Welcome to Merlin

Recently, a growing number of credibility assessment technologies (CATs) have been developed to assist human decision-making processes in evidence-based investigations, such as criminal investigations, financial fraud detection, and insurance claim verification. Despite the widespread adoption of CATs, it remains unclear how CAT and human biases interact during the evidence-collection procedure and affect the fairness of investigation outcomes. To address this gap, we develop a Bayesian framework to model CAT adoption and the iterative collection and interpretation of evidence in investigations. Based on the Bayesian framework, we further conduct simulations to examine how CATs affect investigation fairness with various configurations of evidence effectiveness, CAT effectiveness, human biases, technological biases, and decision stakes. We find that when investigators are unconscious of their own biases, CAT adoption generally increases the fairness of investigation outcomes if the CAT is more effective than evidence and less biased than the investigators. However, the CATs' positive influence on fairness diminishes as humans become aware of their own biases. Our results show that CATs' impact on decision fairness highly depends on various technological, human, and contextual factors. We further discuss the implications for CAT development, evaluation, and adoption based on our findings.

Despite the considerable magnitude of negative brand personalities in the marketplace, prior research has disproportionately focused on positive personality traits. To address this research gap, the authors present a conceptual and empirical approach that draws from the Dark Triad of psychology and applies it to the branding domain. They conceptualize and validate the Dark Triad of brand personality which comprises brand narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy dimensions. Through a multiphase scale development process, a reliable and valid 12‐item brief version of the Dark Triad of brand personality is created, enabling its assessment in both research and management contexts. Examining the Dark Triad in branding is crucial as it provides a unique lens to understand the rise of negative, dark brand personalities. It accounts for brand personality aspects not yet captured by existing scales, including manipulation, exploitation, grandiosity, and lack of empathy. This introduction of the Dark Triad brand personality opens new avenues for research into brand transgressions and ethics in brand management. In terms of managerial implications, insights from this research can inform strategic brand management, enabling companies to better manage their brand's image.

The RecSys Challenge 2024, co-organized by the Danish news outlet Ekstra Bladet, called for participants to develop a news recommender system that accurately predicts which news article a reader is most likely to select from a given list. In the context of this challenge, the organizers explicitly stated their interest in beyond-accuracy objectives. However, the setup of the challenge did not facilitate pursuing these more normative goals: a missed opportunity, given the quality of the dataset. In this paper, we highlight the issues encountered in a submission that prioritized normative diversity. We reflect on the responsibility of conferences, RecSys in particular, when it comes to promoting beyond-accuracy objectives and provide recommendations for future challenge iterations.

Despite the growing interest in explainable AI in the RecSys community, the evaluation of explanations is still an open research topic. Typically, explanations are evaluated using offline metrics, with a case study, or through a user study. In my research, I will have a closer look at the evaluation of the effects of explanations on users. I investigate two possible factors that can impact the effects reported in recent publications, namely the explanation design and content as well as the users themselves. I further address the problem of determining promising explanations for an application scenario from a seemingly endless pool of options. Lastly, I propose a user study to close some of the research gaps established in the surveys and investigate how recommender systems explanations impact the understanding of users with different backgrounds.

Ransomware has remained one of the most notorious threats in the cybersecurity field, for which Moving Target Defense (MTD) has been proposed as a novel defense paradigm. Although various approaches leverage MTD, few of them rely on the operating system and, specifically, the file system, thereby making them dependent on other computing devices, rendering defense against certain threats unrealistic. File-based approaches are less studied here while showing limitations in resource usage and defense effectiveness. Furthermore, existing ransomware defenses merely restore data or detect attacks without preventing them. Thus, this paper introduces the MTFS file system and the design and implementation of three novel MTD techniques – one delaying attackers, one trapping recursive directory traversal, and another one hiding file types. The effectiveness of the techniques is shown in three experiments. First, it is demonstrated that the techniques can delay and mitigate ransomware on real IoT devices. Secondly, in a broader scope, the solution was confronted with 13 ransomware samples, highlighting that it can save 97% of the files. Regarding overhead, the defense system consumes only a small amount of resources, highlighting the feasibility of proactive defense.

