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In this paper, the influence of current sensors of a NILM system is investigated. The current sensors of a classical inductive current transformer and a Rogowski coil are compared. To evaluate the actual influence on the NILM, measurements are performed with two measuring systems with different current sensors. With these measuring systems, 20 different consumers with 50 switch-on and switch-off cycles are measured in parallel. Besides, the influence of the sampling rate on the results of the NILM classification is evaluated. The classification is carried out with features normalized to the performance and without phase information, so only the signal waveform is used to differentiate the devices.
Lifelogging
(2020)
Funding is the key to success for a start-up. Since start-ups are often operating in innovative industries, they rarely receive loans from traditional debt lenders such as banks. However, start-ups do have the option of acquiring money for company growth through equity financing. One possibility for this is venture capital. In this scope, Germany is significantly behind the United States of America due to various aspects. This problem shows the relevance of the topic and justifies the critical examination of this subject. This work aims to analyze the German venture capital market, its development over the last 20 years, its advantages on the one hand and its disadvantages on the other hand as well as its future perspectives. Beyond that, the differences between the German and the American venture capital market and its success factors are presented. To answer all research questions, a broad literature review in combi-nation with several conducted expert interviews, which are evaluated on the principle of the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring, is applied. The results of the analysis indicate that there are mainly three fields that are crucial for a successful venture capital market: Political actions, attitudes of the society, and the economic situation. Within these fields, some aspects of Germany are considered worse than in the U.S. In the United States of America politics often intervenes to create better conditions for investments via venture capital. Besides, the risk affinity of society in the U.S. is a major advantage compared to the risk-averse society in Germany. This is complemented by a pronounced start-up mentality in the U.S. and the positive attitude of society towards the failure of a new start-up. In Germany, the opposite can be found in both aspects. Nevertheless, the German venture capital market has developed positively in recent years and has some advantages, such as a wide range of government grants for start-ups and the opportunity for investors to earn high returns on the initial investment. All experts that were interviewed are very confident that venture capital in Germany will continue to develop positively. They identified the reasons for this evolution in an increasing number of start-ups and better skills among the founders, which increases a start-ups' chances of success. For this reason, the experts forecast rising yield expectations, as well as an increasing number of venture capital providers, and venture capital takers. This research also indicates that the volumes of venture capital funds will rise, and the COVID-19-pandemic will accelerate the development of venture capital in Germany. The results of the research clearly show that despite some weaknesses, the German venture capital market has been on a good path for several years, and that there is a high probability that the growth will continue in the future.
This thesis proposes the adoption of renewable energies as a means to foster economicdiversification in oil and gas dependent rentier states. Surprisingly, oil and gas endowment does not always imply wealth and prosperity, mirroring the on-going debate whether natural resource dependent countries are blessed or cursed by their resource abundance.
This thesis seeks to bridge this gap by focussing on rentier states and the question whether rentier states are cursed or blessed. Based on the example of Oman, the proposed approach will be closely assessed. Additionally, the Sultanate’s challenges stemming from natural resource dependence and its preparedness for a post-oil era will be investigated.
Moreover, this thesis will analyze whether a paradigm shift in Oman’s energy sector can mitigate prevailing challenges and support the country’s economic diversification.
These three research questions will be answered through surveying and analyzing literature and data pertinent to the research topic. Findings indicate that rentier states tend to be more vulnerable to the resource curse and the impending fossil fuel depletion as it could cause public outcry and political and economic turmoil. Oman as a rentier state faces a grim post-oil era, fueled by many challenges, including dwindling oil and financial reserves, productivity losses driven by labor market distortions and rapid population growth.
