Lauder Business School

ABSTRACT Nonverbal communication represents a driving force behind successful selling. Drawing on the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model, this research investigates the impact of salespeople's nonverbal expressiveness (manifested through dynamic facial, bodily, and vocal cues) and customer responses in a selling context. Innovative techniques for dynamic and holistic measurement of nonverbal signals are employed in a sales context, including facial recognition software, body action and posture coding, and voice analysis. A program analyzer traces customers' real‐time responses during exposure to videotaped sales presentations. Findings from large‐scale experimental studies are reported. Study 1 manipulates nonverbal expressiveness (IV: dynamic vs. restrained) and shows that expressive presentations lead to more favorable customer evaluations (DVs). Positive facial expressions—such as happiness—and direct head orientation significantly improve customer responses. Moreover, in line with findings in negotiation contexts, this study shows that under certain conditions, subtle displays of negative emotions—such as anger—can elicit positive responses in personal selling contexts. Study 2 manipulates product type (IV: hedonic vs. utilitarian) and finds that nonverbal expressiveness is more influential for hedonic offerings. This research provides novel insights into the complex dynamics of nonverbal communication and offers managerial guidance on effectively managing such behaviors in sales interactions.

In most DSP applications, FIR filters are used as they provide unconditional stability and linear phase characteristics. However, FIR filters require relatively higher numbers of taps in comparison with IIR filters and this may affect the performances in terms of most of the metrics. Developing FIR filter architectures with simultaneous Improvement in throughput and energy efficiency, while minimizing power, area, and latency is always a challenge due to the trade-off between performance metrics. To this end, three variants of high-performance FIR filters are presented. Three levels of modifications including retiming, fine-grain pipelining, and the use of efficient Booth multipliers and adders are incorporated to achieve overall improvement in performances. The CPD, ELT, power, area, PDP, and ADP of the proposed filter FRFIR-5 are reduced by 25.15%, 44.83%, 49%, 65.64%, 57.11%, and 65.52% respectively in comparison with fully flexible retimed filter and by 57.57%, 55.56%, 11.27%, 11.98%, 57.69%, and 49.92% respectively in comparison with retimed filter using modified square root adders and radix-4 modified Booth multipliers. Cadence software with gpdk 45 nm standard cell library is used for the design and implementation.

In the context of the proposed socalled Retail Investment Strategy (RIS) of the European Commission a (partial) commission ban can be found in the case of providing independent financial advice regarding insurance and other financial products by insurance intermediaries. Since regulatory considerations in the past two decades have brought forward the concept of a commission ban on a regular basis, the present contribution intends to examine the theoretical underpinnings of such a commission ban and its likely impact on the Austrian insurance intermediaries.

Dieser Beitrag thematisiert die ökonomische Macht von Unternehmen in Österreich und stellt die Frage, ob diese – wie auch in anderen OECD-Ländern – zugenommen hat. Auf Basis unterschiedlicher Methoden, Indikatoren und Daten werden empirische Schätzungen zu Markups diskutiert und damit die Grundlage für eine aktuelle Einschätzung der Entwicklung der Marktmacht österreichischer Unternehmen im internationalen Vergleich geschaffen. Die Evidenz über Markups wird durch weitere Indikatoren, wie Konzentrationsraten, Unternehmensdynamik oder Profitabilität ergänzt. Zusammengenommen lässt sich – mit entsprechender Vorsicht – schlussfolgern, dass die Macht von Unternehmen in Österreich in der jüngsten Vergangenheit gestiegen ist. Die Markups österreichischer Unternehmen sind nicht nur vergleichsweise hoch, sondern zeigen auch einen positiven Trend. Insbesondere die ebenfalls zunehmenden Profitindikatoren zeigen, dass die höheren Markups nicht nur wegen steigender Fixkosten zugenommen haben. Die Einbettung der heimischen Entwicklungen in die internationale Diskussion über Unternehmensmacht zeigt nicht nur viele Parallelen zu einigen anderen europäischen Ländern sowie den USA, sondern beweist auch die Notwendigkeit einer Debatte für Österreich.

In “Real-Time Spatial–Intertemporal Pricing and Relocation in a Ride-Hailing Network: Near-Optimal Policies and The Value of Dynamic Pricing,” Chen, Lei, and Jasin consider a dynamic pricing problem faced by a ride-hailing service provider who manages a fixed number of servers and serves price-sensitive customers within a network. Servers serve arriving customers by relocating from the requested origins to destinations within a certain travel time. The authors first propose a static pricing policy based on the optimal solution to a deterministic relaxation of the original stochastic problem. They show that the proposed static policy matches the best possible asymptotic performance of any static policy. The authors further propose a dynamic pricing policy that adaptively changes the prices in a way that reduces the impact of past demand randomness on the balance of future distributions of servers and customers across the network. They show that the dynamic pricing policy achieves significantly better asymptotical performance. The proposed policies and their performance guarantees are further extended to a case where the firm jointly decides the relocation of vacant servers

que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement.

After lengthy preparatory works, the European Commission issued on 25 November 2021 a proposal to amend the AIFM Directive as well as the UCITS Directive which can be considered the starting signal for the first comprehensive review of the AIFM framework, labelled as “AIFMD II”. One key topic of the proposal are suggested amendments regarding the depositaries which will be reflected in the present contribution by expanding on some thoughts regarding its functionality and possible realignment.

Background: There is a class I indication for surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in symptomatic patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS). However, indications for early SAVR in asymptomatic patients with severe AS and normal left ventricular function remain debated. Method: The Avatar trial is an investigator-initiated international prospective randomized controlled event-driven trial that evaluated the safety and efficacy of early SAVR in the treatment of asymptomatic patients with severe AS according to common criteria (valve area 1 cm 2 with aortic jet velocity >4 m/s or a mean transaortic gradient 40 mm Hg) and normal LV function (EF >50%). Negative exercise testing was mandatory for inclusion. The primary hypothesis was that early SAVR will reduce a primary composite endpoint comprising all-cause death, acute myocardial infarction, stroke or unplanned hospitalization for heart failure, as compared to conservative strategy following guidelines. The trial was designed as event-driven to reach at least 35 prespecified events. The study has been performed in 9 centers in 7 European countries. Results: Between June 2015 and September 2020, 157 patients (mean age 67 years, 57% men) were randomly allocated to early surgery (n=78) or conservative treatment (n=79). Data collection, including follow-up was completed in May 2021. The overall median follow-up was 32 months: 28 months in early surgery group and 35 months in the conservative treatment group with a total of 39 events. In the early surgery group, 72 patients (92.3%) underwent SAVR. In an intention-to-treat analysis, patients randomized to conservative strategy had significantly higher incidence of primary composite endpoint (26 vs. 13 in early surgery group, HR 0.46, 95% CI 0.23-0.90, p=0.02). Freedom from HF or all-cause death was also significantly lower in conservative treatment group as compared to the early surgery group (HR 0.40, 95% CI 0.19-0.84, p=0.013). Conclusion: In asymptomatic patients with severe AS, early SAVR reduced a primary composite of all-cause death, acute myocardial infarction, stroke or unplanned hospitalization for heart failure as compared to conservative treatment. This advocates for early aortic valve replacement once AS becomes severe regardless of symptoms.

Block chain is a distributed ledger that offers secure and immutable storage. E–governance allows exchange of information between government and citizens or organizations through latest information and communication technologies. The E governance services facilitate efficient and fast access of services; on the other hand it raises potential risks of breaching into privacy and Security. Blockchain based e-governance system offers secure and transparent services without intermediary. This paper investigates the scope and challenges of adopting blockchain technology as a platform for E-Governance.