Competition and Growth in a Vintage Knowledge Model

This paper models the relationship between growth, technology-lifetime, entry, and competition in a vintage-knowledge model of endogenous growth and perfect competition. The model has a unique steady state REE equilibrium. Variations of R&D-efficiency lead to a negative relation between growth and vintage-lifetime and indicate a non-monotonic relation between growth and competition. A shift of population size and its growth rates have qualitatively different consequences here than in standard models. The extent of entry constitutes a buffer, neutralizing the effect of population size or population growth rates on per-capita income levels and growth rates.Endogenous Growth, Vintage-Model, Perfect Competition

History-Dependent Individual Behavior, Polarization, and Pareto-Improving Activating Welfare

This paper assumes that human capital not only generates market incomes but is a direct source of utility as well. In an otherwise standard framework it is shown that the interaction between human capital and effort in raising human capital and in generating utility naturally leads to history-dependent optimal individual behavior. Depending on the initial distribution of skills, this history-dependence divides each group of otherwise identical households into two perpetually separated groups: one rich and educated, the other poor and uneducated. If the rich have a common interest in the education of the poor (for instance financing public goods), such polarized equilibria are typically Pareto-inefficient. While unconditional transfers only reduce the incentives of the uneducated to accumulate skills, it is shown that there exist activating tax-transfer systems that Pareto-dominate any non-redistributing tax-system and involve a negative marginal income tax on household income below a certain threshold.

Case-based reasoning combined with statistics for diagnostics and prognosis

Many approaches used for diagnostics today are based on a precise model. This excludes diagnostics of many complex types of machinery that cannot be modelled and simulated easily or without great effort. Our aim is to show that by including human experience it is possible to diagnose complex machinery when there is no or limited models or simulations available. This also enables diagnostics in a dynamic application where conditions change and new cases are often added. In fact every new solved case increases the diagnostic power of the system. We present a number of successful projects where we have used feature extraction together with case-based reasoning to diagnose faults in industrial robots, welding, cutting machinery and we also present our latest project for diagnosing transmissions by combining Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) with statistics. We view the fault diagnosis process as three consecutive steps. In the first step, sensor fault signals from machines and/or input from human operators are collected. Then, the second step consists of extracting relevant fault features. In the final diagnosis/prognosis step, status and faults are identified and classified. We view prognosis as a special case of diagnosis where the prognosis module predicts a stream of future features

Inflation and Innovation-driven Growth

This paper models the relationship between inflation and steady state growth in a model combining standard Schumpeterian growth with a standard New Keynesian specification of nominal price rigidity. Positive money growth has two clear-cut countervailing effects on the incentive to innovate. Past price rigidity causes the use of an inefficiently large quantity of cheap old intermediate goods, reducing demand for new ones and hence, the incentive to innovate. Future price rigidity erodes the new good’s relative price, increasing demand and therefore the current incentive to innovate. In numerical calibrations the negative effect of inflation on growth dominates.Inflation, endogenous growth, price rigidity

Short-term price rigidity in an endogenous growth model: Non-Superneutrality and a non-vertical long-term Phillips-curve

This model analyses the interaction between inflation and the long-run levels of employment and output growth in a Schumpeterian growth model with quality improving innovations under nominal price rigidity. At the unique REE steady state equilibrium, both employment and growth are hump-shaped functions of money growth peaking at positive inflation rates. This is due to four effects of money growth under rigidity: Erosion of its relative price through inflation and the optimal initial mark-up set in anticipation of this influence a firm’s profits. Dispersion in relative prices causes inefficient production while the change in the average mark-up influences aggregate demand.Inflation, price rigidity, endogenous growth, employment, long-run Phillips curve

CABS: a case-based and graphical requirements capture, formalisation and verification system

The use of formal specifications based on varieties of mathematical logic is becoming common in the process of designing and implementing safety critical systems and practices for hardware design. Formal methods are usually intended to include in the specification, all the important details of the final system in the specification, with the aim of proving that the specification possesses certain properties and lacks other unwanted properties. In large, complex systems, this task requires sophisticated theorem proving, which can be difficult and complicated. Telecommunications systems are large and complex, making detailed formal specification impractical given current technology. However, formal “sketches” of the behaviours the services provide can be produced, and these can be very helpful in locating which service might be relevant to a given problem.This thesis describes CABS, a case-based approach that uses coarse-grained graphical requirements specification sketches, to outline the basic behaviour of the system's func­tional modules (called services), thereby allowing us to identify, re-use and adapt re­quirements (from cases stored in a library), to construct new cases. The matching algorithm identifies similar behaviour between the input examples and the cases stored in the case library. By using cases that have already been tested, integrated and im ­plemented, less effort is needed to produce requirements specifications on a large scale. Using a hypothetical telecommunications system as an example, it will be shown that a comparatively simple logic can be used to capture coarse-grained behaviour and how a case-based approach benefits from this. The input from the examples is used both to identify the cases whose behaviour corresponds most closely to the designer's intentions, and also in the process of adapting, validating and, finally, verifying the proposed solution against the examples