Is deficit finance free when real borrowing rates are routinely lower than growth rates? Specifically, can the government make all generations better off by perpetually taking from the young and giving to the old? We study this in stochastic closed- and open-economy OLG models. Unfortunately, Pareto gains are predicted only for implausible calibrations. Even then, the gains reflect improved inter-generational risk sharing, improved international risk sharing, and beggaring thy neighbor-not intergenerational redistribution, per se. As we show, theoretically and quantitatively, low government borrowing rates suggest state-contingent bilateral transfers between generations-not unconditional, unilateral redistribution from future to current generations.

In einem jährlich auf www.swissauditmonitor.ch veröffentlichten Report werden die Revisionshonorare, die zusätzlichen Honorare, die Mandatsdauer der Revisionsgesellschaften und die verwendeten Rechnungslegungsstandards von Unternehmen des Swiss Market Index (SMI) und des Swiss Performance Index (SPI) erhoben und ausgewertet. Der 8. Ausgabe des Swiss Audit Monitor liegt das Geschäftsjahr 2023 zugrunde. Dieser Beitrag fasst die wichtigsten Erkenntnisse zusammen.

We study the market’s reaction to the disclosure of EU-wide stress test results across four periods (2014, 2016, 2018, and 2021). Our novel approach contributes to the literature by studying how stress test disclosures influence both the mean and variance (first and second moments) of bank stock performance, extending beyond previous studies focused mainly on the first moment of equity returns. Using one-factor market and structural Engle–Siriwardane type GARCH models, we find that the publication of stress tests provides new information to the markets: Banks with weaker performance in the tests experience, on average, a reduction in stock returns and an increase in volatility, while the reverse holds for banks performing well. Our findings confirm the important role of stress tests in enhancing transparency and market discipline, thereby supporting investors in assessing the resilience of the banking sector more effectively, particularly during periods of higher uncertainty.

Purpose Our study explores the effects of immigration on the employment of native middle-skilled workers, focusing on how this effect varies with the specificity of their occupational skill bundles. Design/methodology/approach Exploiting the 2002 opening of the Swiss labor market to EU workers and using register data on the location and occupation of these workers, our findings provide novel results on the labor market effects of immigration. Findings We show that the inflow of EU workers led to an increase in the employment of native middle-skilled workers with highly specific occupational skills. This finding could be attributed to immigrant workers reducing existing skill gaps, enhancing the quality of job-worker matches, and alleviating firms' capacity restrictions. This allowed firms to create new jobs, thereby providing increased employment options for middle-skilled workers with highly specialized skills. Originality/value Previous literature has predominantly highlighted the disadvantages of specific occupational skills compared to general skills in the context of labor market shocks. However, our findings reveal that workers with specific occupational skills can benefit from an immigration-driven labour market shock. These results suggest that policy conclusions regarding the role of specific occupational skills should be more nuanced.

Emotion regulation is linked to adaptive psychological outcomes. To engage in such regulation, people must be motivated to do it. Given that people in different countries vary in how they think about unpleasant emotions, we expected motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions to differ across countries. Furthermore, given that emotion regulation strategies operate in the service of motivation, we expected people who are less motivated to decrease unpleasant emotions to use emotion regulation strategies less across countries. To test these predictions, we conducted two studies during the COVID-19 pandemic: Study 1 in 2020 (N = 1,329) and Study 2 in 2021 (N = 1,279). We assessed the motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions and the use of emotion regulation strategies among members of East Asian countries (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and China) and Western countries (i.e., United States, United Kingdom, and Germany). Because we found substantial variation within these two broader cultural categories, we examined motivation and overall strategy use in emotion regulation at the country level. In both studies, motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was the lowest in Japan and relatively high in the United States. As expected, across countries, weaker motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was associated with using emotion regulation strategies less. We discuss implications of our findings for understanding cultural differences in motivated emotion regulation.