Empirische Analyse des Einflusses der Überschussbeteiligung auf Neugeschäft und Storno

Recently, German insurers are becoming increasingly interested in assessing and modelling risks related to new business and lapses. The final report of a DAV (German actuarial association) working party on stochastic models for German life insurance companies, released end of 2005, includes some basic approaches for this purpose. However, so far no systematic empirical research has been carried out which provides evidence for an appropriate calibration of such models. This article contributes to closing the gap. It presents the main results of an empirical analysis on the influence of policyholders’ profit participation on new business and lapses based on data about 87 German life insurance companies from 1995—2004. Analyses of regression and correlation were performed for various definitions of the explanatory variable ?profit participation“ (more precisely: the spread to some average value) and with diverse reference parameters for new business and lapses, also considering different types of life insurance. Ultimately, the exploration scarcely yielded evidence for a significant general correlation between policyholders’ profit participation and new business or lapses. However, because of the individuality of life insurance business such an evaluation of historical data can certainly only be regarded as a building block for the overall picture, as is also explained in the paper in some more detail.     

A consumer education programme based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change

MONEY 2000? is a successful consumer education programme that was implemented by Cooperative Extension personnel in over two dozen states of the USA between 1996 and 2002. One of the unique features of this programme is that it was based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM), a framework that has been widely used to study health‐related behaviour changes such as smoking cessation. This paper first describes how the MONEY 2000? programme was developed around major constructs contained within the TTM. Findings are reported from a survey conducted with participants in the first two states that delivered the programme. The findings suggest that several change processes used by MONEY 2000? participants are associated with specific stages of change. In addition, there may be differences in behavioural changes between participants who increased their savings and those who reduced their debts.     

Gender-Based Vicarious Sensitivity to Disempowering Behavior in Organizations: Exploring an Expanded Concept of Hostile Working Environment

The purpose of this study was to explore evidence of gender-based vicarious sensitivity to disempowering behavior in organizations, expanding the concept of hostile working environment beyond the context of sexual harassment. Male and female graduate and undergraduate students viewed 10 video segments of Anita Hill's interview by U.S. senators during the October 1991 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Nominee, Clarence Thomas. Although no significant relationship was found between the personal attributes of age and ethnicity to perceptions of disempowering behavior, female participants reported seeing significantly more offensive behavior in the video segments than did male participants. The results are discussed in terms of greater female sensitivity to common forms of disempowering behavior in organizations, and having a disparate negative impact and systematically placing women at a disadvantage in today's workforce.     

Integrating sustainability and resilience in the supply chain: A systematic literature review and a research agenda

Sustainability has emerged as an important industrial strategic outlook expanding beyond organizational boundaries to include the supply chain. Simultaneously, the industry has also been faced with supply chain resilience concerns. Research on the intersection of supply chain sustainability and resilience is nascent and is a consequence of their observed mutual influences. However, confusion about concepts, implementation methods, and measurements of sustainable and resilient supply chains remains. This study completes a systematic literature review that critically examines several major observations and directions. We find the concept of sustainable supply chains is more established, and general agreement on its theoretical foundations exists. Supply chain resilience is relatively less mature. The nexus and relationships between the two topics are often incoherent: there is confusion on sustainable and resilient supply chains establishment; there is no clarity on what practices could jointly advance both areas. A major conflict exists since sustainability generally focuses on efficiency, while resilience seeks effectiveness. We recommend studies to analyze implementation relationships and impact. We also observe that performance measurement systems should be developed to assess supply chain sustainability and resilience performance taking with explicit consideration time horizons considered in these measures.     

Learning Why More Learning Takes Place in Some Classrooms Than Others

Abstract. The relatively poor average performance of German students on the recent PISA international evaluations of 15- and 16-year-olds' literary skills (2000) and mathematical skills (2003) and the wide variation in performance, with low-income students scoring particularly poorly, have led to calls for reforms of the German educational system. Understanding why students in some classrooms learn more than do those in other classrooms is an important first step in considering alternative reform strategies. Possible explanations include differences in teacher quality, class sizes and peer groups, and also differences among the types of secondary schools that parents select for their children. This paper illustrates a set of techniques that are useful in examining the roles these factors play in predicting why, net of family background and prior achievement, the average achievement of children in some classrooms is much higher than that of children in other classrooms. We illustrate the use of these techniques with a dataset from Bogotá, Colombia, that has two attractive properties. First, some teachers teach multiple classes of students. Second, students are enrolled in schools in two sectors (public and private). Application of the techniques described in this paper could shed light on the reasons why the average academic achievement of German students attending some schools is much higher than that of German students attending other schools.     

GEM research: achievements and challenges

This article analyzes the content and evolution of research based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. We conducted a rigorous search of articles published in journals within the Thomson Reuters’ Social Sciences Citation Index^® through an exploratory analysis focused on articles using GEM data. The main findings of this study reveal that the institutional approach is the most commonly used conceptual framework. Also, although there are still few academic publications using GEM data, the number of articles is increasing, as are opportunities for future research.     

Ethnic patterns of returns to education in Bulgaria

It is widely accepted that disparities in education contribute to the poor labour market outcomes experienced by ethnic minority groups and consequently to their poverty. In this article, I analyse differential educational benefits in Bulgaria and compare returns to education for the Roma minority with the majority population and the Turkish minority. I show that both ethnic minority groups have lower education levels and employment rates than the majority population and that they also have lower returns to education. This result could be related to minorities' lower education quality as well as to discrimination in the labour market. Integration policies should thus aim to improve employability and labour market competence of vulnerable groups starting from school.