An explorative study of corporate travellers’ perception at a German airport

The modern working environment is changing at a fast pace due to factors such as globalisation, digitalisation, and demographic trends. Taking an exploratory approach, this study examines how prevailing factors shaping the working world may influence the perception of business air travellers. Relevant factors are identified through a literature review, which results are confirmed by expert interviews (N = 11). Business travellers are surveyed (N = 67) at Munich Airport regarding their personal experiences and their evaluations of these identified factors. Their perceptions concerning the psychological and physical experience, digitalisation, age, and gender are examined in detail.Findings provide insights into the development of business air travel, with a focus on German business travellers. Despite the influence of advanced information and communications technology, survey results reveal that air travel might stay an essential part of the working world, as face-to-face meetings are not fully replaceable. Increasing multi-partner project work and flexible work structures could even lead into an increase of air travel. The study also delineates recommendations and research potential, such as the extension of the study in the light of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The question of how trends within the working world influence the perception of business related air travel is rarely studied. This study contributes to this gap in the scientific community.     

The over-optimism among experts in assessment and foresight

It is still disputed whether foresight exercises should be based on top-expert assessments or on a broader base of less specialised experts, and whether the self-rating of experts is an acceptable method. Using the German 1993 and the Austrian 1998 Technology Delphis, this study addresses both questions. Self-rating is, in fact, an appropriate method for selecting experts. But the assessment of self-rated top experts tend to suffer from an optimism bias due to the experts' involvement and their underestimation of realisation and diffusion problems. The degree of optimism is positively correlated with the degree of self-rated knowledge, and it is more pronounced for the least pioneering and for organizational innovations. Experts with top self-ratings working in business have a stronger optimism bias than those working in the academia or in the administration: Consistent with the insider hypothesis, they are most optimistic with regard to realisation, innovativeness, and potential leadership in economic exploitation. Given the optimism bias, foresight exercises should base their panels on a fair mixture of experts of different grades, with different types of knowledge and affiliation, and not only on top specialists of the respective field. Delphi-type exercises, therefore, offer an advantage relative to forum groups or small panels of specialists.     

改革现行会计委派制 建立会计代理制

对于国有企业(及国家机关部门和事业单位)来说,建立“外派”会计制度是内在的要求,应该坚持做好。“外派”会计是财务监督会计,与企业内部管理会计并行不悖。不过,现行的会计委派制确实增加了企业经理人员和委派会计人员或财务总监之间产生对立或合谋的可能性,某种意义上成为政府干预企业的新机制、新形式,这影响到会计委派制的实际效果。而由会计师事务所等中介服务机构来充当企业的财务总监的会计代理制却能较好地隔离政府与企业,并在两者之间形成适当的平衡。     

Modelling exchange of probabilistic opinions

Summary. This paper studies how communication or exchange of opinions influences correlation of beliefs. The paper focuses on a situation in which agents communicate with each other infinitely many times without observing data. It is an extension to the ‘Expert Problem’ in Bayesian theory, where the informational flow is asymmetric. Moreover, this paper generalizes the existing literature of communication that employs the common prior assumption (CPA) by allowing for heterogeneous beliefs. Some basic convergence results are shown in contrast with the results obtained under the CPA. Furthermore, several economic implications of the basic results are provided. Received: August 27, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The results presented in this paper are taken from my Ph.D. thesis at Stanford University. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration obtained from innumerable discussions with Mordecai Kurz about this subject. Also, I appreciate comments from Kenneth J. Arrow, Peter J. Hammond, Maurizio Motolese, Carsten K. Nielsen, Ho-Mou Wu and the anonymous referee.     

关于出境游组团社互为代理运作模式的探讨

随着组团社的激增，出境游市场的竞争日趋激烈，国家旅游局提出了出境游组团社之间互为代理的市场运作设想。本文对出境游组团社互为代理的内涵、必要性和可行性进行了探讨，并借助中性联合品牌和电子商务网络，从互为代理的市场运作流程、质量保障体系和财务结算等方面初步构建了出境游组团社互为代理的市场运作模式，以期为在全国范围内推行互为代理提供一个初步的市场运作框架。     

Combining multiple probability predictions using a simple logit model

This paper begins by presenting a simple model of the way in which experts estimate probabilities. The model is then used to construct a likelihood-based aggregation formula for combining multiple probability forecasts. The resulting aggregator has a simple analytical form that depends on a single, easily-interpretable parameter. This makes it computationally simple, attractive for further development, and robust against overfitting. Based on a large-scale dataset in which over 1300 experts tried to predict 69 geopolitical events, our aggregator is found to be superior to several widely-used aggregation algorithms.     

基金会制度与独立董事制度的完善

呼吁引进一个新的制度,即基金会制度,并且从我国实际出发,研究分析了基金会制度在解决独立董事制度中的难题作用。从基金会制度在独立董事的选任和激励约束制度中的作用来看,基金会应是一个独立的非营利性法人机构,将其融入独立董事制度中,能使许多问题迎刃而解。     

What do professional forecasters actually predict?

This paper studies what professional forecasters predict. We use spectral analysis and state space modeling to decompose economic time series into trend, business cycle, and irregular components. We examine which components are captured by professional forecasters by regressing their forecasts on the estimated components extracted from both the spectral analysis and the state space model. For both decomposition methods, we find that, in the short run, the Survey of Professional Forecasters can predict almost all of the variation in the time series due to the trend and the business cycle, but that the forecasts contain little or no significant information about the variation in the irregular component.     

Expert systems and land development expertise

Summary

Expert systems are a product of the new technology. They provide the means for computerizing human expertise. This necessitates a more explicit understanding of the latter, provides an additional source of it and presents the possibility of enhancing the competence of that expertise. The paper argues that in the face of increased competition for investment funds the development industry needs to adopt a more sophisticated approach to project assessment. Two examples, with respect to planning law and retail investment appraisal, are developed to indicate the potential of the expert system approach. Ultimately expert systems challenge appeals to ‘feel’, ‘experience’ and judgement’ in human decision‐making; if successful, however, they promise improved profitability.