Liability Rules for the Digital Age

With legislative proposals for two directives published in September 2022, the European Commission aims to adapt the existing liability system to the challenges posed by digitalisation. One of the proposals is related and limited to liability for artificial intelligent (AI) systems, but the other contains nothing less than a full revision of the 1985 Product Liability Directive, which lies at the heart of European tort law. Whereas the current Product Liability Directive largely followed the model of US law, the revised version breaks new ground. It does not limit itself to the expansion of the concept of product to include intangible digital goods, such as software and data as well as related services, important enough in itself, but also targets the new intermediaries of e-commerce as liable parties. As such, the proposal for a new product liability directive is a great leap forward and has the potential to grow into a worldwide benchmark in the field. In comparison, the proposal of a directive on AI liability is much harder to assess. It remains questionable whether a second directive is actually needed at this stage of the technological development.Peer Reviewe

Mandatory Contract Law: Functions and Principles in Light of the Proposal for a Directive on Consumer Rights

Starting from the theoretical underpinnings of contract law, mandatory rules should be the exception. In the reality of current European legislation, mandatory law is not the exception but the rule. The obvious explanation is that the EU has focussed on consumer law, i.e. on the regulation of transactions between a business and a consumer. In a B-to-C relationship, the consumer is perceived as the weaker party which requires protection against the more powerful business. The following article tries to dismantle the assumptions that consumers are weak and that the ‘weakness’ of consumers forms the normative basis for the body of Directives we now have before us. The Draft Proposal of a Directive on Consumer Rights is used as an object for analyses from the perspectives of comparative law and economic reasoning. The argument is that, while there are important areas where mandatory law is justified, the card of mandatory law has been overplayed in important respects. In particular, the petrification of the law of sales that began with the Directive on Consumer Sales and Guarantees seems to be unjustified. Within a system that allows for court control over standard contract terms, the need for mandatory law is negligible. Where court control over standard terms is perceived not to be sufficient, ‘options’ should be used instead of mandatory law. While options preserve party autonomy, they do limit freedom of choice to a set of immutable alternatives. And in doing so, they reconcile party autonomy with legal certainty

Schadensersatz bei Kartelldelikten

Mit der VO 1/2003 hat die Kommission einen Paradigmenwechsel im Europäischen Wettbewerbsrecht vollzogen. Seit 1962 lag die Durchsetzung der gemeinschaftsrechtlichen Wettbewerbsregeln vor allem in den Händen der Kommission selbst. Nach der Ersten DurchführungsVO zu den heutigen Art. 81, 82 EG hatte die Kommission insbesondere ein Entscheidungsmonopol über die Ausnahmebestimmungen des Art. 81 Abs. 3 EG. Die VO 1/2003 löst dieses System des behördlichen Vollzugs des Kartellrechts ab und setzt ein Modell an seine Stelle, das vor allem auf private enforcement" setzt. Im Kern liegt darin ein Umschwenken von einer administrativ gesteuerten ex-ante Kontrolle zu einer durch die Privatinitiative angetriebenen ex-post Kontrolle aufgrund entsprechender Individualklagen.

Peers or parents? On non-monetary incentives in schools

This paper presents the result of a field experiment on the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives on pupils' achievement on a mathematical multiple choice test. Our sample consists of 2113 pupils of deprived and high-achieving secondary schools in Germany. Based on a pre-study, we compare the effectiveness of (i) a medal (ii) a letter of praise to the parents and (iii) a delegation of choice over incentives. The effect of non-monetary incentives depends on pupils' socio-economic background. While they constitute a potentially cost-effective and easily implementable method of motivation in Non-High Schools, predetermined non-monetary incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation for pupils in High Schools. In contrast, the endogenous choice of the reward increases pupils' willingness to prepare for the test and mitigates the negative effect of predetermined external rewards in High Schools. Additionally, in the delegation treatment, we find that low-achieving pupils typically choose a reward with a higher signaling value to their parents, independent of the school type

