Serving the Many or Serving the Most Needy?

For free, subsidized or cost-covering? The decision on how much to charge for a good or service is fundamental in social business planning. The higher the fee paid by the recipient, the more people in need can be served by the additional revenues. But charging a fee means simultaneously to exclude the very poor from consumption. This paper argues that the entrepreneur’s trade off between both effects is governed by her level of poverty aversion, i.e., her preference intensity for the service of needy people with different incomes. Additionally, we account for the possibility of excess demand for the provided good and assume that applicants are rationed by non-price allocation mechanisms. We thereby contribute to the extensive literature on the pricing and rationing behaviour of nonprofit firms. Within our theoretical model, we find ambiguous reactions of the entrepreneur to a cut in donations. Given a sufficiently low level of status-quo donations, entrepreneurs with relatively high poverty aversion tend to increase the project volume, while those with relatively low poverty aversion do the opposite.allocation mechanism, donation, nonprofit, poverty aversion, social entrepreneur, user fee

Serving the Many or Serving the Most Needy?

For free, subsidized or cost-covering? The decision on how much to charge for a good or service is fundamental in social business planning. The higher the fee paid by the recipient, the more people in need can be served by the additional revenues. But charging a fee means simultaneously to exclude the very poor from consumption. This paper argues that the entrepreneur\u27s trade off between both effects is governed by her level of poverty aversion, i.e., her preference intensity for the service of needy people with different incomes. Additionally, we account for the possibility of excess demand for the provided good and assume that applicants are rationed by non-price allocation mechanisms. We thereby contribute to the extensive literature on the pricing and rationing behaviour of nonprofit firms. Within our theoretical model, we find ambiguous reactions of the entrepreneur to a cut in donations. Given a sufficiently low level of status-quo donations, entrepreneurs with relatively high poverty aversion tend to increase the project volume, while those with relatively low poverty aversion do the opposite

Local transport measurements on epitaxial graphene

Growth of large-scale graphene is still accompanied by imperfections. By means of a four-tip STM/SEM the local structure of graphene grown on SiC(0001) was correlated with scanning electron microscope images and spatially resolved transport measurements. The systematic variation of probe spacings and substrate temperature has clearly revealed two-dimensional transport regimes of Anderson localization as well as of diffusive transport. The detailed analysis of the temperature dependent data demonstrates that the local on-top nano-sized contacts do not induce significant strain to the epitaxial graphene films.Comment: 3 figure

Target-Group and Quality Decisions of Inequity-Averse Entrepreneurs

Limited donations force nonprofit entrepreneurs to ration needy individuals by deciding on who is served at what quality level. We propose a positive model of this allocation for applicants with differing incomes under the assumption of perfect user-fee discrimination. By following recent experimental economic research on social preferences, we assume that entrepreneurs behave inequity averse, i.e. they care about the relative consumption possibilities of others. We find that less inequity-averse entrepreneurs prefer to serve wealthier individuals at high reference quality. In contrast, more inequity-averse entrepreneurs care for the poorest individuals but offer minimum quality. Furthermore, as input costs increase, entrepreneurs with low inequity aversion change the target group, while entrepreneurs with high aversion do not

Revealing the Preferences of Social Financiers

Financiers of social entrepreneurs are typically characterized as having some form of prosocial or CSR related objective. While in some studies such objectives have been formulated on an analytically inconvenient level, other contributions are limited only to charity finance. In this paper we identify Fehr and Schmidt’s inequality aversion as an analytically tractable and most basic motivation of social financiers in general. Specifically, we show that the financiers’ decision structures and their observable behavior coincide with the experimental findings of Fehr and Schmidt (1999). Moreover, we derive behavioral implications for social entrepreneurs. Paradoxically, given that financiers do not prefer a self-consumption of the social service, they contribute more if the entrepreneur provides them nevertheless

The Goal Achievement of Federal Lending Programs

Governmental intervention in credit markets typically involves the allocation of credit in the light of market failures. In this paper we evaluate federal lending programs while presuming positive externalities and symmetrically informed market participants. For common objectives of governmental lending institutions we verify that optimal lending structures require the application of the gap lender principle. We also show that lending programs can never be selffinancing, due to the positive subsidy margin. Within this general framework, we contrast the policies of the US SBA and the German KfW and show that neither institution features an optimal lending structure

High Performance Computing zur technischen Finanzmarktanalyse

Auf Grundlagen der technischen Finanzmarktanalyse wird ein Algorithmus für eine sicherheitsorientierte Wertpapierhandelsstrategie entwickelt. Maßgeblich für den Erfolg der Handelsstrategie ist dabei eine möglichst optimale Gewichtung mehrerer Indikatoren. Die Ermittlung dieser Gewichte erfolgt in einer sogenannten Kalibrierungsphase, die extrem rechenintensiv ist. Bei einer direkten Implementierung auf einem herkömmlichen High Performance PC würde diese Kalibrierungsphase zigtausend Jahre dauern. Deshalb wird eine parallele Version des Algorithmus entwickelt, die hervorragend für die massiv parallele, FPGA-basierte Rechnerarchitektur der RIVYERA geeignet ist, die am Lehrstuhl für technische Informatik der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel entwickelt wurde. Durch mathematisch äquivalente Transformationen und Optimierungsschritte aus verschiedenen Bereichen der Informatik gelingt eine FPGA-Implementierung mit einer im Vergleich zu dem PC mehr als 22.600-fach höheren Performance. Darauf aufbauend wird durch die zusätzliche Entwicklung eines zweiphasigen Iterationsverfahrens schließlich eine praxistaugliche Version des Algorithmus entwickelt, die je Kalibrierung weniger als 12 Minuten Rechenzeit benötigt. Der Stromverbrauch ist dabei etwa 99,99% geringer als bei einer Durchführung des Kalibrierungsalgorithmus auf dem PC. Die abschließende finanzwirtschaftliche Evaluierung zeigt an Beispielen aus dem Bereich des Fondshandels den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg der Handelsstrategie

Changing Salty Food Preferences with Visual and Textual Explanations in a Search Interface

Salt is consumed at too high levels in the general population, causing high blood pressure and related health problems. In this paper, we present results of ongoing research that tries to reduce salt intake via technology and in particular from an interface perspective. In detail, this paper features results of a study that examines the extent to which visual and textual explanations in a search interface can change salty food preferences. An online user study with 200 participants demonstrates that this is possible in food search results by accompanying recipes with a visual taste map that includes salt-replacer herbs and spices in the calculation of salty taste.publishedVersio

Changing Salty Food Preferences with Visual and Textual Explanations in a Search Interface

Salt is consumed at too high levels in the general population, causing high blood pressure and related health problems. In this paper, we present results of ongoing research that tries to reduce salt intake via technology and in particular from an interface perspective. In detail, this paper features results of a study that examines the extent to which visual and textual explanations in a search interface can change salty food preferences. An online user study with 200 participants demonstrates that this is possible in food search results by accompanying recipes with a visual taste map that includes salt-replacer herbs and spices in the calculation of salty taste.publishedVersio

Changing Salty Food Preferences with Visual and Textual Explanations in a Search Interface

Salt is consumed at too high levels in the general population, causing high blood pressure and related health problems. In this paper, we present results of ongoing research that tries to reduce salt intake via technology and in particular from an interface perspective. In detail, this paper features results of a study that examines the extent to which visual and textual explanations in a search interface can change salty food preferences. An online user study with 200 participants demonstrates that this is possible in food search results by accompanying recipes with a visual taste map that includes salt-replacer herbs and spices in the calculation of salty taste.publishedVersio