Finally, findings suggest that the combination of economic and energy diversification can have strong positive effects on the Omani economy, such as freeing oil and gas reserves for export revenues, job creation, and private sector strengthening. However, Oman’s renewable energy industry is still in its infancy and faces various challenges, ranging from absent policies and adequate financing to heavily subsidized fossil fuels. As of now, the proposed approach is overly ambitious as the installed renewable energy capacity is too low to create significant employment opportunities or to free oil and gas for export purposes. However, heightened volatilities and economic shocks in recent years were eyeopening for the Omani government and have resulted in stronger efforts to enforce economic development plans. Similarly, the political transition after the death of Sultan Qaboos injected new impetus into Oman’s economy, which will facilitate the diversification of economic bases.
Vom Prozessmodell zum digital erlebbaren Prototypen – Pay-per-Use-Konzept für eine Verpackungsanlage
(2020)
Multidimensionales Service Prototyping : Service Innovationen kreieren, kommunizieren und bewerten
(2020)
EIT Based Time Constant Analysis to Determine Different Types of Patients in COVID-19 Pneumonia
(2020)
NeuroPricing für Events
(2020)
This study is aimed at valuing two companies in the IT services industry with different valuation approaches. Therefore, the preconditions for an accurate and meaningful business value as well as the procedure, strengths and limitations of these approaches are examined. Additionally, the accuracy of the results is determined through comparison of valuation estimates with their corresponding stock prices occurring within the three months following the business valuations.
Furthermore, it is examined if one valuation approach is superior in terms of accuracy. Finally, to verify the quality and explanatory power of the valuation results, they are compared with the outcomes of the study on the information content of equity analyst reports by Paul Asquith, Michael B. Mikhail and Andrea S. Au. The results of the business valuations show that within the three-month period, no price target was exactly achieved by the corresponding stock prices.
Furthermore, no valuation approach could be determined that is significantly more accurate than the others. It can be concluded that despite some limitations in the explanatory power of the valuations, the average percentage approximations of Mastercard’s and Visa’s stock prices to target prices were only slightly below those of the comparative study. In view of the fact that the research capacities and experience behind these business valuations are significantly lower than those of the top analysts in the comparative study, the results are considered consistent with the outcomes of the study on the information content of equity analyst reports.
Investigation of Long-Term Stability of Hybrid Systems-in-Foil (HySiF) for Biomedical Applications
(2020)
An analysis of the inter-rater reliability of ESG ratings within the consumer staples industry
(2020)
The aim of this study is to gain further insights into whether ESG ratings of the same firms from different rating agencies differ. To this end, this study examines and compares in particular the ratings of the providers Bloomberg, Sustainalytics and MSCI for companies in the consumer staples industry. The study comes to the conclusion that there are in some cases significant differences between these three providers in terms of the respective ESG ratings. Furthermore, a company-size bias is shown for Bloomberg and Sustainalytics ESG ratings. It appears that these agencies rate companies with a large market capitalization better than firms with a lower market value. These large discrepancies in ESG ratings of companies within the consumer staples industry and individual rating problems, such as the company-size bias, mean that today's ESG ratings tend to be not reliable and not valid. The study shows that ESG ratings will have to change a lot in the near future in order to contribute positively to the investment selection of socially responsible investors.
New developments in decentralized ledger technologies may have a huge impact on how we perceive and use money now and in the future. Most notably, it has led to the development of cryptocurrencies and a variation thereof –stablecoins. This thesis discusses the potential impact of Proof of Work based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin on the money market and the central bank’s ability to maintain control over the money supply. The IS-LM model is used to evaluate the effects of a private-issued digital currency. However, due to the characteristics of POW based cryptocurrencies, their impact on the money market is neglectable. In contrast, private-issued stablecoins of large international businesses with the potential of gaining enough users to overcome hindering network effects may pose a serious threat to the financial system, if there is no regulation on their usage.
As a response to this development and combined with the phenomenon of a declining cash usage in many countries, central banks have started to conduct research in their own digital currency, namely central bank digital currency (CBDC). Countries such as Sweden or The Bahamas have already started with the implementation of trial phases of their respective CBDC. However, design choices of the country’s digital currency differ due to financial, geographical, and cultural circumstances, among others. Nevertheless, many countries have utilized decentralized ledger technologies as the underlying technology for CBDC, showing its promising potential for further research and future developments.
