215,821 research outputs found
How Federalism Protects Future Generations from Today's Public Debts
From the politico-economic perspective, federalism is a protector of the present generation. But what about future generations? In federal states, Ricardian equivalence cannot be assumed to work properly, as migration between local jurisdictions undermines intergenerational redistribution based on parental altruism. However, we argue that there exists another equivalence mechanism which also works with purely selfish individuals: Public debts capitalize into property values. Jurisdictions with larger net debts exhibit, ceteris paribus, lower property prices. Debt capitalization in property values is the more pronounced the less elastic land supply is and the more mobile the other factors of production are. Therefore, capitalization is more relevant for local than for national debts, i.e. it is more pronounced in a federal than in a centralized state. Thus, federalism also becomes a protector of future generation
A practice-based framework for defining functional units in comparative life cycle assessments of materials
In comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of materials, there is a mismatch between the current practice and existing guidelines regarding functional unit definition. The purpose of this study is to develop a practice-based framework for defining functional units in comparative LCAs of materials and provide guidance regarding in which situations different functional unit types are relevant. A literature review of comparative LCAs of materials identified three types of functional units: (i) the reference flow functional unit, (ii) the property functional unit, and (iii) the performance functional unit. These functional unit types, of which only the latter strictly complies with LCA guidelines, represent varying degrees of functional equivalence and technological maturity. The most relevant functional unit type depends on the goal of the study. We suggest that screening assessments of whether materials have comparable environmental impacts can apply reference flow functional units. Material comparisons for certain application areas with some important properties can apply property functional units. For comparisons of end products, performance functional units can be applied. However, even in such cases, complete functional equivalence can hardly be achieved due to more or less relevant product differences. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated for the case of comparing cemented carbide and polycrystalline diamond hard materials
Lepton Flavorful Fifth Force and Depth-dependent Neutrino Matter Interactions
We consider a fifth force to be an interaction that couples to matter with a
strength that grows with the number of atoms. In addition to competing with the
strength of gravity a fifth force can give rise to violations of the
equivalence principle. Current long range constraints on the strength and range
of fifth forces are very impressive. Amongst possible fifth forces are those
that couple to lepton flavorful charges or . They
have the property that their range and strength are also constrained by
neutrino interactions with matter. In this brief note we review the existing
constraints on the allowed parameter space in gauged . We find two regions where neutrino oscillation experiments are at
the frontier of probing such a new force. In particular, there is an allowed
range of parameter space where neutrino matter interactions relevant for long
baseline oscillation experiments depend on the depth of the neutrino beam below
the surface of the earth.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Finite free convolutions via Weingarten calculus
We consider the three finite free convolutions for polynomials studied in a
recent paper by Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava. Each can be described either
by direct explicit formulae or in terms of operations on randomly rotated
matrices. We present an alternate approach to the equivalence between these
descriptions, based on combinatorial Weingarten methods for integration over
the unitary and orthogonal groups. A key aspect of our approach is to identify
a certain \emph{quadrature property}, which is satisfied by some important
series of subgroups of the unitary groups (including the groups of unitary,
orthogonal, and signed permutation matrices), and which yields the desired
convolution formulae.Comment: Major revision: includes unitary and hyperoctahedral versions of the
convolution formulae, via a "quadrature property" which yields the relevant
quadrature result
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