What Drives Fraud in a Credence Goods Market? – Evidence from a Field Study

This paper investigates the impact of competition on an expert firm's incentive to defraud its customers in a credence goods market. Controlling for the competence of car repair shops, their financial situation, and reputational concerns, we use and complement the data set from a nationwide field study conducted by the German Automobile Association that regularly checks the reliability of garages in Germany. We find that more intense competition lowers a firm's incentive to defraud its customers.     

Regulierung, Effizienz und das Anreizdilemma bei Investitionen in intelligente Netze

In this paper, we survey from a theoretical point of view to what extend cost-based and incentive-based regulatory regimes stimulate investments. For the purpose of this analysis, we furthermore differentiate by different efficiency measures, i.e. allocative efficiency, productive efficiency and dynamic efficiency and analyse to what extend each efficiency measure is stimulated by the regulatory regime. Eventually, we analyse to what extend regulatory incentives for network innovation in a smart grid context exist and to what extend different forms of regulation stimulate dynamic efficiency.     

Steering the Sales Force for New Product Selling: Why Is it Different,and How Can Firms Motivate Different Sales Reps?

This study investigates how to direct and assemble the sales force for new product selling. In a first step, the authors draw on self‐determination theory to explore and empirically test a threefold conceptualization of motivation. Results provide insights into why sales force steering works differently in the new product selling context. Specifically, results show that for new products’ financial performance, internalized new product selling motivation is more important than intrinsic and controlled motivation. In a second step, the authors show how firms can motivate different sales reps to achieve higher financial performance of new products. In doing so, they examine the interaction effects of sales reps’ predispositions and widespread firm‐steering instruments on new products’ financial performance. Results reveal that the new product sales orientation of the bonus strengthens the positive relationship between sales reps’ performance predisposition and new product financial performance but weakens the relationship between sales reps’ learning predisposition and financial new product performance. Moreover, results reveal that the new product sales orientation of the periodic review strengthens the positive relationship between sales reps’ learning predisposition and financial new product performance. A post hoc analysis shows that a differentiated steering approach that matches appropriate steering instruments with sales reps’ varying predispositions substantially enhances reps’ financial new product performance.     

Shrinkage estimation of semiparametric multiplicative error models

Within models for nonnegative time series, it is common to encounter deterministic components (trends, seasonalities) which can be specified in a flexible form. This work proposes the use of shrinkage type estimation for the parameters of such components. The amount of smoothing to be imposed on the estimates can be chosen using different methodologies: Cross-Validation for dependent data or the recently proposed Focused Information Criterion. We illustrate such a methodology using a semiparametric autoregressive conditional duration model that decomposes the conditional expectations of durations into their dynamic (parametric) and diurnal (flexible) components. We use a shrinkage estimator that jointly estimates the parameters of the two components and controls the smoothness of the estimated flexible component. The results show that, from the forecasting perspective, an appropriate shrinkage strategy can significantly improve on the baseline maximum likelihood estimation.     

Target costing,co-ordination and strategic cost management

During the last years issues of strategic management accounting have received widespread attention in the accounting literature. Yet the conceptual foundation of most proposals is not clear. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of one of the most prominent approaches of strategic management accounting, i.e. target costing. We analyse three distinct characteristics of this strategic management accounting tool, namely its market orientation, its use as co-ordination instrument and its interaction with other factors affecting long-term cost structure in the form of strategic learning. The analysis shows that the more ‘strategic’ dimensions are added to the problem of cost management, the less valid are ‘strategic’ management accounting proposals in terms of the usual way target costing is employed.