Industry 4.0, a term coined at Hannover Messe in Germany in 2011, is believed to be the next disruptive force, driving human progress and innovation. The advent of technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and new Mobile Technologies, fuel this disruption. To enable Industry 4.0, mankind is dependent on technological infrastructure, provided by companies, operating in the semiconductor industry. Over the last years, these companies have increased their profits and their stocks are currently trading near all-time highs. Yet, uncertainty created by the disruption of Industry 4.0, the growing influence of China on the semiconductor market, economic insecurities created by political uncertainties, like the 2020 US Presidential election, and the risk and implications of a second global wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, make the equity valuation of leading and established companies in the semiconductor industry exceptionally challenging. This paper examines, how different equity valuation methods compare under said circumstances and shows sophisticated valuation methods must be used to limit valuation error. Further, this paper gives an estimation of the possible ranges of value and suggests the industry may currently be overvalued.
We introduce an algorithm that performs road background segmentation on video material from pedestrian perspective using machine learning methods. As there are no annotated data sets providing training data for machine learning, we develop a method that automatically extracts road respectively background blocks from the first frames of a sequence by analyzing weights based on mean gray value, mean saturation, and y coordinate of the block’s middle pixel. For each block labeled either road or background, several feature vectors are computed by considering smaller overlapping blocks within each block. Together with the x coordinate of a block’s middle pixel, mean gray value, mean saturation, and y coordinate form a block’s feature vector. All feature vectors and their labels are passed to a machine learning method. The resulting model is then applied to the remaining frames of the video sequence in order to separate road and background. In tests, the accuracy of the training data passed to the machine learning methods was 99.84 %. For the complete algorithm, we reached hit rates of 99.41 % when using a support vector machine and 99.87 % when using a neural network.
This thesis talks about the relation between investor sentiment, stock return and trading volume in the German stock market. Six Granger causality tests were performed in order to determine, whether one of the above mentioned factors is indicative of the others. The results imply that investor sentiment is indicative of both, stock return and trading volume in the specified time period. However, there is no further significant evidence for other relations among the variables. The results are mostly in line with the literature available on this topic and back up the importance of the concept of investor sentiment as investor sentiment delivers an attempt to explain why investors behave irrationally on the stock market. Hence, the factors influencing investor sentiment should be subject to further research in order to gain a broader understanding of the topic.
Real time In-Situ Quality Monitoring of Grinding Process using Microtechnology based Sensor Fusion
(2020)
Given the increasing diversity in today’s business environment and workforce, having the right skills and abilities to manage intercultural interactions become increasingly important. Universities and business schools try to equip their students with the right capabilities by sending them abroad for a study semester or internship.
Within this thesis, the multidimensional construct of Cultural Intelligence, which is defined as being effective in intercultural interactions will be introduced and how students’ international experiences are influencing it.
Using quantitative data from a self-conducted survey which includes the widely used and validated Cultural Intelligence Scale is going to demonstrate if both a study semester and an internship abroad influence Cultural Intelligence more than just one kind of international student experience. The study also tries to find out if previous international experience and Cultural Distance have a significant impact on Cultural Intelligence.
The results indicate that both kinds of international student experiences are not enhancing Cultural Intelligence more than just one type of student experience abroad. There is also no significant influence to be found from prior international experience and Cultural Distance. Although the survey results are not going to provide significant findings, internal and external factors which are enhancing this intelligence are going to be identified theoretically, as well as the positive effects of Cultural Intelligence on the business environment.
Prior research on choice in context demonstrated extremeness aversion to be very effective on consumers’ purchasing behaviour. However, it seems that previous studies have neglected to investigate the impact of the spatial arrangements of choice architectures on consumers purchasing behaviour. Based on indications of prior research, we pursued to demonstrate in this study that consumers who are uncertain regarding their
preferences tend to search for alternatives in the middle of a choice architecture. Therefore, we hypothesized that an alternative, positioned in the middle of a choice architecture, will present a relatively higher choice share. To research this hypothesis we conducted an online survey mainly in Central Europe, which involved a total number of
901 respondents at the age between 15 and 95. The study’s results demonstrate that the decision making of the majority of the participants is heavily influenced by a choice architecture’s spatial arrangement. It became evident that the choice share of one
alternative was higher when presented in the middle of a choice architecture than when presented in the periphery.
