Aktuelle Rechtsfragen der Umweltschadensversicherung

The paper provides an overview of current legal issues with regard to the environmental damage insurance, which exists in Germany since 2007. At the center of the observation are limitations of coverage, in particular the requirement of a malfunction of the business operations, the exclusion of qualitative risk changes and the cost deduction clause. In addition, the article deals with some issues of interpretation as well as of delimitation with regard to further insurance policies. By way of introduction the basics of the German Environmental Damage Act (USchadG) and its underlying EU Directive are shown. Finally, the authors discuss the question whether the environmental damage insurance should be configured as an obligatory insurance in the future.     

Board Committees in Corporate Governance: A Cross‐Disciplinary Review and Agenda for the Future

The importance of board committees – specialized subgroups that exist to perform many of the board's most critical functions, such as setting executive compensation, identifying potential board members, and overseeing financial reporting – has grown over time due to increased legal requirements and greater complexity of the environment in which firms operate. This has resulted in a large body of work examining board committees across the accounting, finance, and management disciplines. However, this research has developed rather independently within each discipline, preventing scholars and practitioners from developing a comprehensive understanding of board committees. To address this issue, we conduct a comprehensive review of the literature that: 1) summarizes and synthesizes antecedents and outcomes associated with board committees in publicly‐traded firms in English common law countries; and 2) offers a critical analysis of existing research, providing recommendations for advancements and new directions in board committee research.     

Seatbelt use among drivers in an urban city in Nigeria: an observational study

Studies from parts of Nigeria reported low compliance with seatbelt. This study sought to establish driver seatbelt use in Enugu, Nigeria by gender, vehicle type/use and time of day. Observations were done day and night at randomly selected locations. Data were analysed with SPSS version 15. Differences in response were checked with chi-square for trend. Confidence interval was 95% and P value < 0.05 was regarded as significant. Average compliance was 37.6% for the 510 males (85%) and 90 females (15%) observed. It was 74.8% in the day and 0.3% at night. Among males, 218 (42.7%) wore seatbelt while 9 (10%) females did. For commercial drivers 159 (65.2%) complied while 68 (19.1%) private drivers did. Truck drivers had 100% compliance while sports utility vehicle drivers had the lowest (18.8%). There is poor seatbelt compliance in Enugu, Nigeria and need for educational campaigns and stricter enforcement.     

Research bias in judgement bias studies – a systematic review of valuation judgement literature

Valuation judgement bias has been a research topic for several years due to its proclaimed effect on valuation accuracy. However, little is known on the emphasis of literature on judgement bias, with regard to, for instance, research methodologies, research context and robustness of research evidence. A synthesis of available research will establish consistency in the current knowledge base on valuer judgement, identify future research opportunities and support decision-making policy by educational and regulatory stakeholders how to cope with judgement bias. This article therefore, provides a systematic review of empirical research on real estate valuer judgement over the last 30 years. Based on a number of inclusion and exclusion criteria, we have systematically analysed 32 relevant papers on valuation judgement bias. Although we find some consistency in evidence, we also find the underlying research to be biased; the methodology adopted is dominated by a quantitative approach; research context is skewed by timing and origination; and research evidence seems fragmented and needs replication. In order to obtain a deeper understanding of valuation judgement processes and thus extend the current knowledge base, we advocate more use of qualitative research methods and scholars to adopt an interpretative paradigm when studying judgement behaviour.     

Does Consumer Well‐Being Affect Hedonic Consumption?

This article presents a theoretical model that reveals how consumers’ long‐term subjective well‐being (SWB) influences their spending on hedonic products. Using the longitudinal data from a large national panel survey, the study found that consumers’ SWB influences spending on hedonic products via the mediating effects of their positive interpretation of life circumstances and broadened set of activities resulting from positive emotions. The results are explained using cognitive tuning theory and broaden‐and‐build theory and have implications for hedonic products providers in terms of who their target audience is and how demand for their products is generated.     

Cooperation in a risky world

We offer a novel investigation of the effect of environmental risk on cooperation in the Voluntary Contribution Mechanism. Our baseline is the standard setting, in which the personal return from the public good is deterministic, homogeneous, and publicly known. Our experimental treatments alter this classic design by making the marginal per capita return from the public good probabilistic. In the homogeneous risk (HomR) treatment, the random draw is made for the whole group, whereas in the heterogeneous risk (HetR) treatment, this happens independently for each group member. Our hypothesis is that different environmental risks may differently affect the ex post payoff inequalities, so that other‐regarding preferences (inequality aversion) may generate higher contributions in HomR than in HetR. Our main result is that the environmental risk does not affect the patterns of cooperation either in the one‐shot or in the finitely repeated version of the game. This suggests that the standard experimental methodology provides a robust and conservative measure of human cooperation.     

Complexity in valuation practice: an inquiry into valuers’ perceptions of task complexity in the Dutch real estate market

The aim of this paper is to examine valuer judgement behaviour, by exploring the manifestation of task complexity in Dutch commercial valuation practice. For this purpose, we adopted a grounded theory approach and undertook 18 in-depth interviews with senior valuation professionals across the Netherlands. Our findings indicate a strong presence of situational task complexity in commercial valuation practice, as professionals operating in large valuation teams perceive different elements of task complexity throughout commercial valuation practice in comparison to peers working in small valuation teams or self-employed valuers. Further, coping strategies used to deal with task complexity vary substantially by type of valuer as well. From our data, we deducted three types of task environment constructs in which valuers operate, which basically represent the various levels of professional standards required by clients as well as organisational settings composed to meet client standards. As such, we found that task environment settings strongly coincide with perceptions of task complexity. The presence of situational task complexity in commercial real estate valuation practice points to the need for customisation of professional valuer’s development programs to facilitate valuers to deal with task complexity in different stages of valuation practice and hence contribute to advancing valuer judgement skills.     

The process of entrepreneurial action at the base of the pyramid in developing countries: a case of vegetable farmers in Benin

The assumption that entrepreneurship is a critical factor in expanding employment, creating wealth and contributing to poverty alleviation at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in developing countries has led to the development of many initiatives to strengthen the entrepreneurial activities of poor people. Despite the fact that entrepreneurship is seen as a strategy in combatting poverty, the process that leads to entrepreneurial action in a BoP context is still unclear. In this paper, we illustrate the possibilities a multi-layered perspective offers to understand the complexity of entrepreneurship in poverty settings. Based on five focus group discussions and 36 in-depth interviews with vegetable farmers in Benin, we examined the entrepreneurship of poor people. We learned that entrepreneurial action is the nexus of individual and exogenous factors in complex relationships. Based on this, we elaborate on the characteristics of the process model of entrepreneurial action. We provide a process-based view of entrepreneurship at the BoP, suggesting a need for consistency between individual, behavioural strategies and contextual elements. We discuss the implications of our findings for BoP practice and provide a framing perspective that we hope will encourage a greater focus on the complexity of entrepreneurship phenomenon.