Learning with Latent Language

The named concepts and compositional operators present in natural language provide a rich source of information about the kinds of abstractions humans use to navigate the world. Can this linguistic background knowledge improve the generality and efficiency of learned classifiers and control policies? This paper aims to show that using the space of natural language strings as a parameter space is an effective way to capture natural task structure. In a pretraining phase, we learn a language interpretation model that transforms inputs (e.g. images) into outputs (e.g. labels) given natural language descriptions. To learn a new concept (e.g. a classifier), we search directly in the space of descriptions to minimize the interpreter's loss on training examples. Crucially, our models do not require language data to learn these concepts: language is used only in pretraining to impose structure on subsequent learning. Results on image classification, text editing, and reinforcement learning show that, in all settings, models with a linguistic parameterization outperform those without

Agents and Brokers as Intermediaries: Their Regulation in Germany

Most markets are characterized by imperfections, mostly market power and limited information. Under these circumstances, intermediaries like real estate agents and insurance brokers play an important role in the economy by facilitating exchange between third parties. As specialized entities they can transmit information, thereby lessening information asymmetries between market participants and can thus enhance the functioning of markets. This special role allows for opportunistic behavior by intermediaries, though. As long as the parties can write enforceable contracts that cover the relevant aspects of the intermediaries behavior, legal regulation is not necessary. In this paper it will be shown, though, that contracts are only partially able to solve possible principalagent problems and that the current legal rules in Germany are inefficient as they can not sufficiently control possible opportunistic behavior. A system of legal rules for intermediaries is sketched, taking into account that severe informa-tional asymmetry is more likely to arise if transactions are infrequent and learning does not take place.

The impact of split incentives on energy efficiency technology investments in maritime transport

This paper presents the first analysis of how the split incentive market failure affects the implementation of energy efficiency technologies in the maritime transport sector. In maritime transport, split incentives occur due to the different types of charter (resulting in the divided responsibility for fuel costs) existing between shipowners and charterers. The paper uses a robust and rigorous framework of methods to operationalise the split incentive concept in a cross-sectional survey of 275 shipowners, representing around 25% (6000 ships) of the target population, resulting in the most comprehensive data on the implementation of energy efficiency technologies in shipping. The findings show, contrary to that postulated in the literature, that firms that have majority of their ships on time charter (i.e. those that don't directly observe the energy price signal but may potentially receive an energy efficiency premium) have a higher implementation of energy efficiency technologies compared to firms that operate ships on the spot charter (i.e. directly observe the price signal). To some extent the findings could be due to the effect that other confounding variables may have on the implementation of measures and the extent to which the shipping market is correcting or overcoming the split incentive efficiency problem

Maintenance Required: Charter Schooling in Michigan

Michigan's charter sector has tremendous potential, but achieving that potential requires significant improvements

The Contractual Pillar of Maritime Decarbonisation: A study on the challenges and potential of improving energy efficiency in shipping through contractual means

Climate change has grown into an increasingly important concern for the shipping industry, but the contractual infrastructure of bulk shipping has not fully evolved to reflect this. As a result, this thesis examines the challenges and potential of improving energy efficiency in shipping through contractual means. In particular, we focus on how charterparties could be adapted to both encourage and enable more efficient ship operations, while also recognising that stakeholders such as shipowners, charterers and cargo owners often have conflicting interests. Furthermore, we also examine the key challenges in revising chartering contracts both generally and specific to different efficiency-oriented contractual solutions. Properly aligning charterparties and all stakeholders’ interests with operational efficiency is important since chartering contracts serve as the underlying framework of international shipping. We combine a literature-based analysis with interviews of key stakeholders in the shipping value chain to not only synthesise previous research results, but also explore how industry experts currently perceive the promise and limits of efficiency-oriented contractual changes. Firstly, we expand the literature by examining the common barriers to revising chartering contracts. Secondly, we review the current status of just-in-time arrivals, particularly when requiring contractual changes, and analyse how policy interventions such as carbon pricing and the upcoming CII regime could also contribute to tackling operational inefficiencies through contractual means. Finally, we evaluate more recent efficiency-linked contractual innovations and assess the challenges they are facing or might face in the future. Our findings suggest that policy interventions are necessary to incentivise more efficient ship operations, but their effectiveness depends heavily on stakeholders’ willingness to adapt contractual structures and fixture behaviour accordingly. As the status quo is maintained by stakeholders’ vested interests, external stimuli are generally required to motivate widespread contractual changes. Furthermore, although charterers and cargo owners play a crucial role for revising charterparties, they have varying responsiveness to price signals and interest in proactively reducing their shipping emissions, which creates some difficulties for improving energy efficiency through contractual means.nhhma

Understanding The IS Experience Cycle: A Model Of ERP Implementation

This paper focuses on the experience cycle of information systems in organisations (Markus, Tanis, 2000). This area of research has dramatically increased since the 1970s (Lucas, 1978), but still fails to present a unified approach (DeVaujany, Fomin, 2001). Although the current literature on IS implementation offers substantial results regarding various steps of the experience cycle; there is still a significant gap to fill regarding the understanding of the process as a whole. This paper contributes to the IS field, by considering the IS experience cycle, as a process composed by three phases (chartering, project and diffusion), which cannot be understood in isolation from each other. As an illustration, this paper uses a system dynamics model to understand the implementation and more specifically focuses on the case of Enterprise Resource Planning. The paper applies a coupled pair of simple differential equations to simulate a real organisation and successfully fits the model to the observed data. The model is able to predict the implementation time under various conditions and shows the necessity of not analysing the project and diffusion phases independently from each other