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Sustainable food supply
(2024)
The present cumulative dissertation was written from 2020-2023 at the Professorship of Christian Social Ethics and Social Policy at the Business Faculty of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. All papers in this dissertation represent independent contributions to scientific journals in the fields of Sustainable Consumption, Sustainable Food, and Sustainable Consumer Behavior. They examine consumer behavior regarding sustainable food by analyzing various factors that influence consumers’ decision-making.
Paper I: Winterstein, J., & Habisch, A. (2021). Organic and local food consumption: A matter of age? Empirical evidence from the German market. ABAC Journal1, 41(1), 26-42.
Paper II: Winterstein, J. (2022). Nudging and Boosting towards Sustainable Food Choices–A Systematic Literature Review of Cognitively Oriented Measures. Products for Conscious Consumers: Developing, Marketing and Selling Ethical Products1, 113-132. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80262-837-120221014
Paper III: Winterstein, J., Frank, F., & Habisch, A. (2024) Desire for exploration beats price: Empirical study on customer motives for using digital monetary food sharing platforms. International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development1,2. DOI: 10.1504/IJISD.2023.10055067
Paper IV: Winterstein, J., Zhu, B., & Habisch, A. (2024). How personal and social-focused values shape the purchase intention for organic food: Cross-country comparison between Thailand and Germany. Journal of Cleaner Production1,3, 434, 140313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.140313
In this cumulative dissertation, I investigate unintended economic consequences of government interventions in three essays, each looking at a very specific question. The first essay examines how the introduction and enhancement of public pension systems affect demography, the second essay focuses on tax evasion via citizenship-by-investment programs, and the third essay evaluates the diversion of foreign financial assistance by powerful elites from recipient countries.
Despite the different research questions, all three essays evolve around the issue that actions of governments almost always create incentives causing unforeseen or unexpected behavioral responses. The first essay shows that increasing pension wealth creates incentives to save less for old-age in the form of own children, the second essay documents that policy instruments that increase the detection probability of tax evasion create incentives for evaders to find new ways to circumvent the law, and the third essay shows that foreign assistance creates rent-seeking incentives.
The results collected in the dissertation have implications for economic policy: Government interventions must be informed by an understanding of how well policies and programs produce (or contribute to) their desired outcomes. The results of all three essays presented in this thesis demonstrate that unforeseen or unexpected behavioral responses to government interventions can lead to economic outcomes or side effects that are divergent or contrary to the intentions of policymakers. These unintended economic consequences can significantly lessen the effectiveness of the policy or render it unsustainable. The first essay illustrates that the fertility effects of public pensions can erode the contribution base and, thus, the sustainability and political acceptance of a PAYG pension system in the long-run. The second essay shows that loopholes that have been found by evaders can lessen the deterrence effect of tax information exchange mechanisms, undermining their effectiveness to curb tax evasion. The third essay demonstrates that aid capture can prevent resources from being spent on their intended use, rendering foreign assistance less effective.
Demystifying pairs trading
(2022)
This thesis contributes to the literature on algorithm-based hedge fund strategies with new insights into pairs trading to further demystify the rule-based trading strategy. Thereby, I closely follow the popular trading approach of Gatev, Goetzmann, and Rouwenhorst (2006). After introducing the methodology, the return calculation, and previous academic work, three research questions are investigated to extend the current knowledge of researchers and practitioners about the trading strategy.
This dissertation comprises three essays on the leveraged loan market. The first essay investigates leveraged loan market liquidity. The second essay evaluates several models in terms of their ability to predict leveraged loan volatility. The third essay analyzes the informational efficiency of the leveraged loan market.
This cumulative dissertation examines possible applications of digital assistants and their optimal design. The first article analyzes whether the emotional support from a digital assistant has a positive effect on the customer’s satisfaction with the service or his persistence. The second article examines digital assistants in their possible role as companions. The effects of the presence of a digital companion on customer satisfaction are examined. The third article deals with digital assistants in their possible role as instrumental supporters. While digital assistants appear through written/recorded language or a visualized embodiment in the context of emotional support or as a companion, they act more inconspicuously while providing instrumental support (e.g. as an autopilot of an autonomous vehicle). Therefore, the article focuses on a possible anthropomorphization of the autonomous digital assistant and examines whether the perceived risk of the user is reduced and his satisfaction with the service can be increased.
Automation technologies and human capital are fundamental drivers of economic growth. The motivation of this thesis is to advance the literature by providing novel insights into the determinants of automation innovation and human capital. For this purpose, this thesis exploits immigration episodes, uses empirical methods for causal inference and introduces new sources of data on immigrants and automation innovation. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 each examine the relationship between labor endowments and automation innovation. Chapter 4 examines the effects of ethnic concentration on immigrant childrens' acquisition of human capital.
The cumulative dissertation "Optimization models for shelf space allocation in retail stores" consists of the four individual scientific contributions listed below:
1. Düsterhöft, Tobias, Hübner, Alexander and Schaal, Kai (2020): A practical approach to the shelf-space allocation and replenishment problem with heterogeneously sized shelves.
2. Hübner, Alexander, Düsterhöft, Tobias and Ostermeier, Manuel (2020): An optimization approach for product allocation with integrated shelf space dimensioning in retail stores.
3. Ostermeier, Manuel, Düsterhöft, Tobias and Hübner, Alexander (2020): A model for the store wide shelf space allocation.
4 Düsterhöft, Tobias (2020): Retail shelf space planning - Differences, problems and opportunities of applied optimization models.
