The 10 most recently published documents
The present study investigates the moderating effect of usage intensity of the social networking site (SNS) Instagram (IG) on the influence of advertisement disclosure types on advertising performance. A national sample (N = 566) participated in a randomized online experiment including a real influencer and followers in order to investigate how different advertisement disclosure types affect advertising performance and how usage intensity moderates this effect. We find that disclosing an influencer’s postings with “#ad” increases the trustworthiness of the influencer and the general credibility of the posting for heavy users, but not for light users. Followership of a user has been found to strongly improve all researched variables (attitude toward product placement, trustworthiness of the spokesperson and general credibility of the posting). This study adds to literature the first distinction on heavy and light usage intensity, and on followership of an IG user when regarding the effects of advertisement disclosure types on advertising performance. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how advertisers, influencers, and SNS providers should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media users, e.g., to closely monitor an influencer’s audience to identify heavy users and optimally target them.
Multilevel governance of energy transitions depends on the coordination between national, supra- and international administrative actors. Coordination takes place in systems of multilevel administration, which constitute highly dynamic arenas dominated by legally non-binding instruments and reciprocal interactions and relationships. This article seeks to gain insights into the underlying coordination processes by asking which conditions account for the change over time of coordination between administrative actors in multilevel administration systems. First, research on multilevel administration is summarized. Second and starting from historic and discursive institutionalist theory, a conceptual framework is outlined to assess the conditions and modes that account for the dynamics of coordination in general, and the change of coordination instruments in particular. A trend towards persuasive coordination in a process of institutional layering driven by endogenous conditions is expected. Empirically, an in-depth comparative analysis is conducted based on exploratory interviews with 90 experts mainly from the European Commission, the International Energy Agency, and national administrators from Canada and Europe. The results unveil that administrative coordination evolves according to at least three types of layering that go beyond the initial hypothesis: first, through layering of coordination instruments; second, as an increase in formal and non-formal interactions through a growing number of channels and complexity of interactions over time; third, as layering of inter-administrative relationships through a growing importance of personal networks and the creation of new contacts. By analysing the dynamics of multilevel administrative coordination, the article contributes to an important but underdeveloped aspect of the governance of supra- and international energy transitions.
Die Emergenz digitaler Netzwerke ist auf die ständige Entwicklung und Transformation neuer Informationstechnologien zurückzuführen.
Dieser Strukturwandel führt zu äußerst komplexen Systemen in vielen verschiedenen Lebensbereichen.
Es besteht daher verstärkt die Notwendigkeit, die zugrunde liegenden wesentlichen Eigenschaften von realen Netzwerken zu untersuchen und zu verstehen.
In diesem Zusammenhang wird die Netzwerkanalyse als Mittel für die Untersuchung von Netzwerken herangezogen und stellt beobachtete Strukturen mithilfe mathematischer Modelle dar.
Hierbei, werden in der Regel parametrisierbare Zufallsgraphen verwendet, um eine systematische experimentelle Evaluation von Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen zu ermöglichen.
Angesichts der zunehmenden Menge an Informationen, sind viele Aspekte der Netzwerkanalyse datengesteuert und zur Interpretation auf effiziente Algorithmen angewiesen.
Algorithmische Lösungen müssen daher sowohl die strukturellen Eigenschaften der Eingabe als auch die Besonderheiten der zugrunde liegenden Maschinen, die sie ausführen, sorgfältig berücksichtigen.
Die Generierung und Analyse massiver Netzwerke ist dementsprechend eine anspruchsvolle Aufgabe für sich.
Die vorliegende Arbeit bietet daher algorithmische Lösungen für die Generierung und Analyse massiver Graphen.
Zu diesem Zweck entwickeln wir Algorithmen für das Generieren von Graphen mit vorgegebenen Knotengraden, die Berechnung von Zusammenhangskomponenten massiver Graphen und zertifizierende Grapherkennung für Instanzen, die die Größe des Hauptspeichers überschreiten.
Unsere Algorithmen und Implementierungen sind praktisch effizient für verschiedene Maschinenmodelle und bieten sequentielle, Shared-Memory parallele und/oder I/O-effiziente Lösungen.
