Essay on the State of Research and Innovation in France and the European Union

Innovation in the economy is an important engine of growth and no economy, whatever its complexity and degree of advancement, whether it is based on industry, agriculture, high tech or the providing of services, can be truly healthy without innovating actors within it. The aim of this work, done by an applied mathematician working in finance, not by an economist or a lawyer, isn't to provide an exhaustive view of the all the mechanisms in France and in Europe that aim at fostering innovation in the economy and to offer solutions for removing all the roadblocks that still hinder innovation; indeed such a study would go far beyond the scope of this study. What I modestly attempted to achieve in this study was firstly to draw a panorama of what is working and what needs to perfected as far as innovation is concerned in France and Europe, then secondly to offer some solutions and personal thoughts to boost innovation.Comment: 26 pages. Modifications in the new version : Reference [7] was invalid (it was a report that was never voted and published by the French Senate, contrary to what I assumed) and has been replaced. The corresponding part has been modified in consequence. Also, minor correction

Streaming an image through the eye: The retina seen as a dithered scalable image coder

We propose the design of an original scalable image coder/decoder that is inspired from the mammalians retina. Our coder accounts for the time-dependent and also nondeterministic behavior of the actual retina. The present work brings two main contributions: As a first step, (i) we design a deterministic image coder mimicking most of the retinal processing stages and then (ii) we introduce a retinal noise in the coding process, that we model here as a dither signal, to gain interesting perceptual features. Regarding our first contribution, our main source of inspiration will be the biologically plausible model of the retina called Virtual Retina. The main novelty of this coder is to show that the time-dependent behavior of the retina cells could ensure, in an implicit way, scalability and bit allocation. Regarding our second contribution, we reconsider the inner layers of the retina. We emit a possible interpretation for the non-determinism observed by neurophysiologists in their output. For this sake, we model the retinal noise that occurs in these layers by a dither signal. The dithering process that we propose adds several interesting features to our image coder. The dither noise whitens the reconstruction error and decorrelates it from the input stimuli. Furthermore, integrating the dither noise in our coder allows a faster recognition of the fine details of the image during the decoding process. Our present paper goal is twofold. First, we aim at mimicking as closely as possible the retina for the design of a novel image coder while keeping encouraging performances. Second, we bring a new insight concerning the non-deterministic behavior of the retina.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1104.155

Horizontale und vertikale Innovationen in einem semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodell mit Kapitalakkumulation

Im semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodell von Li (2000) findet technischer Fortschritt statt, weil sowohl neue als auch qualitativ bessere Produkte erfunden werden. Allerdings ist Arbeit der einzige Produktionsfaktor in der Oekonomie, es gibt keinen akkumulierbaren Faktor (physisches Kapital). In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird aber argumentiert, dass Kapitalakkumulation eine wichtige Tatsache in der Realitaet ist. Das Modell von Li (2000) wird deshalb um Kapital als notwendigen Input in der Produktion erweitert, so dass Akkumulation moeglich wird. Anders betrachtet wird das wegweisende Romer(1990)-Modell verallgemeinert, in dem die Moeglichkeit von Qualitaetsverbesserungen bestehender Produkte (vertikale Innovationen) eingefuehrt wird. Damit kann "kreative Zerstoerung" im Schumpeterschen Sinne auftreten. Ausserdem werden durch diese Modifikation die Skaleneffekte aus dem Romer(1990)- Modell eliminiert. Schliesslich wird gezeigt, dass die "verkuerzte Form" des Modells identisch ist zu einem neoklassischen Wachstumsmodell, wie z.B. dem Solow-Modell mit Cobb-Douglas Produktionsfunktion. Es hat aber die mikrooekomomische Fundierung bezueglich F&E von semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodellen.semi-endogenous growth, Schumpeterian models of growth, Solow model

