University of Mannheim

About: University of Mannheim is a education organization based out in Mannheim, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & European union. The organization has 4448 authors who have published 12918 publications receiving 446557 citations. The organization is also known as: Uni Mannheim & UMA.

Media Makes Momentum

Abstract: Relying on 2.2 million articles from forty-five national and local U.S. newspapers between 1989 and 2010, we find that firms particularly covered by the media exhibit, ceteris paribus, significantly stronger momentum. The effect depends on article tone, reverses in the long run, is more pronounced for stocks with high uncertainty, and is stronger in states with high investor individualism. Our findings suggest that media coverage can exacerbate investor biases, leading return predictability to be strongest for firms in the spotlight of public attention. These results collectively lend credibility to an overreaction-based explanation for the momentum effect.

The Effect of Central Exit Examinations on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Timss Germany

Abstract: This paper makes use of the regional variation in schooling legislation within the German secondary education system to estimate the causal effect of central exit examinations on student performance. We propose a difference-in-differences framework that exploits the quasi-experimental nature of the German TIMSS middle-school sample. The estimates show that students in federal states with central exit examinations clearly outperform students in other federal states, but that only part of the difference can be attributed to central exit examinations. Our results suggest that central examinations increase student achievement by about one third school year equivalent.

MinIE: Minimizing Facts in Open Information Extraction

Abstract: The goal of Open Information Extraction (OIE) is to extract surface relations and their arguments from natural-language text in an unsupervised, domain-independent manner. In this paper, we propose MinIE, an OIE system that aims to provide useful, compact extractions with high precision and recall. MinIE approaches these goals by (1) representing information about polarity, modality, attribution, and quantities with semantic annotations instead of in the actual extraction, and (2) identifying and removing parts that are considered overly specific. We conducted an experimental study with several real-world datasets and found that MinIE achieves competitive or higher precision and recall than most prior systems, while at the same time producing shorter, semantically enriched extractions.

Optimal "Soft" or "Tough" Bankruptcy Procedures

Abstract: This article describes optimal bankruptcy laws in a framework with asymmetric information. The key idea is that the financial distress of a firm is not observed by its lenders for quite a while. As early rescues are much cheaper than late rescues, it may pay if the creditors are forgiving in bankruptcy, thereby inducing the revelation of difficulties as early as possible. Either “tough” or “soft” bankruptcy laws can be optimal, depending on the parameters. This implies that mandatory one-size-fits-all bankruptcy procedures cannot be optimal. “Hybrid” procedures, which try to combine elements of soft and tough procedures, are found to be redundant, and possibly harmful. Absolute priority rules may be helpful as a part of tough procedures, but their introduction is (partly) inconsistent with the design of soft procedures. The article also reinterprets much of the evidence on the performance of Chapter 11, the “rather soft” U.S. reorganization procedure, questioning many negative conclusions.

Prospect Theory, Mental Accounting, and Differences in Aggregated and Segregated Evaluation of Lottery Portfolios

Abstract: If individuals have to evaluate a sequence of lotteries, their judgment is influenced by the presentation mode. Experimental studies have found significantly higher acceptance rates for a sequence of lotteries if the overall distribution was displayed instead of the set of lotteries itself. Mental accounting and loss aversion provide an easy and intuitive explanation for this phenomenon. In this paper we offer an explanation that incorporates further evaluation concepts of Prospect Theory. Our formal analysis of the difference in aggregated and segregated portfolio evaluation demonstrates that the higher attractiveness of the aggregated presentation mode is not a general phenomenon (as suggested in the literature) but depends on specific parameters of the lotteries. The theoretical findings are supported by an experimental study. In contrast to the existing evidence and in line with our theoretical results, we find for specific types of lotteries an even lower acceptance rate if the overall distribution is displayed.