Welfare is the largest expenditure category in all advanced democracies. Consequently, much literature has studied partisan effects on total and policy-specific welfare expenditure. Yet, these results cannot be trusted: The methodological standard is to apply time-series cross-section-regressions to annual observation data. But governments hardly change annually. Thus, the number of observations is artificially inflated, leading to incorrect estimates. While this problem has recently been acknowledged, it has not been convincingly resolved. We propose Mixed-Effects Models as a solution, which allow decomposing variance into different levels and permit complex cross-classification data structures. We argue that Mixed-Effects models combine the strengths of existing methodological approaches while alleviating their weaknesses. Empirically, we study partisan effects on total and on disaggregated expenditure in 23 OECD-countries, 1960-2012, using several measures of party preferences.
The debate on effects of globalization on welfare states is extensive. Often couched in terms of a battle between the compensation and the efficiency thesis, the scholarly literature has provided contradictory arguments and findings. This article contributes to the scholarly debate by exploring in greater detail the micro-level foundations of compensation theory. More specifically, we distinguish between individual policy preferences for compensatory social policies (unemployment insurance) and human capital-focused social investment policies (education) and expect globalization to mainly affect demand for educational investment. A multi-level analysis of ISSP survey data provides empirical support for this hypothesis. This finding provides an important revision and extension of the classical analytical perspective of compensation theory, because it shows that citizens value the social investment function of the welfare state above and beyond simple compensation via social transfers. This might be particularly relevant in today's skill-centered knowledge economies.
In order to reach climate neutrality by 2050, the European Union is taking action in the form of extensive sustainability regulations with the aim to push the private sector towards sustainable economic activities. In this context, a new instrument to finance a company’s sustainability transition has been developed: the sustainability-linked bond (SLB). This paper analyzes the SLB market’s efficiency in attracting those companies that are most crucial for a successful sustainability transition, namely carbon-intensive companies and companies that are lagging behind in their sustainability transition, defined as ESG laggards. By developing a conceptual framework for the SLB market and running a probit and logit regression estimation, this paper shows that the SLB market efficiently attracts carbon-intensive companies, but fails to attract ESG laggards. Moreover, the paper identifies four success factors for the SLB market to improve its future accessibility and credibility.
The European low-carbon transition began in the last few decades and is accelerating to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This paper examines how climate-related transition indicators of a large European corporate firm relate to its CDS-implied credit risk across various time horizons. Findings show that firms with higher GHG emissions have higher CDS spreads at all tenors, including the 30-year horizon, particularly after the 2015 Paris Agreement, and in prominent industries such as Electricity, Gas, and Mining. Results suggest that the European CDS market is currently pricing, to some extent, albeit small, the exposure to transition risk for a firm across different time horizons. However, it fails to account for a company’s efforts to manage transition risks and its exposure to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. CDS market participants seem to find challenging to risk-differentiate ETS-participating firms from other firms.
An unfamiliar term in the not-too-distant past, “net zero” has become a headline-maker in the business and financial world with the growing importance of climate change. Succumbing to increasing pressure, companies and financial institutions around the world have come to adopt net-zero transition plans and targets, pledging to hit certain emission-reduction targets in a long-term period. Moreover, regulators around the world have started to require the disclosure or adoption of net-zero transition plans and targets.
However, an unintended consequence of net-zero transition commitments has been the increased popularity of divestments. That is, many firms seeking to fulfill a net-zero plan are passing on carbon-intensive assets (i.e., oil, gas, and coal assets) to other firms that are likely to be non-committal to environmental goals or that operate under less pressure from investors, stakeholders, and regulators. Such divestments, technically mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, present an ideal opportunity to improve a divesting firm’s environmental record and reach ambitious net-zero goals, creating the impression that an emission reduction has occurred. However, the key is how acquiring firms handle these assets. If they continue operating as before, there will not be an overall improvement for the global climate. Worse, such assets can be operated by new owners in a way that causes more emissions. In any case, such divestments undermine the credibility and value of net-zero ambitions by allowing firms to reach targets by simply divesting assets.
This article explores the reasons and motivations for divestments or, more broadly M&As of carbon-intensive assets and explains why the increased role of net-zero commitments can be undermined by those transactions. We provide some evidence to illustrate the landscape of such transactions and the concerns they give rise to. Lastly, we explore several policy options to address the problem.