Aufdeckung von Versicherungsbetrug bei Kfz-Schäden mit Hilfe des Benford-Tests

The German Insurance Association estimates a yearly amount of damage of € 1.5?bn to German motor vehicle insurance companies because of systematic fraud by insurance holders. It is supposed that about 10% of submitted claim applications contain manipulated data, therefore insurance companies are forced to complete a detailed and cost intensive case-by-case review of each single application. An alternative method to detect fraud in empiric data is the method of digital analysis based on Benford’s law. The Benford method uses a mathematical law of specific logarithmic distribution attributes of first digits. According to this approach, the data of a Benford set confirm with the expected digit distribution, if the data is not manipulated, whereas fraudulent interventions lead to a deviation from Benford’s law. Hence, until now there has not been any investigation whether the Benford method can also be applied on insurance data. The present article analyses a dataset consisting of more than 120,000 damage claim applications to answer this question as well as to identify the impact of specific characteristics on the probability of fraud contained in claim applications, such as the repair of the vehicle in a franchised or an independent workshop, the vehicle brand or the examination by insurance companies experts. Indeed it could be shown that Benford’s Law is only applicable on second digits of insurance data, but delivers very strong results here: All results of the considered characteristics could be verified by plausible arguments. For this reason insurance companies can benefit from making use of the Benford method to identify those claim applications with a high probability of fraud, which should then be reviewed in more detail so that resources can be allocated in a much more cost efficient way.     

Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior: Use of Local Language for Market Communication—A Study in Region Friuli Venetia Giulia (Italy)

Cross-cultural consumer behavior is of market interest due to globalization of marketplaces, migration, multicultural marketplaces, and diffusion in the EU of many languages. The objective of this study is to check whether the local language used in a marketing communication could affect the consumers’ preferences for food products. The theoretical foundation is the consumer motivational approach that goes deeper into motivations interfering with the consumers’ preference order. The multivariate conjoint analysis is used to evaluate the preferences for attributes described in different languages. A number of students from the University of Udine (located in the northeastern part of Italy) have been submitted to interviews to examine their preferences for a simulated sandwich package reporting information in different languages, distributed by vendor machine. The results suggest that the consumer’s reaction to local language depends on sociodemographic profile, cultural background, language knowledge, and family education, and the local language could actually be used as a market tool for market segmentation. These results are of interest to many EU countries with bilingual communities such as Spain, Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, and most of the Italian regions where local languages are still alive.     

The evaluation of forest crop damages due to climate change. An application of Dempster–Shafer method

In order to assess damage risk caused by climate change in forest areas, Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence and fuzzy measures were applied to develop a framework for the estimation of economic forest damage. According to the definition of risk supported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a function of hazard and resilience lines of evidence was defined. The results of the hazard and resilience assessment were used to develop an economic framework based on Faustmann studies. The evaluation model, implemented through a spatial analysis procedure, was carried out linking Faustmann formula with hazard and resilience raster maps. The model permitted to estimate in monetary terms two possible costs to be supported: the first one is expressed as the expected damage to the forest crop on the basis of the current obtainable woody assortments and the second one referred to the potential expenses to pay in order to mitigate the risk. Finally, the framework was tested on an area of central Italy (Tuscany region).     

Consumer Behavior Toward Eco-Labeled Minimally Processed Fruit Product

The authors proposed an analysis of the determinants of purchase intentions and willingness to pay for minimally processed fruit. For this purpose, on-field research was conducted that involved 589 consumers. A questionnaire, gathered in Italy and based on a Likert scale, was administered to investigate intentions to purchase minimally processed fruit from environmentally sustainable farms, simulating a minimally processed product with an eco-label. Via structural equation modeling, the authors develop propositions representing a theoretical approach in the context of purchasing food products. By analyzing two different types of consciousness (health and green), the deduced managerial implications make it possible to assess that the green consciousness influences the attitude and affects the choices and behaviors of consumers. The potential adoption of an eco-label on this kind of food product could be seen as a useful marketing tool for new markets.     

