A Continuity Theorem for Stinespring's Dilation

We show a continuity theorem for Stinespring's dilation: two completely positive maps between arbitrary C*-algebras are close in cb-norm iff we can find corresponding dilations that are close in operator norm. The proof establishes the equivalence of the cb-norm distance and the Bures distance for completely positive maps. We briefly discuss applications to quantum information theory.Comment: 18 pages, no figure

Managing pharmaceutical regulation in Germany: Overview and economic assessment

Rising costs in pharmaceutical expenditure have become a major concern for policy makers in Germany over the last years. Therefore the pharmaceutical market in Germany has been increasingly targeted by different kinds of regulations, focussing both on the supply and the demand side, using price, volume and spending controls. Specific regulations include price reductions, reference pricing, pharmacy rebate for sickness funds, increasing co-payments, an aut-idem substitution, parallel imports, negative list, guidelines, and finally spending caps for pharmaceutical expenditure per physicians association. Although it is difficult to attribute certain effects to single measures, some measures like reference pricing and physician spending caps are more effective and long-lasting than others. Although highly disputed among physicians, the spending caps applied between 1993 and 2001 have limited pharmaceutical expenditure for an entire decade. However, while some measures do effectively control expenditures, their effect on allocative efficiency may be negative. -- Steigende Ausgaben für Arzneimittel stellen zunehmend ein Problem für Entscheidungsträger in Politik und Selbstverwaltung dar. Daher war der Arzneimittelmarkt in den letzten Jahren Ziel verschiedener Regulierungsformen, die sowohl auf der Angebotsseite als auch auf der Nachfrageseite ansetzen und sowohl Instrumente zur Preis, Mengen als auch Ausgabenregulierung nutzen. Sie umfassen dabei insbesondere Preisrabatte, Festbeträge, Zuzahlungen, Aut-idem substitution, Parallelimporte, Negativlisten, Leitlinien and Arzneimittelbudgets. Obwohl es schwierig ist, bestimmte Wirkungen monokausal auf einzelne Maßnahmen zu zurückzuführen, kann festgestellt werden, dass Arzneimittelbudgets und Festpreise nachhaltiger und effektiver als andere Regulierungsformen sind. Obwohl Arzneimittelbudgets bei niedergelassenen Ärzten sehr umstritten sind, waren sie hauptverantwortlich für die Begrenzung der Arzneimittelausgaben zwischen 1993 und 2001. Daneben existieren einige Regulierungsformen die zwar die Arzneimittel-ausgaben wirksam senken, deren allokative Effizienz jedoch insgesamt eher negativ ist.

Autobranche im Nachhaltigkeitsstau?

Nach der ersten Umweltbewertung der Automobilindustrie vom Januar 1999 hat die oekom research AG nun ein Corporate Responsibility Rating der Branche vorgelegt. Dabei wurde die Untersuchung um eine Bewertung der Sozial- und Kulturverträglichkeit erweitert. Die Ergebnisse sind kein Ruhmesblatt

Hebelwirkung für die Umwelt

Die ökologische Unternehmensbewertung hat sich als Informationsinstrument für interessierte Investoren etabliert. Selbst Großanleger entdecken Umweltinformationen als Entscheidungskriterium. Bei der Beschaffung der Informationen steht das Öko-Rating allerdings immer noch vor bürokratischen Hürden

Examining trade-offs between social, psychological, and energy potential of urban form

Urban planners are often challenged with the task of developing design solutions which must meet multiple, and often contradictory, criteria. In this paper, we investigated the trade-offs between social, psychological, and energy potential of the fundamental elements of urban form: the street network and the building massing. Since formal methods to evaluate urban form from the psychological and social point of view are not readily available, we developed a methodological framework to quantify these criteria as the first contribution in this paper. To evaluate the psychological potential, we conducted a three-tiered empirical study starting from real world environments and then abstracting them to virtual environments. In each context, the implicit (physiological) response and explicit (subjective) response of pedestrians were measured. To quantify the social potential, we developed a street network centrality-based measure of social accessibility. For the energy potential, we created an energy model to analyze the impact of pure geometric form on the energy demand of the building stock. The second contribution of this work is a method to identify distinct clusters of urban form and, for each, explore the trade-offs between the select design criteria. We applied this method to two case studies identifying nine types of urban form and their respective potential trade-offs, which are directly applicable for the assessment of strategic decisions regarding urban form during the early planning stages