Determinants of self-reporting under the European corporate leniency program

We empirically investigate the determinants of self-reporting under the European corporate leniency program. Applying a data set consisting of 442 firm groups that participated in 76 cartels decided by the European Commission between 2000 and 2011, we find that the probability of a firm becoming the chief witness increases with its character as repeat offender, the size of the expected basic fine, the number of countries active in one group as well as the size of the firm’s share in the cartelized market. Our results have important implications for an effective prosecution of anti-cartel law infringers

Evaluating the Usefulness and the Ease of Use of a Web-based Inspection Data Collection Tool

This paper contributes a valid and reliable measurement instrument in the form of a questionnaire to determine, from a user's perspective, the usefulness and ease of use of a Web-based Inspection Process Support tool (WIPS) that we developed for inspection data collection. The questionnaire is built upon the work of Fred Davis on perceived usefulness, ease of use, and usage of information technology. To validate the questionnaire and its underlying model as well as to evaluate WIPS, we performed a controlled experiment with computer science students as subjects. The subjects performed inspection of a code module and used WIPS for collecting defect and effort data. Once they had completed the code inspection, they filled out the usefulness and ease of use questionnaire. Our experimental results provide empirical evidence that the questionnaire is a reliable measurement instrument (cronbach alpha: 0.84 for usefulness; 0.82 for ease of use). Factor analysis revealed that the questionnair..

Empirical investigation of perspective-based reading: A replicated experiment

Inspection is considered a powerful method to detect defects in a software artifact. It is reported that savings are particularly high if inspections are used in early phases of the software development process, i.e. in the requirements definition phase. However, only few systematic techniques exist to support defect detection in requirements documents. One is perspective-based reading (PBR). The effectiveness of this technique has been validated in an experiment with software professionals at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. In this paper we describe a replication of this experiment within an academic environment to validate the original results. In the original experiment, no real team meetings were performed, i.e. the individual results were pooled into nominal team results. In contrast, in our replication effort we performed real team meetings, which allowed us to make a comparison between real and nominal teams. Moreover, we investigated how the technique supports detection of de fects belonging to different defect classes. The results are three-fold: (1) We basically confirm the results of the original experiment, that PBR helps to increase individual and team defect detection effectiveness compared to an Ad-hoc approach. (2) We found no statistically significant difference between real and nominal teams. (3) The analysis according to different defect classes only yield few statistically significant results due to the experimental setting. To document data collection and analysis, we used the Goal/Question/Metric approach. We found it highly beneficial for structuring data collection and analysis especially for replication purposes