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According to the German penal code, offenders can basically be sanctioned to a prison sentence or (in cases of misdemeanours) to a fine. If an offender is sentenced to a fine, but is not able or willing to make the payment, then the German state can administer a custodial sentence as a replacement. This is called an “Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe” (EFS). The proportion of EFS prisoners accounts for 10% of the German prison population and thus appears to be strikingly high considering the consequences of an imprisonment for the detainee. It has been considered that this is due to high levels of mental disorders in the population of EFS prisoners. This article thus aims at delineating the prevalence of mental disorders in EFS prisoners according to socio‐demographic data and ICD‐10 diagnoses of two recent German studies. Results of these studies indicate that EFS prisoners indeed are for the most part socially and economically deprived and show a high prevalence of mental disorders. It is argued that their resulting lack of social competence may lead to incapability of avoiding their fee being converted into a prison sentence. As a consequence EFSs have to be seen as supporting social stigmatization and risking a further exclusion from society.

Wealth Management Products (WMPs) are the largest and most crucial component of China's Shadow banking, which are off the balance sheet and considered as a substitute for deposits. Commercial banks in China are involved in the issuance of WMPs mainly to; evade the regulatory restrictions, move non-performing loans away from the balance sheet, chase the profits and take advantage of yield spread (the difference between WMPs yield and deposit rate).

In this study, the authors investigate what bank related characteristics and needs; influenced and prompted the issuance of WMPs. By using a quarterly panel data from 2010 to 2019, this study performed the fixed effects approach favored by the Hausman specification test, and a feasible generalized least square (FGLS) estimation method is employed to deal with any issues of heteroscedasticity and auto-correlation.

This study found that there is a positive and significant association between the non-performing loan ratio and the issuance of WMPs. Moreover, profitability and spread were found to play an essential role in the issuance of WMPs. The findings of this study suggest that WMPs are issued for multi-purpose, and off the balance sheet status of these products makes them very lucrative for regulated Chinese commercial banks.

Non-guaranteed WMPs are considered as an item of shadow banking in China, as banks do not consolidate this type of WMPs into their balance sheet; due to that reason, there is no individual bank data available for the amount of WMPs. The authors use the number of WMPs issued by banks as a proxy for the bank's exposure to the WMPs business.

From a regulatory perspective, this study helps regulators to understand the risk associated with the issuance of WMPs; by providing empirical evidence that Chinese banks issue WMPs to hide the actual risk of non-performing loans, and this practice could mislead the regulators to evaluate the bank credit risk and loan quality. This study also identifies that Chinese banks issue WMPs for multi-purpose; this can help potential investors to understand the dynamics of WMPs issuance.

This research is innovative in its orientation because it is designed to investigate the less explored wealth management products (WMPs) issued by Chinese banks. This study's content includes not only innovation but also contributes to the existing literature on the shadow banking sector in terms of regulatory arbitrage. Moreover, the inclusion of FGLS estimation models, ten years of quarterly data, and the top 30 Chinese banks (covers 70% of the total Chinese commercial banking system's assets) make this research more comprehensive and significant.

Real estate and stocks are two major asset types in an investor’s portfolio. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between these two markets to provide a valuable insight into the process of portfolio optimization and security selection.

This study examines the long-run relationship between residential real estate prices and stock market index in the case of Germany for the period of 2005-2017 by applying time series econometrics techniques. To this aim, this study uses Hedonic House Price Index as a proxy for real estate prices and DAX30 as a proxy for stock prices. Moreover, three additional variables, namely, consumer confidence, credit availability and supply of mortgage loans, are incorporated as control variables to assess the robustness of the results.

Obtained empirical results indicate a long-run relationship between stock prices and real estate prices which suggests that in long-run, there is no diversification benefit from allocating stock and real estate assets in a portfolio. This finding is especially important for long-term investors such as pension funds.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study that empirically investigates the relationship between the real estate market and stock prices using the Hedonic Price Index for the case of Germany.

Decision-making is one of the key technologies for self-driving cars. The high dependency of previously existing methods on human driving data or rules makes it difficult to model policies for different driving situations.

In this research, a probabilistic decision-making method based on the Markov decision process (MDP) is proposed to deduce the optimal maneuver automatically in a two-lane highway scenario without using any human data. The decision-making issues in a traffic environment are formulated as the MDP by defining basic elements including states, actions and basic models. Transition and reward models are defined by using a complete prediction model of the surrounding cars. An optimal policy was deduced using a dynamic programing method and evaluated under a two-dimensional simulation environment.