Umbau der Finanzierung der Arbeitslosenversicherung

Die Finanzierung der Arbeitsmarktpolitik ist unter den Bedingungen hoher Arbeitslosigkeit und dem damit verbundenen hohen Mittelbedarf immer wieder Gegenstand politischer Auseinandersetzungen und Anlass für Diskussionen über die Reformierung der Sozialversicherungssysteme. In der vorliegenden Publikation wird die Finanzierung der Arbeitsmarktpolitik in drei Ländern mit jeweils unterschiedlichen Finanzierungssystemen - Frankreich, Dänemark und Schweden - untersucht, um anhand der Erfahrungen in diesen Ländern Anregungen und Erkenntnisse für die auch in Deutschland geführte Reformdiskussion zu gewinnen. Beim Vergleich der Ergebnisse interessierte vor allem, ob und wie es in den einzelnen Ländern gelingt, die Mittel für die Arbeitsmarktpolitik aktiv zur Erreichung bestimmter arbeitsmarktpolitischer Ziele einzusetzen und welche Rolle dabei die Art der Finanzierung der Aufgaben spielt. Einige Länder verfügen bereits über solche Strukturen bzw. Instrumente, die in der deutschen Reformdebatte als beispielhaft charakterisiert werden.The financing of the labour market policy gives ground for political debates and discussions on the reformation of the social security systems, this being due to high unemployment and the related large means required. The available publication looks into the financing of labour market policy in three countries, each having a different financing system - France, Denmark and Sweden. On the basis of the experience made in these countries, one hopes to gain ideas and knowledge for the reform discussion being held in Germany. When comparing the results, it is interesting to see if and how it is possible to ascertain the means for the labour market policy, to actively reach and implement certain labour market political goals and which role the type of financing of these tasks plays in each country. Some countries already dispose of such structures, i.e. instruments which are exemplary characterised in the German reform debate

Optimization of van der Waals Energy for Protein Side-Chain Placement and Design

AbstractComputational determination of optimal side-chain conformations in protein structures has been a long-standing and challenging problem. Solving this problem is important for many applications including homology modeling, protein docking, and for placing small molecule ligands on protein-binding sites. Programs available as of this writing are very fast and reasonably accurate, as measured by deviations of side-chain dihedral angles; however, often due to multiple atomic clashes, they produce structures with high positive energies. This is problematic in applications where the energy values are important, for example when placing small molecules in docking applications; the relatively small binding energy of the small molecule is drowned by the large energy due to atomic clashes that hampers finding the lowest energy state of the docked ligand. To address this we have developed an algorithm for generating a set of side-chain conformations that is dense enough that at least one of its members would have a root mean-square deviation of no more than R Å from any possible side-chain conformation of the amino acid. We call such a set a side-chain cover set of order R for the amino acid. The size of the set is constrained by the energy of the interaction of the side chain to the backbone atoms. Then, side-chain cover sets are used to optimize the conformation of the side chains given the coordinates of the backbone of a protein. The method we use is based on a variety of dead-end elimination methods and the recently discovered dynamic programming algorithm for this problem. This was implemented in a computer program called Octopus where we use side-chain cover sets with very small values for R, such as 0.1 Å, which ensures that for each amino-acid side chain the set contains a conformation with a root mean-square deviation of, at most, R from the optimal conformation. The side-chain dihedral-angle accuracy of the program is comparable to other implementations; however, it has the important advantage that the structures produced by the program have negative energies that are very close to the energies of the crystal structure for all tested proteins

Hiking Trip Selection Based On Reachability By Public Transport

Smart cities should enable the citizens to utilize available ressources. One of the goals is the reduction of individual motorized traffic. However, many citizens still use cars to get to the location of an ourtdoor activity. As a concrete example we use hiking trips and identify those that can be reached by public transport. The result is a map (and a corresponding GIS data set) showing the hiking locations for a single day hiking trip. The concept can be used for various other applications although there are still open questions, e.g., what part of the answer can be precomputed and what should be determined on demand