The strategic strength of weak signal analysis

Foresight can be seen as a social cognition process involving a complex set of methods and interactive processes intended to assist policy in becoming more adaptive and forward-oriented in unpredictable environments. As a form of foresight raw material, “weak signals” can be thought of as gross, unstructured, fragmented, incomplete and inadvertent environmental data that may be refined into valuable information regarding context and further be articulated into strategically actionable knowledge. As advanced indicators that precede significant discrete one-off events and/or novel developments in the rate and direction of trends, their analysis has the potential to facilitate the real-time alignment between organisational decision-making and changing external circumstances. These predictors of future change pose fundamental problems of identification and interpretation and represent a challenge to established mental models. Thus, the practical significance of weak signals is that they can be transformed into meaningful insight for policy action. Such a value, however, does not materialise automatically. Realising this potential requires a degree of tolerance and fluidity of the collective cognitive frameworks by which weak signals can be apprehended, assessed and acted upon. This paper aims at covering the scope of perceptions and actions typically involved in the tracing and tracking of this shaping process.     

The Meaning(s) of Trust. A Content Analysis on the Diverse Conceptualizations of Trust in Scholarly Research on Business Relationships

Scholarly research largely converges on the argument that trust is of paramount importance to drive economic agents toward mutually satisfactory, fair, and ethically compliant behaviors. There is, however, little agreement on the meaning of trust, whose conceptualizations differ with respect to actors, relationships, behaviors, and contexts. At present, we know much better what trust does than what trust is. In this article, we present an extensive review and analysis of the most prominent articles on trust in market relationships. Using computer-aided content analysis and network analysis methods, we identify key, recurring dimensions that guided the conceptualization of trust in past research, and show how trust can be developed as a multifaceted and layered construct. Our results are an important contribution to a convergence of research toward a shared and common view of the meaning of trust. This process is important to ensure the body of trust research’s internal theoretical consistency, and to provide reliable and common principles for the management of business relationships – a context in which opportunism and imperfect information may induce economic actors to cheat and stray from fair and ethically compliant behaviors.     

Wild cards, weak signals and organisational improvisation

This paper addresses the need for reliable action guidelines which can be used by organisations in turbulent environments. Building on current conceptual and empirical research, we suggest an analytical approach to the management of surprising and potentially damaging events. In order to do so we propose the wild card management system. Wild cards refer to sudden and unique incidents that can constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend. As the first of the two components of such a wild card system, we advocate a weak signal methodology to take into account those wild cards that can be anticipated by scanning the decision environment. The second component, the nurture of improvisation capabilities, is designed to deal with unanticipated ongoing crises. This paper can be seen as part of a broader agenda on how to manage in conditions of continuous but unpredictable change.     

Die Marktabgrenzung in der Elektrizitätswirtschaft

This article presents the current market definition in the electricity sector as applied by the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office). The main focus is on the definition of the relevant product and geographic markets at the end consumer level. Moreover, it considers implications of the market definition for competition policy. A central aspect of the electricity sector is the interdependence between the generation, distribution and end consumer levels. It follows that the generation level has a deterministic impact on the electricity sector in general and especially at the consumer level.     

THE REVOLUTION WITHIN: ICT AND THE SHIFTING KNOWLEDGE BASE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES

This empirical article analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's largest manufacturing firms during the 1980s and 1990s. The objective of the research is twofold: first, to emphasise the emerging differences among technologies when companies from different industries patent outside their traditional technological capabilities; secondly, to investigate whether the tendency among large companies from all industries to patent in ICT is distinctive when compared with the tendency to patent in other technologies. We find that technological diversification in large companies has clearly occurred in ICTs. Non-ICT specialist industries increasingly develop, rather than just utilise, the cluster of ICT-related technologies. We conclude that the development of corporate capabilities in the key technologies of the emerging ICT paradigm is more widespread than previously emphasised in the literature. One implication of this observation is that technological diversification and the information revolution may be related phenomena.