The Income Body Weight Gradients in the Developing Economy of China

Though existing theories predict the income gradient of individual body weight to change sign from positive to negative in process of economic development, empirical evidence is scarce. This paper adds to the literature on that topic by investigating the case of China using data from the China Health and Nutrition survey. Using a one-dimensional measure to characterize the level of economic development of a region, regression analyses indicate that more income is related to larger future growth of individuals’ BMI in less developed areas whereas it lowers BMI growth in more developed areas. The switch is somewhat more pronounced for females. Finally, using concentration indices it is shown that overweight status is predominantly a problem of higher income ranks in less developed geographical areas and trickles down to lower income ranks throughout the course of economic development.BMI, Bodyweight, Income, Development, China, CHNS, Concentration Index

Key Performance Indicators for Evaluating Corporate Wikis for Knowledge Management

This paper presents a methodology for assessing and improving the quality of information provided by corporate wikis. Regarding the assessment, we present two KPIs for measuring relative demand and relative usefulness of wiki articles, including corresponding processes and data model. In regard to improving quality, we use the KPIs to classify the articles. For this classification, we introduce four categories and discuss possible actions for reducing information overload and increasing the visibility of articles. To prove our methodology, we analyze an existing corporate wiki of a large European enterprise in the chemical industry. Its articles are used to demonstrate how the proposed KPIs can contribute to knowledge management by improving the information quality

Secure Interactive Electronic Negotiations in Business to Business Marketplaces

In this paper, we discuss security aspects of interactive bilateral multi-attribute negotiations. We introduce this type of electronic negotiations and maintain that it will be an important functional aspect of business-to-business electronic marketplaces. We discuss the general application architecture and the process flow for this type of negotiations. We introduce the relevant security issues and show how these issues can be dealt with, especially within a business relationship where a lower degree of trust prevails. To this purpose, we introduce and discuss a protocol for secure interactive electronic negotiations

How to Discover Knowledge for Improving Availability in the Manufacturing Domain?

This paper presents a specific process model for Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) projects aiming at availability improvement in manufacturing. For this purpose, Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) is analyzed and used, since it is an approved approach to monitor and improve the degree of availability in manufacturing. To define the specific process model, we use the generic CRISPDM reference model and conduct a mapping for availability improvement. We prove the applicability of our model in the context of a specific KDD project in a large enterprise in the manufacturing industry

Customer Loyalty Programs and Privacy Concerns

In recent years, loyalty programs have been established allowing the creation of detailed consumer profiles by collecting and processing purchase information. Collecting this information, however, raises privacy concerns of customers. In this work, we provide the results of an empirical study which reveal that privacy concerns have an impact on the probability of participating in loyalty programs. We identify a privacy-sensitive segment of customers using demographic and psychographic data that, in principle, would participate in a loyalty program, however, refrains from doing so because of privacy concerns. Moreover, we found that people participating in customer loyalty programs are more concerned about their privacy than non-participants, which is an interesting though counterintuitive result

Trust Building and Usage Control for Electronic Business Processes

Information technology (IT) supports companies to streamline their business processes. The main contributions of IT are the digitalization of data and efficient communication networks, which allow companies to automatize their business processes and thus increase their efficiency, i.e., their value creation. This effort started with the optimization of internal business processes within a company. Nowadays, it also includes external business processes, in which multiple enterprises and even customers are involved. However, using IT also causes undesirable side effects for companies. They are exposed to a wide range of vulnerabilities and threats. Digitalizing data, e.g., documents, spurs the access to that data and the exchange of it. However, a disadvantageous result of digitalizing data is the increased risk of unauthorized access to that data. Communication networks provide an excellent foundation for collaboration between companies. At the same time, the open and anonymous character of communication networks is a reason for distrust towards business partners offering their goods and services over such networks. As a result of these undesirable side effects, the outcome of a certain business process supported by IT may be suboptimal or companies may refrain from using IT. Against this background, this thesis focuses on securing electronic business processes with regard to two aspects, i.e., building trust in open networks and controlling the usage of digital objects. Trust is the prerequisite for all kinds of commercial transactions. Using reputation information is one possible way to build up trust among business partners. In this thesis, we propose two new reputation systems to establish trust for ad-hoc processes in open markets. The first reputation system facilitates trust building in the context of electronic negotiations which are performed with the help of a centralized system. The reputation system enables companies to find trustworthy business partners and provides decision support during a negotiation. The second reputation system supports trust building in decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. A main feature of this system is its robustness against coalition attacks, which is proven with the help of a simulation. Controlling the usage of digital objects demands two functionalities. First, we need methods for defining usage rules. Second, mechanisms for enforcing the defined usage rules are required. In this thesis, we address both aspects of usage control. Digital documents play a central role in business processes, since they are a means of integration and are handled among business partners. Some documents are sensitive and thus have to be protected from being accessed by unauthorized parties. For this purpose, we propose a flexible and expressive access control model for electronic documents. Our model captures the information about the operations performed on documents. This history information can be used to define access control rules. Customers are involved in the execution of special kinds of business processes, such as selling and consuming digital goods. In these cases, digital goods have to be protected from being used in an unauthorized way, e.g., being shared in public networks. Thus, the trustworthiness of customers' platforms has to be verified before transferring digital goods. For this, we propose a robust integrity reporting protocol which is necessary when a remote platform has to perform security relevant operations, e.g., to enforce a security policy which controls the usage of digital content. This integrity reporting protocol is a building block of a new Digital Rights Management system which is also presented in this thesis. This system provides a high protection level. At the same time, it allows users to transfer their purchased content to other devices or users.