Results show that, at the given scenario, the self-driving car maintained safety and efficiency with the proposed policy.

This paper presents a framework used to derive a driving policy for self-driving cars without relying on any human driving data or rules modeled by hand.

This paper aimed at investigating the relationship between organizational climate for initiative, job autonomy, climate for innovation and innovative work behavior (IWB) in a developing economy context.

The study surveyed 444 manufacturing businesses in Morocco, collecting data from three sources: CEOs, middle managers and non-managerial employees in the production department. The data were analyzed using structural equation modelling, the Bayesian estimation approach and the bootstrapped moderated mediation technique.

This study revealed that middle managers’ job autonomy mediates the positive link between climate for initiative and middle managers’ IWB when climate for innovation is strong.

This study provides practical information for organizations intending to make their middle managers willing to be innovative in their job by granting them job autonomy and building favorable climates for initiative and innovation.

This research expands the human resource management and innovation literature by examining features of the work context (i.e. climates for initiative and for innovation, and job autonomy) as previous research has mainly focused on the context approach to work design (i.e. social environment of work design). The study highlights the role of middle managers as essential contributors to fostering innovations within their firms.

Although the percentage of female entrepreneurs has increased over the past several years, it is far below the level of males. Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour and role congruity theory, the purpose of this paper is to specify a model in which the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intention (EI) is mediated by three essential motivational constructs (i.e. attitude toward starting a business, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (PBC)).

The study specifies and tests a meta‐analytical structural equation model. The study aggregates the results of 30 studies (n=52,367).

The study reveals a higher average EI for men compared to women. However, although significant, the gender differences in EI and the motivational constructs were small and cannot sufficiently explain the substantial differences in actually starting a business. Furthermore, moderator analyses show differences in the gender‐EI relationship between Europe and the US and between students and non‐students.

Differences between men and women seem to be a consequence of differences in turning intentions into implementation. Researchers are called upon to investigate gender differences in hindrances as a potential explanation for different implementations and when and why women give up their entrepreneurial plans. Moreover, future research should investigate further motivational processes beyond those suggested by the theory of planned behavior.

The study analyses the relationship between gender and EI and the results show a weak relationship which indicates that the higher number of male entrepreneurs cannot solely be explained by differences in motivation.

In the context of demographic and economic changes, helping mature age job seekers find employment is imperative. The purpose of this paper is to examine mature age job seekers’ proactive personality as a moderator of the relationship between age and job search intensity; and to examine job search self-efficacy as a mediator of this moderation effect. It was hypothesized that the generally negative relationships between age and job search self-efficacy and intensity are weaker among job seekers with a more proactive personality.

In total, 188 job seekers between 40 and 64 years completed an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Consistent with previous research, age was negatively related to job search intensity. Proactive personality was positively related to job search intensity and moderated the relationship between age and job search intensity. Extending previous research, proactive personality also positively predicted job search self-efficacy and moderated the relationship between age and job search self-efficacy which, in turn, positively predicted job search intensity.

Potential limitations of the study include the cross-sectional design, sample selectivity, and the omission of possibly important control variables.

Practitioners, organizations, and societies concerned with helping mature age job seekers find employment could provide additional support to those with a less proactive personality and low job search self-efficacy.

This study extends previous research by showing that mature age job seekers’ job search self-efficacy mediates the moderating effect of proactive personality on the relationship between age and job search intensity.

This new paper aims to extend the authors’ previous contributions about open-loop aircraft flutter test to closed-loop aircraft flutter test by virtue of the proposed direct data–driven strategy. After feeding back the output signal to the input and introducing one feedback controller in the adding feedback loop, two parts, i.e. unknown aircraft flutter model and unknown feedback controller, exist in this closed-loop aircraft flutter system, simultaneously, whose input and output are all corrupted with external noise. Because of the relations between aircraft flutter model parameters and the unknown aircraft model, direct data–driven identification is proposed to identify that aircraft flutter model, then some identification algorithms and their statistical analysis are given through the authors’ own derivations. As the feedback controller can suppress the aircraft flutter or guarantee the flutter response converge to one desired constant value, the direct data–driven control is applied to design that feedback controller only through the observed data sequence directly. Numerical simulation results have demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed direct data–driven strategy. Generally, during our new information age, direct data–driven strategy is widely applied around our living life.

