Die benutzerzentrierte Qualitätssicherung, die mit dem weit verbreiteten TCO-Zertifikat zu einem de facto Standard für die Qualitätssicherung von Büroprodukten führte, wird in Schweden seit 1998 unter dem Namen „UsersAward“ auch für Software-Produkte angewendet. „UsersAward“ verfolgt dabei einen ganzheitlichen Prozessansatz, bei dem die Nutzerzufriedenheit mit Software in den sechs Bereichen Ge...

Loan fraud is a critical factor in the insolvency of financial institutions, so companies make an effort to reduce the loss from fraud by building a model for proactive fraud prediction. However, there are still two critical problems to be resolved for the fraud detection: (1) the lack of cost sensitivity between type I error and type II error in most prediction models, and (2) highly skewed di...

The retail industry is being revolutionized by the movement in consumer perception of shopping exemplified by “Shopping is Theater”. Increasingly, consumers are expecting shopping to be a highly interactive and rewarding experience. This has been driving the need for reduced time to market of newer retailing ideas, and the use of advances in hardware and software technologies to create a richer...

Investments in cost reductions are critical for the long run success of companies that operate in dynamic and stochastic market environments. This paper studies optimal investment in cost reductions as a real option under the assumption that a single firm faces two different sources of risk, stochastic demand and input prices. We derive optimal investment strategies for a monopoly as well as a ...

A partial occlusion of one or more of the coronary arteries due to atherosclerosis leads to an insufficient supply of blood to the myocardium and as a result to the reduction of its functioning (myocardial ischemia). A total occlusion blocks the blood supply completely, which generally leads to starvation of myocardial tissue (myocardial infarction). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has proven ...

Evidence from explicit measures (e.g. favourability ratings, valuations) has led to the prevalent hypothesis that owned objects become cognitively associated with self-concept. Using a novel version of the Implicit Association Test (self-object IAT), wherein participants categorized objects by colour, we evaluated implicit cognitive associations involving self with already-owned and newly-owned...

We estimate implied cost of equity capital (re) for a sample of firms from 1984 to 1998 using the Ohlson and Juettner (2000) model that does not make restrictive assumptions about clean surplus and payout policies. We find that re is strongly positively associated with conventional risk factors such as earnings variability, systematic and unsystematic return volatility, and leverage, and is neg...

Ownership is a common concept underlying many social activities – buying, selling, renting and giving etc. For a software agent to operate in an open environment like Agentcities, it may be necessary for it to reason about ownership. This paper provides a brief overview of ownership issues for computer agents and an approach towards a coherent ontological framework for reasoning about agent own...

Home ownership differentials are both a consequence and a cause of social inequality in the United States. Differences in income, wealth, education, family structure, and racial identity all contribute to differences in home ownership, and differential home ownership opportunities help sustain differences in wealth, education, access to jobs, and overall quality of life. In particular, home own...