Rising Inequalities in Income and Health in China: Who is left behind?

During the last decades, China has experienced double-digit economic growth rates and rising inequality. This paper implements a new decomposition on the China Health and Nutrition panel Survey (1991-2006) to examine the extent to which changes in level and distribution of incomes and in income mobility are related to health disparities between rich and poor. We find that health disparities in China relate to rising income inequality and in particular to the adverse health and income experience of older (wo)men, but not to the growth rate of average incomes over the last decades. These findings suggest that replacement incomes and pensions at older ages may be one of the most important policy levers in combating health disparities between rich and poor Chinese

Trust Building and Usage Control for Electronic Business Processes

Information technology (IT) supports companies to streamline their business processes. The main contributions of IT are the digitalization of data and efficient communication networks, which allow companies to automatize their business processes and thus increase their efficiency, i.e., their value creation. This effort started with the optimization of internal business processes within a company. Nowadays, it also includes external business processes, in which multiple enterprises and even customers are involved. However, using IT also causes undesirable side effects for companies. They are exposed to a wide range of vulnerabilities and threats. Digitalizing data, e.g., documents, spurs the access to that data and the exchange of it. However, a disadvantageous result of digitalizing data is the increased risk of unauthorized access to that data. Communication networks provide an excellent foundation for collaboration between companies. At the same time, the open and anonymous character of communication networks is a reason for distrust towards business partners offering their goods and services over such networks. As a result of these undesirable side effects, the outcome of a certain business process supported by IT may be suboptimal or companies may refrain from using IT. Against this background, this thesis focuses on securing electronic business processes with regard to two aspects, i.e., building trust in open networks and controlling the usage of digital objects. Trust is the prerequisite for all kinds of commercial transactions. Using reputation information is one possible way to build up trust among business partners. In this thesis, we propose two new reputation systems to establish trust for ad-hoc processes in open markets. The first reputation system facilitates trust building in the context of electronic negotiations which are performed with the help of a centralized system. The reputation system enables companies to find trustworthy business partners and provides decision support during a negotiation. The second reputation system supports trust building in decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. A main feature of this system is its robustness against coalition attacks, which is proven with the help of a simulation. Controlling the usage of digital objects demands two functionalities. First, we need methods for defining usage rules. Second, mechanisms for enforcing the defined usage rules are required. In this thesis, we address both aspects of usage control. Digital documents play a central role in business processes, since they are a means of integration and are handled among business partners. Some documents are sensitive and thus have to be protected from being accessed by unauthorized parties. For this purpose, we propose a flexible and expressive access control model for electronic documents. Our model captures the information about the operations performed on documents. This history information can be used to define access control rules. Customers are involved in the execution of special kinds of business processes, such as selling and consuming digital goods. In these cases, digital goods have to be protected from being used in an unauthorized way, e.g., being shared in public networks. Thus, the trustworthiness of customers' platforms has to be verified before transferring digital goods. For this, we propose a robust integrity reporting protocol which is necessary when a remote platform has to perform security relevant operations, e.g., to enforce a security policy which controls the usage of digital content. This integrity reporting protocol is a building block of a new Digital Rights Management system which is also presented in this thesis. This system provides a high protection level. At the same time, it allows users to transfer their purchased content to other devices or users

The income body weight gradients in the developing economy of China

Existing theories predict the income gradient of individual body weight to change sign from positive to negative in process of economic development. However, there are only few empirical studies which test this hypothesis. This paper adds to the literature on that topic by investigating the case of China. Using individual and community data from 1991 to 2009 waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey regression analyses suggest that after controlling for important confounding factors (1) higher income is positively related to future growth of individuals’ BMI in less developed areas (i.e. BMI growth is 0.7–1.5 percentage points higher when comparing the richest with the poorest individuals), but negatively related to BMI growth in more developed areas (i.e. BMI growth is 0.8–1.6 percentage points lower for the richest individuals), and (2) that concentrations of overweight are “trickling down” to lower income ranks as regions become more developed. Moreover, the reversal of the income gradient appears to happen at earlier stages of development for females