is lower. In considering structural features as boundary conditions, we propose that family CEOs have stronger effects in smaller and centralized firms, and weaker effects in formalized firms. Multilevel data from 41,200 employees and 2,246 direct reports of CEOs from 497 firms with and without family CEOs provide support for our model. This research suggests that firms managed by family CEOs, despite often being criticized as nepotistic relics of the past, tend to offer pleasant work environments. |
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Peter Kuhn, Liudmila Zavolokina, Dian Balta, Florian Matthes, Toward Government as a Platform: An Analysis Method for Public Sector Infrastructure, In: 18th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik, Paderborn, Germany, 2023. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
 
Government as a Platform (GaaP) is a promising approach to the digital transformation of the public sector. In practice, GaaP is realized by platform-oriented infrastructures. However, despite successful examples, the transformation toward platform-oriented infrastructures remains challenging. A potential remedy is the analysis of existing public infrastructure regarding its platform orientation. Such an analysis can identify the gaps to an ideal platform-oriented infrastructure and, thus, support the transformation toward it. We follow the design science research methodology to develop a four-dimensional analysis method. We do so in three iterations, and, after each iteration, evaluate the method by its application to infrastructures in practice. With regard to theory, our results suggest extending GaaP conceptualizations with a specific emphasis on platform principles. With regard to practice, we contribute an analysis method that creates proposals for the improvement of infrastructures and, thus, supports the transformation toward GaaP. |
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Xingzhen Zhu, Markus Lang, Helmut Max Dietl, Content Quality Assurance on Media Platforms with User-Generated Content, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, Vol. 18 (3), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
This paper develops a duopoly model for user-generated content (UGC) platforms, which compete for consumers and content producers in two-sided markets characterized by network externalities. Each platform has the option to invest in a content quality assurance (CQA) system and determine the level of advertising. Our model reveals that network effects are pivotal in shaping the platforms’ optimal strategies and user behavior, specifically in terms of single vs. multi-homing. We find that when network effects for producers are weak, consumers tend to engage in multi-homing while producers prefer single-homing. Conversely, strong network effects lead to the opposite behavior. Furthermore, our model demonstrates that user behavior and network effects dictate whether a platform is incentivized to incorporate advertisements and/or invest in CQA. Generally, weak network effects prompt a platform to invest in a CQA system, unless both consumers and producers engage in multi-homing. Our model’s results highlight the importance for platform companies to evaluate the extent of network effects on their platform in order to anticipate user behavior, which subsequently informs the optimal CQA and advertising strategy. |
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Dietmar Harhoff, Patrick Lehnert, Curdin Pfister, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Innovation effects and knowledge complementarities in a diverse research landscape, In: International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training. 2023. (Conference Presentation)

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Redaktion, Markus Leippold, UNECE Co-Develops AI Platform for Resilient Energy Systems, In: Mirage, 13 September 2023. (Media Coverage)

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Raluca Ioana Gui, Markus Meierer, Patrik Schilter, René Algesheimer, REndo: Internal Instrumental Variables to Address Endogeneity, Journal of Statistical Software, Vol. 107 (3), 2023. (Journal Article)
 
Endogeneity is a common problem in any causal analysis. It arises when the independence assumption between an explanatory variable and the error in a statistical model is violated. The causes of endogeneity are manifold and include response bias in surveys, omission of important explanatory variables, or simultaneity between explanatory and response variables. Instrumental variable estimation provides a possible solution. However, valid and strong external instruments are difficult to find. Consequently, internal instrumental variable approaches have been proposed to correct for endogeneity without relying on external instruments. The R package REndo implements various internal instrumental variable approaches, i.e., latent instrumental variables estimation (Ebbes, Wedel, Boeckenholt, and Steerneman 2005), higher moments estimation (Lewbel 1997), heteroscedastic error estimation (Lewbel 2012), joint estimation using copula (Park and Gupta 2012) and multilevel generalized method of moments estimation (Kim and Frees 2007). Package usage is illustrated on simulated and real-world data. |
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Susanne Müller-Zantop , Markus Leippold, ESG: Game Over?, In: In$ide Paradeplatz, 7 September 2023. (Media Coverage)

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