Financial Development and Sectoral Output: Growth in 19th Century Germany

In this paper we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the development of the financial sector was an essential factor behind economic growth in 19th century Germany. We apply a structural VAR framework to a new annual data set from 1870 to 1912 that was initially recorded by Walther Hoffmann (1965). With respect to the literature, the distinguishing characteristic of our analysis is the focus on different sectors in the economy and the interpretation of the findings in the context of a two-sector growth model. We find that all sectors were affected significantly by shocks from the banking system. Interestingly, this link is the strongest in sectors with small, non-tradable goods producing firms, such as services, transportation and agriculture. In this regard, the growth patterns in 19th century Germany are reminiscent to those in today's emerging markets. --Economic Growth,Financial Development,Sectoral asymmetries

Financial Development and Sectoral Output Growth in 19th Century Germany

In this paper we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the development of the financial sector was an essential factor behind economic growth in 19th century Germany. We apply a structural VAR framework to a new annual data set from 1870 to 1912 that was initially recorded by Walther Hoffmann (1965). With respect to the literature, the distinguishing characteristic of our analysis is the focus on different sectors in the economy and the interpretation of the findings in the context of a two-sector growth model. We find that all sectors were affected significantly by shocks from the banking system. Interestingly, this link is the strongest in sectors with small, non-tradable goods producing firms, such as services, transportation and agriculture. In this regard, the growth patterns in 19th century Germany are reminiscent to those in today's emerging markets.economic growth, financial development, sectoral asymmetries

Financial Development and Sectoral Output Growth in 19th Century Germany

In this paper we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the development of the financial sector was an essential factor behind economic growth in 19th century Germany. We apply a structural VAR framework to a new annual data set from 1870 to 1912 that was initially recorded by Walther Hoffmann (1965). With respect to the literature, the distinguishing characteristic of our analysis is the focus on different sectors in the economy and the interpretation of the findings in the context of a two-sector growth model. We find that all sectors were affected significantly by shocks from the banking system. Interestingly, this link is the strongest in sectors with small, non-tradable goods producing firms, such as services, transportation and agriculture. In this regard, the growth patterns in 19th century Germany are reminiscent to those in today\'s emerging markets.Economic Growth, Financial Development, Sectoral asymmetries

Neural Networks for Predicting Algorithm Runtime Distributions

Many state-of-the-art algorithms for solving hard combinatorial problems in artificial intelligence (AI) include elements of stochasticity that lead to high variations in runtime, even for a fixed problem instance. Knowledge about the resulting runtime distributions (RTDs) of algorithms on given problem instances can be exploited in various meta-algorithmic procedures, such as algorithm selection, portfolios, and randomized restarts. Previous work has shown that machine learning can be used to individually predict mean, median and variance of RTDs. To establish a new state-of-the-art in predicting RTDs, we demonstrate that the parameters of an RTD should be learned jointly and that neural networks can do this well by directly optimizing the likelihood of an RTD given runtime observations. In an empirical study involving five algorithms for SAT solving and AI planning, we show that neural networks predict the true RTDs of unseen instances better than previous methods, and can even do so when only few runtime observations are available per training instance

[Tagungsbericht zu:] Ordnungen des Sehens / Systems of Perception (Frankfurt am Main, 30.09. - 02.10.2011)

Tagungsübersicht im Auftrag der Veranstalter: Ordnungen des Sehens. Innovationsfelder der kunsthistorischen Niederlandeforschung. Internationale Konferenz des Arbeitskreises Niederländische Kunst- & Kulturgeschichte e.V. (ANKK) in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kunsthistorischen Institut der Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main und dem Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 30.09. - 02.10.2011Symposium abstract on behalf of the organizers: Systems of Perception. Innovatory Concepts and new Approaches to Netherlandish Art and Culture. International conference of the “Arbeitskreises Niederländische Kunst- & Kulturgeschichte e.V. (ANKK)“ in cooperation with the Institute of Art History at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 09/30/2011 – 10/01/201