Offshoring in Europe—Evidence of a Two-Way Street from Denmark

Based on a large Danish survey of companies in tradable goods and services sectors, this working paper presents the results of offshoring and its impact on jobs, adding new perspectives to the globalization debate. Globalization entails a cross-border flow of jobs, but contrary to the mainstream media portrayal of globalization, it is not a one-way but a two-way street. In 2002–05 more jobs were created as a result of offshoring of activities into eastern Denmark from companies outside Denmark (i.e., inshored to Denmark) than were eliminated due to offshoring from companies in the Danish region. Overall, the employment effects of both offshoring and inshoring were found to be limited to less than 1 percent of all jobs either lost to offshoring or gained via inshoring. For Denmark, the worries in purely numerical terms regarding the employment effects of globalization seem overly alarmist. However, the trends revealed in the study do pose challenges for low-skilled workers—the group most negatively affected—and for highly skilled specialists, who face pressure to constantly upgrade their skills. Policy implications can be drawn in view of our results to ensure that labor markets are able to meet the demands of globalizing firms.Labor Market, Offshoring, Offshore Outsourcing, High- and Low-Skilled Workers, Skill Bias, Denmark, Flexicurity

Hand movement observation by individuals born without hands: phantom limb experience constrains visual limb perception

Increasing evidence suggests that the visual analysis of other people's actions depends upon the observer's own body representation or schema. This raises the question of how differences in observers' body structure and schema impact their perception of human movement. We investigated the visual experiences of two persons born without arms, one with and the other without phantom sensations. These participants, plus six normally-limbed control observers, viewed depictions of upper limb movement under conditions of apparent motion. Consistent with previous results (Shiffrar M, Freyd JJ (1990) Psychol Sci 1:257), normally-limbed observers perceived rate-dependent paths of apparent human movement. Specifically, biologically impossible motion trajectories were reported at rapid display rates while biologically possible trajectories were reported at slow display rates. The aplasic individual with phantom experiences showed the same perceptual pattern as control participants, while the aplasic individual without phantom sensations did not. These preliminary results suggest that phantom experiences may constrain the visual analysis of the human body. These results further suggest that it may be time to move beyond the question of whether aplasic phantoms exist and instead focus on the question of why some people with limb aplasia experience phantom sensations while others do not. In this light, the current results suggest that somesthetic representations are not sufficient to define body schema. Instead, neural systems matching action observation, action execution and motor imagery likely contribute to the definition of body schema in profound ways. Additional research with aplasic individuals, having and lacking phantom sensations, is needed to resolve this issu

Ein Beitrag Zur Klassifikation Von Koppelkurven (A Contribution to the Classification of Coupler Curves)

A study of the coupler curves of four-bar and Watt mechanisms is undertaken either theoretically or based on a computer program that is integrated in a CAD-System. This leads even in the case of four-far linkages to some new insights concerning the existence of nodes and cusps. The possible real singularities of non-degenerate coupler curves of the Watt mechanism are determined and by means of our computer program, we demonstrate their difficult structure

Cross-border vocational training as processes of cross-border learning

In den letzten Jahren hat die grenzüberschreitende Berufsausbildung zunehmend an Bedeutung gewonnen. Die übergeordnete Forschungsfrage beschäftigt sich damit, wie regionale Lernprozesse in einer Grenzregion durch bilaterale grenzüberschreitende formale Bildungsabkommen entwickeln. Dafür wurde ein Modell regionalen Lernens in Grenzregionen basierend auf dem Modell von Wellbrock et al. (2012) entwickelt, das sich auf eine ganzheitliche Begrifflichkeit stützt und die Akteursperspektive in den Fokus stellt. Die Entwicklung der grenzüberschreitenden beruflichen Ausbildung unter Beteiligung verschiedener Akteure kann als intra- und interregionaler Lernprozess verstanden werden, der zu einer "grenzüberschreitenden Lernregion" führt. Die Analyse der untersuchten Strukturen unter Berücksichtigung der konzeptionellen Annahmen zeigt, dass die Lernprozesse in der saarländisch-lothringischen Grenzregion dynamisch sind und von Schlüsselpersonen mit Expertenwissen abhängen, genauso wie von vorteilhaften regionalen Gegebenheiten.In recent years cross-border vocational educational training (VET) in cross-border regions has gained more and more importance. The overall research question is how regional learning processes are shaped by bilateral cross-border formal learning agreements in a border region. Therefore, we build our own model of regional learning in border regions on Wellbrock et al. (2012) following an integrated conceptual perspective and focusing on the actor’s perspective. The development of this transboundary VET by a variety of actors can be considered to form an intra- und interregional learning process. The interpretation of the structures regarding the conceptual findings reveals that the learning processes in the Saarland-Lorraine border region are dynamic and depend on key actors with expert knowledge as well as advantageous regional characteristics