Power and Inefficient Institutions

This paper is concerned with the persistence of inefficient institutions. Why are they not replaced by more effcient ones? What and/or who prevents such change? We provide an answer to these questions based on two key ideas. The principal idea is that institutional change on an issue may adversely affect the bargaining power of some agents on different issues. The second is that certain kinds of frictions (or transaction costs) are present, which do not allow for this deteriorating bargaining power to be compensated for. A key insight obtained from our analysis is that, the greater is the degree of inequality in the players� bargaining powers the more likely it is that ineffcient institutions will persist.

Introduction

Asset management, a distinctive sector within the financial services industry, centers on an agency relationship between a client and an individual manager or firm appointed to manage the client\u27s investment portfolio. Additionally, in many jurisdictions asset managers are subject to a technically complex set of regulatory requirements, which differ across jurisdictions. This book is the only comparative analysis of the law of asset manager liability in the major European jurisdictions, the United States, and Canada, with chapters written by specialists from the relevant jurisdictions plus a comprehensive chapter covering the relevant European law, in particular the MiFID directive. The book\u27s coverage is limited to relationships that pertain to individual portfolios of securities, as opposed to collective investment schemes such as mutual funds and UCITs. A central focus is how regulation interacts with civil liability, whether based on breaches of duties imposed by general law (such as breach of fiduciary duty and duties of care) or on breaches of duties imposed by regulation itself. The Introduction, co-authored by the book\u27s co-editors, situates the country-by-country materials within the broader context of questions about regulatory design and effectiveness. These include whether regulation and liability should be understood as substitutes for each other or as necessary complements; differences in the style of regulation; the role of industry-based self-regulation; and the impact of mandated disclosure of information by asset managers

High frequency oscillations as a correlate of visual perception

“NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International journal of psychophysiology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in International journal of psychophysiology , 79, 1, (2011) DOI 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.07.004Peer reviewedPostprin

Time-Temperature Superposition of Structural Relaxation in a Viscous Metallic Liquid

Bulk metallic glass-forming Pd40Ni10Cu30P20 has been investigated in its equilibrium liquid by quasielastic neutron scattering. The quasielastic signal exhibits a structural relaxation as known from nonmetallic viscous liquids. Even well above the melting point, the structural relaxation is nonexponential and obeys a universal time-temperature superposition. From the mean relaxation times average diffusivities have been determined, resulting in values on a 10^-10 m^2 s^-1 scale, 3 orders of magnitude slower than in simple metallic liquids

Coexistence of qubit effects

Two quantum events, represented by positive operators (effects), are coexistent if they can occur as possible outcomes in a single measurement scheme. Equivalently, the corresponding effects are coexistent if and only if they are contained in the ranges of a single (joint) observable. Here we give several equivalent characterizations of coexistent pairs of qubit effects. We also establish the equivalence between our results and those obtained independently by other authors. Our approach makes explicit use of the Minkowski space geometry inherent in the four-dimensional real vector space of selfadjoint operators in a two-dimensional complex Hilbert space

The phase of ongoing EEG oscillations predicts visual perception

Oscillations are ubiquitous in electrical recordings of brain activity. While the amplitude of ongoing oscillatory activity is known to correlate with various aspects of perception, the influence of oscillatory phase on perception remains unknown. In particular, since phase varies on a much faster timescale than the more sluggish amplitude fluctuations, phase effects could reveal the fine-grained neural mechanisms underlying perception. We presented brief flashes of light at the individual luminance threshold while EEG was recorded. Although the stimulus on each trial was identical, subjects detected approximately half of the flashes (hits) and entirely missed the other half (misses). Phase distributions across trials were compared between hits and misses. We found that shortly before stimulus onset, each of the two distributions exhibited significant phase concentration, but at different phase angles. This effect was strongest in the theta and alpha frequency bands. In this time–frequency range, oscillatory phase accounted for at least 16% of variability in detection performance and allowed the prediction of performance on the single-trial level. This finding indicates that the visual detection threshold fluctuates over time along with the phase of ongoing EEG activity. The results support the notion that ongoing oscillations shape our perception, possibly by providing a temporal reference frame for neural codes that rely on precise spike timing

Time Scales for Viscous Flow, Atomic Transport, and Crystallization in the Liquid and Supercooled Liquid States of Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10.0Be22.5

The shear viscosity of liquid Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10.0Be22.5 has been measured. At the liquidus temperature we find an extremely high viscosity of 2.5 Pa s, favoring glass formation. At deep supercooling the time scales for the diffusion of small and medium sized atoms as reported in the literature decouple from the internal relaxation time as probed by our viscosity measurements. Similarly, crystallization from the supercooled liquid state can be described with an effective diffusivity that scales with the viscosity at high temperatures and is Arrhenius-like at deep supercooling

Pairing of a harmonically trapped fermionic Tonks-Girardeau gas

The fermionic Tonks-Girardeau (FTG) gas is a one-dimensional spin-polarized Fermi gas with infinitely strong attractive zero-range odd-wave interactions, arising from a confinement-induced resonance reachable via a three-dimensional p-wave Feshbach resonance. We investigate the off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO) of the FTG gas subjected to a longitudinal harmonic confinement by analyzing the two-particle reduced density matrix for which we derive a closed-form expression. Using a variational approach and numerical diagonalization we find that the largest eigenvalue of the two-body density matrix is of order N/2, where N is the total particle number, and hence a partial ODLRO is present for a FTG gas in the trap.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revtex

The attitude control of a satellite in an elliptic orbit

Attitude control system for satellite in elliptical orbit calculated by linear equations and computer simulatio