Financial crises and information transfer: An empirical analysis of the lead-lag relationship between equity and CDS iTraxx Indices

This study examines the lead-lag-relationship between European equity and CDS markets in the context of the financial crisis. Previous research identified the stock market to lead the CDS market in an ordinary economic environment. Against the background of our study this lead-lag-relationship strengthens when moving from the non-crisis- to the crisisscenario on a daily as well as on a weekly basis. Hence, we conclude that information transfer from stock to CDS markets widens during the financial crisis. In addition and in contrast to the literature we find an extraordinary day-of-the-week-effect on weekly returns as an anomaly for information processing. --Granger-causality, iTraxx Indices, Credit Default Swaps, Day-of-the-Week-Effect, Feedback System

Regulation via the Polluter-Pays Principle

We consider the problem of regulating an economy with environmental pollution. We examine the distributional impact of the polluter-pays principle which requires that any agent compensates all other agents for the damages caused by his or her (pollution) emissions. With constant marginal damages we show that regulation via the polluter-pays principle leads to the unique welfare distribution that induces non-negative individual welfare change and renders each agent responsible for his or her pollution impact. We extend both the polluter-pays principle and this result to increasing marginal damages due to pollution. We also compare the polluter-pays principle with the Vickrey-Clark-Groves scheme

Estimating and Explaining the Prevalence of Tuberculosis for Asylum Seekers Upon Their Arrival in Germany

Up until recently incidences of tuberculosis (TB) had been declining for many years in Germany. The rise in TB cases coincided with a large increase in the number of people applying for asylum. We combine data from various sources to estimate the at-entry prevalence of TB for asylum seekers from 18 countries of origin and rely on survey data to explain the varying risk of suffering from TB. Our results reveal that asylum seekers from Eastern Africa show a much higher risk of suffering from TB than asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq. The survey data suggests that asylum seekers from Africa were by far more underprivileged in their respective countries of origin and experienced a higher risk of contracting TB on their way to Germany. Information about the socio-economic situation and the circumstances of the journey to Germany may help to improve TB surveillance

High magnitude and rapid incision from river capture: Rhine River, Switzerland

Landscape evolution is controlled by the development and organization of drainage basins. As a landscape evolves, drainage reorganization events can occur via river capture or piracy, whereby one river basin grows at the expense of another. The river downstream of a capture location will generate a transient topographic response as the added water discharge increases sediment transport and erosion efficiency. This erosional response will propagate upstream through both the captured and original river basins. Here we focus on quantifying the impact of drainage reorganization along the Rhine/Aare River system (~45,000 km 2 ) during the late Pliocene/early Pleistocene, where gravel remnants indicate total incision of ~650 m during the last ~4.2 Myr in the region of the recent Aare‐Rhine confluence. We develop a numerical model of drainage capture to quantify the range of possible magnitudes of erosion and the transient river response resulting from the reorganization of the Rhine River. The model accounts for both fluvial incision and sediment transport. Our model estimates 400–800 m of river elevation change (lowering profiles) during the last ~4 Myr due to river capture events, providing an important component to the recent exhumation budget of the Swiss Alpine Foreland. The model indicates a rapid response to capture events (re‐equilibration timescale of ~1 Myr). The predicted incision magnitudes are consistent with incision measured from the elevation of Pliocene and early Pleistocene river gravels, suggesting that across northern Switzerland, a significant amount of incision can be explained by drainage reorganization. Key Points Drainage capture has caused significant erosion along the Rhine River The transient erosional wave propagates quickly through the landscape The incision is a significant fraction of Plio‐Pleistocene erosion in the regionPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99064/1/jgrf20056.pd

On Key Parameters for the Attractiveness of On-Demand Inter-City Air Mobility

In this paper, we present a globally applicable approach for estimating the potential passenger demand for On- Demand Inter-City Air Mobility based on three different use cases. All of these cases are concerned with pas- sengers who nowadays travel with conventional airlines, and might choose On-Demand Air Mobility (ODAM) as an alternative mode of travel in future. First, we consider the possibility to complement direct connections on low-demand inter-city routes. Second, we analyse the possibility of replacing multi-stop connections, where the origin and destination airports are within a certain range. Third, we take a look at feeder flights from small or regional airports to bigger hubs and vice versa. The approach is then used for estimating the impact of five parameters on the ODAM market size. These are namely air taxi speed, air taxi range, the set of usable airports, a time offset which is added to the flight time of every trip and the availability of alternate airports. We conduct this investigation for four regions: China, Europe, India, and the US and analyse the differences between the various parameters over the different use cases in these regions. The results show that the potential market size differs widely between regions, use cases and parameters. The largest potential market overall can be identified in Europe with approximately 6.7 million PAX and about 582 Million USD revenue per year. For all regions, in total, complementing direct flights attracts most people to use ODAM as an alternative way of transportation. Considering that the value proposition of ODAM is the reduction of travel time, both technical and operational parameters of air taxis show a high impact on the potential market size. Compared to cars, their advantage lies in the higher speed, whereas the absence of schedule delay is the main advantage compared to conventional air travel

Thermo-Elastic Topology Optimization For High Temperatures Gradients Using Load Separation

Designing components for thermo-mechanical loads is a challenging process. While mechanical loads like forces or pressure demand a stiff and thick-walled design, thermal loads create temperature gradients, resulting in thermo-mechanical stress from the structure's temperature proportional and, therefore, uneven expansion. In contrast to a pure mechanical load case, an initial design before optimization can already include stress levels beyond the limit of the material. Therefore, common optimization approaches for a preliminary design use exemplary systems with low-temperature gradients, so thermal stresses do not exceed the limit. From there, energy density is used to calculate the topology optimizations sensitivity and therefore decide which elements to remove and which to keep. This paper describes a novel approach for reducing thermo-mechanical stress by following the stress corresponding temperature gradients from the heat source to the sink to calculate a new sensitivity that helps to grow cooling channels. The optimization is exemplarily shown on a piston for internal combustion engines. While handling delta temperatures of 600K, results show a reduction in thermo-mechanical stress while reducing the component's mass. Because the approach reduces critical stress in a component, it allows the initial design (before the topology optimization) to have stress levels way above yield strength