如何在中国汽车市场胜出

汽车制造公司要想在中国成为赢家，应对以下5点给予格外关注：加深对中国消费者对产品需求的理解：建立经济且适用的分销网络；引入先进品牌经验；保持合理成本结构；迅速与适当的伙伴建立相应的业务关系。     

Mapping and analysing virtual outcrops

Laser scanning is a very efficient way to generate realistic, high-resolution digital models of 3-D geological outcrops. This paper discusses the methodologies involved in the creation and analysis of virtual outcrops, based on laser scanner data. The visualisation of the laser scanner data as a photorealistic 3-D object is described. Geological features picked out on the virtual outcrop (e.g. fractures, faults or bedding planes) can be extrapolated outward, into space, and inward, into the subsurface, using tension surfaces.     

The Opportunity Cost of Negative Screening in Socially Responsible Investing

This paper investigates the impact of negative screening on the investment universe as well as on financial performance. We come up with a novel identification process and as such depart from mainstream socially responsible investing literature by concentrating on individual firms’ conduct and by studying a much wider range of issues. Firstly, we study the size and financial performance of fourteen potentially controversial issues: abortion, adult entertainment, alcohol, animal testing, contraceptives, controversial weapons, fur, gambling, genetic engineering, meat, nuclear power, pork, (embryonic) stem cells, and tobacco. We investigate an international sample of more than 1,600 stocks for more than twenty years. We then analyze the impact of applying negative screens to a market portfolio. Our findings suggest that the choice for negative screening strategies does matter for the size of the investment universe as well as for risk-adjusted return performance. Investing in controversial stocks in many cases results in additional risk-adjusted returns, whereas excluding them may reduce financial performance. These findings suggest that there are opportunity costs to negative screening.     

Wertorientierte Kapitalanlagestrategie eines als Kapitalgesellschaft verfassten Versicherungsunternehmens

The question, inasmuch the allocation of shareholder capital to support capital market risks of an insurance company is value-accreditive is not only a very timely issue for market-affine shareholders given the current state of the financial markets, recent changes of insurance contract act, and an increasingly risk-adequate regulation. Moreover, the questions at hand touches upon very fundamental aspects of the risk/return business model of an insurance company. Applying established mirco- and institutional-economic concepts the analysis fundamentally denies such a value-contribution from a shareholder point of view. Yet, both for non-life- as well as in particular life-operations exceptions to this rule are also explored.     

How Will the Court Decide? – Tax Experts’ versus Laymen's Predictions

We conduct a survey of German tax professionals (tax advisors and revenue agents) and laymen to examine whether tax experts more accurately forecast the outcomes of five real cases from the German Federal Fiscal Court. With an average of 2.39 correct predictions among experts and an average of 2.49 correct predictions among laymen, our results reveal no significant difference in forecasting accuracy between the two groups. Additionally, neither general nor task-specific tax expertise increases the experts’ forecasting accuracy. This unpredictability of tax court decisions indicates that accounting rules and taxpayer penalties that rely on accurate predictions of tax court decisions may need to be re-evaluated. Moreover, our results indicate the existence of two types of ‘advisor bias’. First, tax advisors exhibit a significantly higher level of overconfidence in comparison to other experts (i.e. revenue agents) and laymen. In particular, they believe that they correctly predict, on average, 1.52 more cases than they actually do. Second, we find some evidence indicating that tax advisors acting as client advocates form stronger appeal recommendations than revenue agents.