This paper proposes to consider the influence of transparency in leadership styles on work performance and satisfaction. In an experimental setting, a pair of strangers were advised to solve a Sudoku in a digital environment under time pressure. With an induced hierarchy, the leader was able to view the task and the timer, whereas only the subordinate was enabled to actively edit the riddle. The treatment group was told to transparently communicate the intended leadership style during the preparation phase. The results indicate that transparency has a significant positive effect on the performance and the satisfaction of the teams. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that transparency may not be the direct cause of improved performance and satisfaction. Yet it might be crucial in establishing trust between the leader and subordinate, causing a positive effect on the two dependent variables. The paper is concluded by discussing limitations, practical implications and considerations for future research.
What happens in a situation in which an individual is given a quality task for no compensation while knowing that someone else receives a reward for the same effort? If a performance drop occurs, does the individual's fairness sensitivity play a dependent role? These questions are approached theoretically and experimentally within this thesis. As a foundation, the most critical insights from the psychological investigation of extrinsic rewards and its impact on intrinsic motivation and performance are reviewed. Furthermore, relevant findings regarding fairness are introduced from varying fields of research. The conducted double-blind experiment suggests with limited confidence that the higher an individual's fairness sensitivity in a situation of perceived unfair treatment, the lower the performance.
Chapter 1 will focus on explaining the main ideas around which this dissertation centers and explain individual terms that are crucial to understanding the problem of sustainability in the aviation industry and mention some measures that have been taken so far to tackle it. It will go through the development of aviation as we know it today, how climate change redefined business towards sustainability and modern trends among younger generations who fight for the protection of the environment and guarantee economic sustainability in order to provide future generations with a healthy planet to live and thrive on.
Chapter 2 will dive into the intricacies of taxing carbon emissions and its effects on the economy, the European Trading Scheme and how it has affected aviation in Europe and the world, as well as explaining what compensation initiatives are and focusing on atmosfair’s program to help offset carbon emissions.
Chapter 3 will finally present a set of new measures which would allow the aviation industry to be taxed more fairly and help reduce the amount of carbon emitted by relocating passengers to other modes of transport, motivate manufacturers to increase their innovativeness and come up with more efficient alternatives to fossil fuels, all of this without harming the global network of aviation that keeps our world united.
It will not focus on the politics behind the implementation of a new carbon compensation tax, only its economic impact. The cases and theoretical examples applied in the text will be centered on short-haul flights within the European Union and European Economic Area, although the covered initiative could also be applied to medium- and long-haul flights inside and outside of the EU.
The bachelor’s thesis deals with the question of whether a treatment with neurofeedback could provide a benefit for the members of an organization during a change process.
In particular, the motives and challenges of change projects were identified. Furthermore, the methods which can be used to reduce and even prevent these problems were examined. The non-achievement of basic human needs, the associated fear, the loss of trust and stress plays a major role here. A good change management is able to address some of these issues, for example through good communication and the implementation of a change vision. The difficulty is that people may be too stuck in their views, including previous bad experiences, to be helped by current methods. It could be shown, that the training with neurofeedback achieves positive and fast lasting effects. The thesis explains how the person to be treated must be prepared and what a training might look like. Various areas in which neurofeedback has already been successfully used are briefly described and it is investigated whether there are treatments for disorders that are similar for the resistances in change processes. Expert interviews have examined these assumptions more closely and provided a practical and concrete perspective on the treatment with neurofeedback in an organizational context.
