Wintersemester 2022/23

26.10.2022Lisa Spantig, RWTH Aachen
 

Cooperation and the Signaling Value of Incentives: An Experiment in a Company (joint work with Marvin Deversi)

Economists and management scholars have argued that the scope of incentives to increase cooperation in organizations is limited as their use signals the prevalence of free-riding among employees. This paper tests this hypothesis experimentally, using a sample of managers and employees from a large company with a cooperative culture. We exogenously vary whether managers are informed about prevailing cooperation levels among employees before they can set incentives to promote cooperation. Comparing informed versus uninformed incentive choices, the data reveals strong positive effects of incentives that are unaffected by the hypothesized signaling effect. The absence of such an effect seems related to the perception of managers' intentions, a mitigating factor that has not been explored in the literature so far.

02.11.2022Florian Herold, Uni Bamberg
 

Second-best Probability Weighting  (joint work with Nick Netzer)

Non-linear probability weighting is an integral part of descriptive theories of choice under risk such as prospect theory. But why do these objective errors in information processing exist? Should we try to help individuals overcome their mistake of overweighting small and underweighting large probabilities? In this paper, we argue that probability weighting can be seen as a compensation for preexisting biases in evaluating payoffs. In particular, inverse S-shaped probability weighting is a flipside of S-shaped payoff valuation.Probability distortions may thus have survived as a second-best solution to a fitness maximization problem, and it can be counter-productive to correct them while keeping the value function unchanged.

14.12.2022Matthias Hunold, Uni Siegen
 t.b.a.
21.12.2022Sven Müller, RWTH Aachen
 

Revenue Maximizing Tariff Zone Planning for Public Transport Companies

This paper presents a new approach to design a counting zones tariff system applicable for urban public transport service providers. The proposed approach is oriented to a counting zones tariff system that maximizes the expected revenue (or demand) for a given price system. We assume (i) that the price per zone stems from a discrete set of values, (ii) the number of public transport trips depend on the price system, and (iii) public transport passengers always choose the time-shortest path. Our approach enables to account for specific spatial patterns of the resulting zones, like rings or stripes, for example. We also propose an approximation of the original problem that grows only linear in the number of public transport stops. In extensive numerical studies with artificial test instances, we evaluate for different network structures and public transportation demand. Finally, we also present a large case study of the San Francisco Bay Area.

11.01.2023Matthias Soppert, Universität Bw München
 

On the Benefit of Combining Car Rental and Car Sharing (joint work with Ralph Angeles, Beatriz Brito Oliveira, Claudius Steinhardt)

Increasing fleet utilization is one of the main drivers to improve the operational performance in car rental as well as in car sharing. This is why, most recently, traditional car rental companies have begun to additionally offer car sharing products, and vice versa. Both products, i.e., long-term rentals of the car rental product and short-term rentals of the car sharing product, address different customer segments with different demand patterns and price sensitivities. However, both products use the same resource, namely the same vehicle fleet. We study the tactical problem of a combined car rental car sharing operator to maximize profits by means of availability control and temporal price differentiation. By considering several practice-relevant cases with regard to the specific set-up of the combined system, we aim at deriving managerial insights that allow classical car rental and classical car sharing providers to predict implications of additionally offering the respective other product.

18.01.2023Florian Hoffmann, KU Leuven
 

Worker Runs (with V. Vladimirov)

The voluntary departure of hard-to-replace skilled workers worsens firm prospects, thus, increasing remaining workers' incentives to leave. We develop a model of collective turnover in which firms design compensation to limit the risk of such "worker runs." To achieve cost-efficient retention, firms use dilutable pay -- such as stock option/bonus pools - that promises remaining workers more when others leave but gets diluted otherwise. The optimal type of dilutable pay depends on firms' risk exposure and their resource constraints. Firms can further improve overall retention by compensating identical workers differently, not only offering different pay levels but also different compensation structure.

01.02.2023Andrzej Baranski, NYU Abu Dhabi
 cancelled