Determinants of expected vs. actual match outcome: an examination of the German Bundesliga

Within society, there are many publications regarding expectations of firm performance. These include analysis, industry insiders and ranking service. Within sports, bookmakers provide betting odds that reflect the expected outcome of matches and are determined by several factors. The purpose of this study is to analyse the determinants of expected match outcome (i.e. betting odds) and compare them to those of actual match outcome. Data from the 2010/2011 season of the German Bundesliga (soccer) are made available that are combined with betting odds for each match. Regression results show that several factors, such as difference in standing between team and opponent, difference in competitions played, difference in points earned over the last five matches, differences in standing last season and home advantage significantly influence expected match outcome. On the contrary, actual match outcome is only determined by the latter two factors.     

The Online Market for Illegal Copies of Magazines: A German Case Study

A few years ago, publishing companies started to sell digital copies of their magazines. This study investigates a consequence of this change: the increasing online trade with illegal copies. We collected data on almost 10,000 issues of German magazines that are illegally offered online. The files are distributed in a three-sided market, in which a small number of platforms bring suppliers of illegal copies, consumers, and advertisers together. The market has been growing rapidly—between 2009 and 2012 by a factor of 10. In contrast to the legal magazine market, the illegal trade mostly concerns IT and consumer electronics magazines.     

The role of metacognitive competences in the development of school achievement among gifted adolescents

Gifted underachievers perform worse in school than would be expected based on their high intelligence. Possible causes for underachievement are low motivational dispositions (need for cognition) and metacognitive competences. This study tested the interplay of these variables longitudinally with gifted and non-gifted students from Germany (N = 341, 137 females) in Grades 6 (M = 12.02 years at t1) and 8 (M = 14.07 years). Declarative and procedural metacognitive competences were assessed in the domain of reading comprehension. Path analyses showed incremental effects of procedural metacognition over and above intelligence on the development of school achievement in gifted students (β = .139). Moreover, declarative metacognition and need for cognition interactively predicted procedural metacognition (β = .169), which mediated their effect on school achievement.     

User community vs. producer innovation development efficiency: A first empirical study

In this paper we report upon a first empirical exploration of the relative efficiency of innovation development by product users vs. product producers. In a study of over 50 years of product innovation in the whitewater kayaking field, we find users in aggregate were approximately 3× more efficient at developing important kayaking product innovations than were producers in aggregate. We speculate that this result is driven by what we term “efficiencies of scope” in problem-solving. These can favor an aggregation of many user innovators, each spending a little, over fewer producer innovators benefitting from higher economies of scale in product development. We also note that the present study explores only one initial point on what is likely to be a complex efficiency landscape.     

Changes in the prevalence of child sexual abuse, its risk factors, and their associations as a function of age cohort in a Finnish population sample

Objective

We examined (1) the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) experiences as a function of cohort and gender, (2) the prevalence of factors associated with CSA as a function of cohort and whether the association of these factors with CSA remained the same irrespective of cohort, and (3) whether any cohort differences could be explainable by cohort differences in reporting bias.

Method

We used the responses of 4,561 men (M = 29, SD = 7 years) and 8,361 female (M = 29, SD = 7 years) Finnish participants who responded to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form as well as questions regarding family structure.

Results

The prevalence of CSA experiences varied between 0.7-4.6% for men and 1.8-7.5% for women depending on the item. Younger cohorts reported less CSA as well as less of the risk factors (physical neglect and abuse, emotional neglect and abuse, parental substances abuse, not growing up with both biological parents) that were positively associated with the likelihood of CSA. The effects of these risk factors did not vary as a function of the cohort. Also, the declining trend was not explainable by social desirability being higher in the younger cohorts.

Conclusions

The results suggest that there is a real decline in the prevalence of CSA and it is associated with a simultaneous decline in factors associated with CSA.     

Populist Twitter Posts in News Stories

Research in information processing suggests that the journalistic practice of embedding right-wing populist Twitter posts in news may stimulate political polarization. To test this notion, we conducted an online experiment (N?=?379). We investigated how highlighted right-wing populist statements affected individuals from different ideological stances and whether potential effects were determined by Twitter-specific characteristics (Twitter frame, profile picture). We exposed participants to two articles, each including a statement by a politician of the Austrian Freedom Party. In the first group, the statements were not highlighted (control group). In the second and third group, the statements appeared as conventional block quotes either without (G2) or with (G3) a picture of the politician. In the fourth and fifth group, the statements were highlighted as Twitter posts, again either without (G4) or with (G5) a picture of the politician. Results revealed that all highlighting conditions increased statement recognition among left-wing individuals. However, the full Twitter post condition exerted the strongest effect. Higher recognition then decreased left-wing individuals’ anti-immigrant attitudes and sympathy toward the right-wing populist candidate. Thus, embedding right-wing populists’ Twitter posts may induce disconfirmation bias among left-wing voters and trigger a process in which they strengthen their initial attitudes.     

Users as service innovators: The case of banking services

Many services can be self-provided. An individual user or a user firm can, for example, choose to do its own accounting - choose to self-provide that service - instead of hiring an accounting firm to provide it. Since users can ‘serve themselves’ in many cases, it is reasonable to suspect that they can also innovate with respect to the services they self-provide - possibly without the assistance of service providers.In this paper, we conduct the first quantitative exploration of the importance of services innovation by users, focusing on the field of commercial and retail banking services. We find that 55% of today's computerized commercial banking services were first developed and implemented by non-bank firms for their own use, and 44% of today's computerized retail banking services were first developed and implemented by individual service users rather than by commercial financial service providers. Manual precursors to these services - manual procedures that carried out functions similar to computerized services in our sample - were almost always developed by users as self-services.Our empirical findings differ significantly from prevalent producer-centered views of service development. We speculate that the patterns we have observed in banking with respect to the major role of users in service development will prove to be quite general. If so, this will be an important matter: on the order of 75% of GDP in advanced economies today is derived from services. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in service development.