First, consider one more complex closed loop stochastic aircraft flutter model, whose input–output are all corrupted with external noise. Second, for the identification problem of closed-loop aircraft flutter model parameters, new identification algorithm and some considerations are given to the corresponding direct data–driven identification. Third, to design that feedback controller, existing in that closed-loop aircraft flutter model, direct data–driven control is proposed to design the feedback controller, which suppresses the flutter response actively.

A novel direct data–driven strategy is proposed to achieve the dual missions, i.e. identification and control for closed-loop aircraft flutter test. First, direct data–driven identification is applied to identify that unknown aircraft flutter model being related with aircraft flutter model parameters identification. Second, direct data–driven control is proposed to design that feedback controller.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this new paper extends the authors’ previous contributions about open-loop aircraft flutter test to closed-loop aircraft flutter test by virtue of the proposed direct data–driven strategy. Consider the identification problem of aircraft flutter model parameters within the presented closed loop environment, direct data–driven identification algorithm is proposed to achieve the identification goal. Direct data–driven control is proposed to design the feedback controller, i.e. only using the observed data to design the feedback controller.

The purpose of this paper extends the authors’ previous contributions on aircraft system identification, such as open loop identification or closed loop identification, to cascade system identification. Because the cascade system is one special network system, existing in lots of practical engineers, more unknown systems are needed to identify simultaneously within the statistical environment with the probabilistic noises. Consider this problem of cascade system identification, prediction error method is proposed to identify three unknown systems, which are parameterized by three unknown parameter vectors. Then the cascade system identification is transferred as one parameter identification problem, being solved by the online subgradient descent algorithm. Furthermore, the nonparametric estimation is proposed to consider the general case without any parameterized process. To make up the identification mission, model validation process is given to show the asymptotic interval of the identified parameter. Finally, simulation example confirms the proposed theoretical results.

Firstly, aircraft system identification is reviewed through the understanding about system identification and advances in control theory, then cascade system identification is introduced to be one special network system. Secondly, for the problem of cascade system identification, prediction error method and online subgradient decent algorithm are combined together to identify the cascade system with the parameterized systems. Thirdly from the point of more general completeness, another way is proposed to identify the nonparametric estimation, then model validation process is added to complete the whole identification mission.

This cascade system corresponds to one network system, existing in lots of practice, such as aircraft, ship and robot, so it is necessary to identify this cascade system, paving a way for latter network system identification. Parametric and nonparametric estimations are all studied within the statistical environment. Then research on bounded noise is an ongoing work.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, research on aircraft system identification only concern on open loop and closed loop system identification, no any identification results about network system identification. This paper considers cascade system identification, being one special case on network system identification, so this paper paves a basic way for latter more advanced system identification and control theory.

Over the last decade, international accounting harmonization and convergence and the increasing adoption of IFRS as national standards have become dominant topics in international accounting research (Alp & Ustundag, 2009; Ashbaugh & Pincus, 2001; Cairns, Massoudi, Taplin, & Tarca, 2011; Christensen et al., 2007; Daske, 2006; Daske & Gebhardt, 2006; Daske et al., 2008; Ding et al., 2007; Gastón, García, Jarne, & Laínez Gadea, 2010; Haverals, 2007; Hellmann, Perera, & Patel, 2010; Lantto & Sahlström, 2008; Othman & Zeghal, 2006; Peng & van der Laan Smith, 2010; Schleicher, Tahoun, & Walker, 2010; Tyrrall et al., 2007). In this move toward convergence, the politics associated with IAS setting by the IASB has become an important and controversial topic in international accounting research. Although previous studies have aimed to examine political issues and stakeholder's perception toward the standard-setting process of the IASB (Alali & Cao, 2010; Chiapello & Medjad, 2009; de Lange & Howieson, 2006), no study has critically examined the complexity of factors influencing attitudes and public opinion toward this standard-setting process. Given that attitudes are likely to guide behavior and lead stakeholders to either advance the work of the IASB or create obstacles, it is timely and relevant to analyze attitudes toward this issue. A recent study has provided evidence that stakeholders’ acceptance of IFRS and preparers’ overall perception of IFRS may influence compliance and the quality of financial reports (Navarro-García & Bastida, 2010). As such, it is the objective of this chapter to provide insights into determinants of attitudes toward the IASB's standard setting and critically examine the influence of power structures and perceived legitimacy on individual attitudes and public opinion.¹ Specifically, this study examines German attitudes toward the promotion of professional judgment by the IASB since the adoption of IFRS in the EU in 2005.