Finally, it was found that training with neurofeedback in companies is quite an interesting option. At this stage, however, there is a lack of studies that can prove the concrete benefits. Until now, neurofeedback has been applied almost exclusively to the medical field and this will probably not change in the upcoming years due to the high complexity of the procedure. Other methods, such as yoga or meditation, are on the one hand easier to carry out and the other hand already established in society. However, since positive results have already been achieved with biofeedback and people are beginning to take an interest in it, this could be a first step towards neurofeedback.
Sales promotion are commonly used tool by marketers to manipulate consumer toward a certain offer or product. Attractiveness of a promotion can increase the demand of the promoted product. Monetary and non-monetary are considers the two main types of sales promotions. Monetary sales promotion, also known as price promotion, will provide immediate price discount upon purchase, for example 50% discount. Non-monetary sales promotions or premium promotion, on the other hand, usually grant consumer an extra free product or additional service for free. Previous studies also demonstrated that different sales promotion affect consumer behavior differently. Consumers’ value perception can be influenced by several factors. For instance, marketers use specific “phrase” such as “value pack” to influence consumer price perception. Rationally, consumers’ value perception should remain unchanged regardless of the phrases use to describe the promotion with same discount value. In this study, we examine the impact two sales promotion those are “50% discount” and “buy one get one free” on value perception of Thais consumers. These two deals have equal economic value but perceived differently by consumer. We aim to answer the question “does two different deals with the same value impact value perception of the same product differently?” In order to obtain logical answer, two set of questionnaires were send out to observe the maximum price which consumer willing to pay for “instant noodles” and “soy protein powder”. Unfortunately, the result from our survey were not significant enough for us to derive a concrete conclusion. We also discuss about potential cause of the unexpected result and interpret our result for better understanding. Even without a significant finding, this paper address that different sales promotions impact consumer in various ways supported by other literatures and also self-assumption.
Python lernen in abgeschlossenen Lerneinheiten : Programmieren für Einsteiger mit vielen Beispielen
(2020)
Container environments permeate all areas of computing, such as HPC, since they are lightweight, efficient, and ease the deployment of software. However, due to the shared host kernel, their isolation is considered to be weak, so additional protection mechanisms are needed.This paper shows that neural networks can be used to do anomaly detection by observing the behavior of containers through system call data. In more detail the detection of anomalies in file and directory paths used by system calls is evaluated to show their advantages and drawbacks.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often said to increase efficiency which is why it is especially interesting to companies seeking possibilities to improve existing processes. Consequently, this thesis, written in cooperation with the Corporate Communications and Marketing / Public Affairs department at Marquardt GmbH, explores opportunities in this field by determining prerequisites that should be met when considering working with AI as well as risks that should be taken care of. In order to determine the department’s level and progress in the field of AI, the employees involved in the existing tasks and processes completed a questionnaire, resulting in the department being at the lowest level. Moreover, providers of tools within the fields of social bots, document classification, content marketing, media planning and sentiment analysis are compared with the help of utility analyses, allowing for a recommendation regarding what the next steps of the department should be. The fields were chosen premised on the emplyoees’ current tasks while information required for the analyses was obtained by contacting the providers as well as their websites. Based on findings of the thesis, the department is recommended not to follow the trend of AI immediately as the effort required would be disproportionate to the return.
In the past years, the German pension system has been experiencing severe pressure. Demographic changes and the resulting implications for the German labor market have forced various pension reforms and reduced overall pension benefits.
In recent years, researchers have developed various approaches to improve retirement schemes around the world. Apart from pension reforms, many of those approaches are based on recent findings within behavioral science – namely the nudge theory, which briefly stated holds that behavior of individuals can be influenced in a positive way without restricting freedom of choice. Within this thesis, findings and approaches have been applied to various parts of the German pension system, giving suggestions on how to overcome issues of insufficient participation and savings and unfavorable investments.
Next to the hypothetical benefit of applying nudging to the German pension system, the approaches are discussed with perspective to their controversy. In the context of cultural research, theoretical and practical approaches are assessed for applicability in Germany. Although they might provide a foundation for improvement, the approaches are critically examined regarding their acceptance and effectiveness within the German culture.
