Tort Reform, Disputes and Belief Formation

We experimentally study the effects of the split-award tort reform, where the state takes a share of the plaintiff's punitive damage award, on litigants' beliefs and bargaining outcomes. In addition, we study the formation of litigants' beliefs in a strategic environment. Our results provide support for coherence-based reasoning theories: coherence shifts in litigants' background beliefs (elicited before a role is assigned and after commitment to a choice at the pretrial bargaining stage) suggest bi-directionality between choices and beliefs. Our findings also suggest role-specific bias in the updating of plaintiffs' beliefs about firm's negligence. Finally, our findings indicate that split-awards affect plaintiffs' beliefs about fairness and lower out-of-court settlement amounts.Tort Reform; Belief Formation; Split-Award Statute; Coherence-Based-Reasoning; Role-Specific Bias; Self-Serving Bias; Motivated Reasoning; Settlement; Litigation; Experiments; Debiasing through Law

Policy Advice Derived from Simulation Models

When advising policy we face the fundamental problem that economic processes are uncertain. Consequently, policy can err. In this paper we show how the use of simulation models can reduce policy errors by inferring empirically reliable and meaningful statements about economic processes. We suggest that policy is best based on so-called abductive simulation models, which help to better understand how policy measures can influence economic processes. We show that abductive simulation models use a combination of theoretical and empirical analysis based on different data sets. By way of example we show what policy can learn with the help of abductive simulation models, namely how policy measures can influence the emergence of a regional cluster.Policy Advice, Simulation Models, Uncertainty, Methodology

BUDGETARY CONSOLIDATIONS IN EU-12

This article treats on the behaviour of fiscal autorities of the twelve new state members of the EU during the post-adhesion period. We analyze the factors which determined the fiscal consolidations of the new member states, identifying two groups of stastability pact, budgetary deficit, excessive deficit procedure

Global Climate Protection: Immediate Action Will Avert High Costs

The anthropogenic climate change will persist if the global volume of greenhousegas emissions will not be reduced significantly. A dangerous and irreversibleclimate change will occur if atmospheric concentrations of greenhousegases in the year 2100 exceed 450 ppm and global surface temperatureis 2 °C higher than its preindustrial level. The consequence of exceedingthese limits would be both more frequent and more violent extreme climateevents. In order to avoid this, it is necessary to stabilize global greenhousegas concentrations at nearly today's level.Significant emission reduction would require the countries that are primarilyresponsible immediately implementing emissions-reducing measures.If climate policy measures are not introduced, global climate changedamages amounting to up to 20 trillion US dollars can be expected in theyear 2100.1 If such measures are not implemented now, but only in 20 or30 years' time, it will not be possible to prevent the rise in global surfacetemperature exceeding the 2 °C limit. Moreover, the costs of a climate protectionpolicy launched today are likely to be lower than a policy initiatedonly in 20 years' time, which would then be based on drastic measures. Thesooner a policy of climate protection is implemented, the fewer climatechange damages humankind will face in future decades. The costs of anactive climate protection policy implemented today would reach globallyaround 430 billion US dollars in 2050 and around 3 trillion US dollars in2100. A climate protection policy that entered into force only in 2025 wouldimply additional costs of up to 50 billion US dollars in 2050 and 340 billionUS dollars in 2100. Global climate damages of up to 12 trillion US dollarscan be avoided in 2100 if active climate protection policy is implemented asrapidly as possible.In Germany, a climate protection policy that immediately implementseffective measures would cost 5.7 billion US dollars in 2050 and 40 billionUS dollars in 2100. At the same time, however, climate change damagesamounting to 33 billion US dollars in 2050 and 160 billion US dollars in 2100would be avoided.

MapReduce for information retrieval evaluation: "Let's quickly test this on 12 TB of data"

We propose to use MapReduce to quickly test new retrieval approaches on a cluster of machines by sequentially scanning all documents. We present a small case study in which we use a cluster of 15 low cost machines to search a web crawl of 0.5 billion pages showing that sequential scanning is a viable approach to running large-scale information retrieval experiments with little effort. The code is available to other researchers at: http://mirex.sourceforge.net

Theories of Leptonic Flavor

I discuss different theories of leptonic flavor and their capability of describing the features of the lepton sector, namely charged lepton masses, neutrino masses, lepton mixing angles and leptonic (low and high energy) CP phases. In particular, I show examples of theories with an abelian flavor symmetry G_f, with a non-abelian G_f as well as theories with non-abelian G_f and CP.Comment: Talk presented at NuPhys2016 (London, 12-14 December 2016), 1+8 pages, LaTeX, 1 table, 8 figure

Enhanced Strength and Ductility in Magnesium Matrix Composites Reinforced by a High Volume Fraction of Nano- and Submicron-Sized SiC Particles Produced by Mechanical Milling and Hot Extrusion

In the present study, Mg nanocomposites with a high volume fraction (10 vol %) of SiC particles were fabricated by two approaches: mechanical milling and mixing, followed by the powder consolidation steps, including isostatic cold pressing, sintering, and extrusion. A uniform distribution of the high content SiC particles in a fully dense Mg matrix with ultrafine microstructure was successfully achieved in the mechanically milled composites. The effect of nano- and submicron-sized SiC particles on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the nanocomposites was evaluated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) were used to characterize microstructures of the milled and mixed composites. Mechanical behavior of the Mg composites was studied under nanoindentation and compressive loading to understand the effects the microstructural modification on the strength and ductility of the Mg/SiC composites. The mechanical properties of the composites showed a significant difference regarding the size and distribution of SiC particles in the Mg matrix. The enhanced strength and superior ductility achieved in the mechanically milled Mg composites are mainly ascribed to the effective load transfer between matrix and SiC particles, grain refinement of the matrix, and strengthening effects of the nano- and submicron-sized SiC particles.DFG, 414044773, Open Access Publizieren 2019 - 2020 / Technische Universität Berli