Approches conceptuelles de l’enseignement de la religion: enseignement religieux et enseignement orienté sciences des religions

Avec l’introduction des plans d’études harmonisés (Plan d’études romand et Lehrplan 21), les enseignant·e·s se retrouvent face au défi d’enseigner des cours sur « la religion » qui soient accessibles à tout·e·s les élèves tout en respectant leur liberté religieuse. Cette contribution présente quatre types d’enseignement issus d’une recherche empirique. Ces quatre types peuvent être regroupés en deux différentes formes d’enseignement : l’enseignement religieux et l’enseignement orienté sciences des religions (religionskundlich). Ces deux formes poursuivent des buts différents et sont liés à des présupposés divergents. Selon les auteures, seul l’enseignement orienté sciences des religions est adapté pour l’école publique en Suisse.In view of the harmonized curricula Plan d’études romand and Lehrplan 21, teachers are challenged with providing lessons about the topic of religions for all pupils while observing their right to freedom of religion. This contribution presents four empirically based types of teaching “religion”. They can be condensed into two major types of religion education: religious education and study of religions’ based education. Both types imply different aims and premises which are described in this article. The authors argue, that only the “study of religions’ based education” approach is appropriate for a compulsary religion education delivered to all pupils.Mit den vereinheitlichten Lehrplänen Plan d’études romand und dem Lehrplan 21 sehen sich Lehrerinnen und Lehrer herausgefordert, einen Unterricht zum Thema „Religion“ zu erteilen, an dem sämtliche Schülerinnen und Schüler teilnehmen können und der ihre Religionsfreiheit respektiert. Der Beitrag stellt vier aus der Empirie generierte Typen der Religionsvermittlung vor. Diese lassen sich zu zwei grundsätzlich verschiedenen Unterrichtsformen zusammenfassen: den religiösen Unterricht und den religionskundlichen Unterricht. Die beiden Unterrichtsformen verfolgen unterschiedliche Ziele und sind mit unterschiedlichen Voraussetzungen verbunden, die im Beitrag erläutert werden. Die Autorinnen argumentieren, dass nur der Religionskundeunterricht für einen obligatorischen Unterricht zum Thema Religion geeignet ist

Efficient deep CNNs for cross-modal automated computer vision under time and space constraints

We present an automated computer vision architecture to handle video and image data using the same backbone networks. We show empirical results that lead us to adopt MOBILENETV2 as this backbone architecture. The paper demonstrates that neural architectures are transferable from images to videos through suitable preprocessing and temporal information fusion

Efficient Benchmarking of Algorithm Configuration Procedures via Model-Based Surrogates

The optimization of algorithm (hyper-)parameters is crucial for achieving peak performance across a wide range of domains, ranging from deep neural networks to solvers for hard combinatorial problems. The resulting algorithm configuration (AC) problem has attracted much attention from the machine learning community. However, the proper evaluation of new AC procedures is hindered by two key hurdles. First, AC benchmarks are hard to set up. Second and even more significantly, they are computationally expensive: a single run of an AC procedure involves many costly runs of the target algorithm whose performance is to be optimized in a given AC benchmark scenario. One common workaround is to optimize cheap-to-evaluate artificial benchmark functions (e.g., Branin) instead of actual algorithms; however, these have different properties than realistic AC problems. Here, we propose an alternative benchmarking approach that is similarly cheap to evaluate but much closer to the original AC problem: replacing expensive benchmarks by surrogate benchmarks constructed from AC benchmarks. These surrogate benchmarks approximate the response surface corresponding to true target algorithm performance using a regression model, and the original and surrogate benchmark share the same (hyper-)parameter space. In our experiments, we construct and evaluate surrogate benchmarks for hyperparameter optimization as well as for AC problems that involve performance optimization of solvers for hard combinatorial problems, drawing training data from the runs of existing AC procedures. We show that our surrogate benchmarks capture overall important characteristics of the AC scenarios, such as high- and low-performing regions, from which they were derived, while being much easier to use and orders of magnitude cheaper to evaluate