This Thesis is aimed at showing the extent to which the efficient functioning of a country’s financial system is important for the development of its economy. One of the main determinants of economic development is economic growth. The research focuses on the functions of the main actors of the financial system, and how these functions impact on the GDP which in turn impacts on economic growth.
Data from Books, Articles, and the Internet which show historical evidence of a positive correlation that exists between “the development and stability of a country’s financial system” and “the development of its economy” has been gathered to come up with an answer to this research question.
The German economy is used as a case study to establish this evidence. In the course of this research, data showing the development of the German financial markets and Banking sector from the period - pre and post 2008 financial crisis was gathered. As well, data showing the growth of its GDP through the same time span was gathered.
Following these data showing evidence of a positive correlation between the state of Germany’s Financial System and the state of its economy, it can be concluded that the efficient functioning of a country’s Financial System is to a greater extent, very important for the development of its Economy.
When scaling, startups face managerial challenges and a downfall in innovation. A growing team and the resulting increased communication and organizational complexity bring issues previously not existing. Accountability Systems can assist startups overcome the mentioned issues and maintain their essence of innovation, vital for their success.
This paper discusses the relevance and benefits of implementing formal managerial systems in a growing startup. By mapping out the interdependence of culture, innovation and growth, it is demonstrated how Accountability Systems can support the preservation of an innovative culture when scaling a startup.
In a time when innovation is often disregarded due to a focus on process efficiency, Accountability Systems can provide a valuable tool for managing transition. This thesis serves as a general evaluation of Accountability Systems and their benefits. It is important to note that this paper is not intended to serve as a directly adaptable guide for startups.
The pivotal role of the service industry in the economy is increasing over the last decades, as shown by the significant contribution to the GDP made by travel and tourism. Among the varied range of travel companies, this paper focuses on travel agencies. The objective of the thesis is to find out the key drivers, which lead to the success of European travel agencies and to point out the factors that make them unable to compete and develop sustainably. This paper uses the PESTEL model, Porter’s Five Forces model analysis, flywheel concept and spontaneously conducted interviews with travel and tourism industry experts. A case study approach is adopted. There is also the analysis of the financial statements, business model and strategies of the top 15 world-leading travel agencies to find out the market structures and competitors’ behaviors. From the collected data and examination, three primary factors that lead to the sustainable development of travel agencies and four main factors that decreed the failure were identified. Besides, the research also finds out the answer for the three research questions: technology is the disruptive forces in the travel agency industry, there will be no monopoly in this industry at least in the next medium-term, and the adaptation of a new business model is possible. Finally, the study proposed a sustainable development model for a European travel agency as well as directions for future relevant research.
In recent decades, the topic of increasing wealth and income inequalities has received growing attention in research. The focus was frequently placed on examining past developments and influencing factors, which might have produced the present distributions.
This thesis attempts to summarize the effects of past developments and tendencies on the distribution of income and wealth of households based on the findings of existing academic literature. An understanding of the underlying forces is particularly important to respond correctly and effectively to rising inequality. In addition, this thesis aims at presenting the distribution of income and wealth in the euro area with respect to similarities and differences across euro area countries. For this purpose, data provided through the Household Finance and Consumption Survey has been used. Furthermore, the observations have been compared to corresponding data on income and wealth distributions in the United States, allowing for a better assessment of the circumstances in the euro area. The Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Census Bureau published data on household wealth and income in the United States, which has been utilized in this thesis. The observed points in time are 2010 and 2014.
The conducted investigations and analyses yielded the result that relevant developments have been the process of globalization, the technological advancement, the evolution of labour markets, the growing importance of capital, the changes in governmental policies and societal developments. Furthermore, it could be shown that both income and wealth tend to be unequally distributed within and between euro area countries. In fact, wealth appeared to be much more concentrated than income. Large heterogeneity across countries was detected. Nevertheless, the degree of inequality is less severe than the one observed in the United States.