The planning and best possible utilization of the available shelf space is of central importance for retailers. Shelf space is a scarce resource in stores today. Shelf planners need to determine optimal shelf spaces for each item within product allocation. Researchers have already developed several decision support models. Usually, these models have in common that they can make a decision on the number of facings per product. A facing is a visible sales unit of a product on the shelf. Behind a facing, depending on the depth of the shelf further sales units are located. With an increase in the number of facings the visibility of the product for customers is also increasing, which is associated with a certain demand effect, the so-called space elasticity.
The content of this dissertation are optimization models that extend existing approaches to product allocation significantly and thus also enable a practical application of these approaches. Within the framework of a practical project substantial new contents for the product allocation can be determined. The resulting optimization models build on each other. Initially, in the 1st article the product allocation is extended by an exact consideration of the shelf space dimensions. The resulting question of the optimal shelf layout is the central part of the 2nd article. If the layouts of shelves are determined on the shelf, the total shelf space per category must be known beforehand. This question is dealt with in the 3rd article. Finally, new research fields are identified in the 4th article based on current real processes and requirements.
In this cumulative dissertation, I investigate the relation between the cognitive complexity of work tasks and economic outcomes such as earnings, migration, and aggregate income growth. Existing theoretical and empirical research firmly established that human capital plays a major role in determining these outcomes. However, the literature to date has focused on a limited set of human capital measures, such as education, years of work experience, and basic demographic characteristics, and has largely ignored considerable individual variation attributable to occupational skills. By introducing novel skill measures derived from work tasks and using theoretical models combined with empirical evidence, I demonstrate the determining role played by occupational skills.
The first paper examines the connection between problem solving and lifecycle wage dynamics. I introduce a model of learning-by-doing which relates the intensity of complex tasks to the growth of problem solving skills and labour productivity. Using German administrative data, I find that workers in complex jobs receive static and dynamic wage premia and acquire relatively more human capital throughout life.
The second paper examines the selection pattern of Mexican migrants to the United States and shows that Mexican migrants have lower cognitive skills and higher manual skills compared to non-migrants. Using an extended version of the Roy-Borjas model, I show that differences in the returns to occupational skills explain the selection pattern better than differences in the returns to education and basic characteristics.
The third paper explores the role that complexity plays in economic development. I develop a regional model of endogenous growth which relates aggregate problem solving skills to the rate of technology adoption. In the model, migration costs and spillovers in technology adoption create persistent differences in regional income. By estimating growth regressions, I find that problem solving skills strongly predict per capita income growth in a sample of European regions.
The results collected in the dissertation have implications for economic development policies focused on human capital, projection and analysis of international migration, and evaluating long-term effects of recessions.
Within the last 25 years, researchers identified different destructive behaviors of leaders, various outcomes and some major reasons for their emergence. However, the attention given to personality traits in this context does not yet reflect their relevance as excellent predictors of (bad) behavior. Further, the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) could derive valuable measures against destructive leadership, if more was known about the role of managers’ and followers’ ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ personality traits in such situations. Consequently, this dissertation combines research on leadership and three HRM functions (i.e., acquisition, placement, motivation) and, in three separate empirical studies, examines the role of personality traits in explaining destructive management and leadership.
The first contribution is an experimental vignette study on hiring recommendations of Dark Triad supervisors for Dark Triad applicants. Based on the Similarity-Attraction Paradigm, results show that supervisors who are high in Dark Triad traits (i.e., Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) tend to recommend applicants that also show high levels in those traits. This bias leads to decisions in personnel selection processes that prefer individuals with ‘dark’ traits, which are then likely to result in detrimental actions, e.g. counterproductive work behavior.
The second study introduces the Sensory Processing Sensitivity trait (SPS) into the context of expatriate management. Although SPS is known to relate to positive outcomes, individuals high in SPS tend to be easily overwhelmed and stressed by new environmental stimuli. This study draws on the Conservation of Resources Theory and uses a cross-sectional design to find that the ‘dark’ side of SPS prevails in the expatriate context and that it indirectly and positively relates to expatriates’ turnover intentions via social capital and stress.
In the third study, I examine resistance behaviors of followers when their supervisor exploits them. Based on complementary Person-Supervisor Fit, I expect that there are followers with certain interaction styles (giver, taker, or matcher) that tend to resist in a more constructive way than others do. Using an experimental vignette approach, results show that givers express higher levels of overall resistance caused by an increase in constructive resistance. Takers and matchers show less constructive, but more dysfunctional resistance.
The results of this dissertation shed light on the relevance of ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ personality traits in the context of destructive leadership and management. They suggest various possibilities for HRM to protect the organization and its employees from negative consequences.
This dissertation comprises three individual essays which can be grouped under the banner of “Financial Intermediation”. In the first essay it is analyzed whether there are persistent differences in the performance of different CLO managers in the presumably information inefficient market for syndicated loans. The results suggest that greater management skills are reflected in higher risk-adjusted returns. Moreover, CLO managers seem to profit from private information captured through their affiliation to private equity firms invested in the equity of the firms which debt the CLO holds. This is one of the results of the second paper in which also a clear preference for “own debt” is found for the very first time. This finding has broader implications also for the borrowing costs which shrink through the demand pressure affiliated CLOs create thereby creating incentives for higher levels of debt. In the third article the reaction of socially responsible investment (SRI) stock funds to changes in corporate social responsibility as measured by changes in the constitution of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index relative to conventional funds is analyzed. The results raise doubt on the SRI label: The reaction to index changes is no different for SRI funds than for conventional ones. Furthermore, neither the label nor the average ESG rating are valid predictors for the reaction to changes in the index.