A Pratical Approach to Financial Crisis Indicators Based on Random Matrices

URL des Documents de travail : http://centredeconomiesorbonne.univ-paris1.fr/documents-de-travail/Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2015.49 - ISSN : 1955-611XThe aim of this work is to build financial crisis indicators based on market data time series. After choosing an optimal size for a rolling window, the market data is seen every trading day as a random matrix from which a covariance and correlation matrix is obtained. Our indicators deal with the spectral properties of these covariance and correlation matrices. Our basic financial intuition is that correlation and volatility are like the heartbeat of the financial market: when correlations between asset prices increase or develop abnormal patterns, when volatility starts to increase, then a crisis event might be around the corner. Our indicators will be mainly of two types. The first one is based on the Hellinger distance, computed between the distribution of the eigenvalues of the empirical covariance matrix and the distribution of the eigenvalues of a reference covariance matrix. As reference distribution we will use the theoretical Marchenko Pastur distribution and, mainly, simulated ones using a random matrix of the same size as the empirical rolling matrix and constituted of Gaussian or Student-t coefficients with some simulated correlations. The idea behind this first type of indicators is that when the empirical distribution of the spectrum of the covariance matrix is deviating from the reference in the sense of Hellinger, then a crisis may be forthcoming. The second type of indicators is based on the study of the spectral radius and the trace of the covariance and correlation matrices as a mean to directly study the volatility and correlations inside the market. The idea behind the second type of indicators is the fact that large eigenvalues are a sign of dynamic instability.Le but de ce travail de recherche est la construction d'indicateurs de crises financières basés sur des données de marché. Après avoir choisi la taille optimale d'une fenêtre roulante, les données de marchés seront vues comme une matrice aléatoire à partir de laquelle une matrice de covariance et une matrice de corrélation seront obtenues. Nos indicateurs exploitent les propriétés spectrales de cette matrice de covariance et de cette matrice de corrélation. Notre intuition financière de base est que la corrélation et la volatilité sont le pouls d'un marché financier : quand les corrélations entre les actifs augmentent ou développent des comportements anormaux, quand la volatilité commence à augmenter, alors un évènement de crise est peut être sur le point de se produire. Nos indicateurs seront essentiellement de deux types. Le premier type est basé sur la distance de Hellinger, calculée entre la distribution des valeurs propres de la matrice de covariance empirique et la distribution des valeurs propres d'une matrice de covariance de référence. Comme distribution de référence nous utiliserons la distribution théorique de Marchenko Pasur et aussi, essentiellement, des distributions simulées en utilisant une matrice aléatoire de même taille que la matrice de covariance roulante empirique et constituée de coefficients suivant une loi Gaussienne ou t-student et présentant des corrélations. L'idée derrière ce premier type d'indicateurs est que quand la distribution empirique du spectre de la matrice de covariance commence à dévier au sens de Hellinger de la référence, alors une crise est probablement sur le point de se produire. Le second type d'indicateurs est basé sur l'étude du rayon spectral et de la trace de la matrice de covariance et de la matrice de corrélation, dans le but d'étudier directement la volatilité et la corrélation à l'intérieur du marché. L'idée derrière ce second type d'indicateurs est que de grandes valeurs propres sont un signe d'instabilité dynamique

Horizontale und vertikale Innovationen in einem semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodell mit Kapitalakkumulation

Im semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodell von Li (2000) findet technischer Fortschritt statt, weil sowohl neue als auch qualitativ bessere Produkte erfunden werden. Allerdings ist Arbeit der einzige Produktionsfaktor in der Oekonomie, es gibt keinen akkumulierbaren Faktor (physisches Kapital). In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird aber argumentiert, dass Kapitalakkumulation eine wichtige Tatsache in der Realitaet ist. Das Modell von Li (2000) wird deshalb um Kapital als notwendigen Input in der Produktion erweitert, so dass Akkumulation moeglich wird. Anders betrachtet wird das wegweisende Romer(1990)-Modell verallgemeinert, in dem die Moeglichkeit von Qualitaetsverbesserungen bestehender Produkte (vertikale Innovationen) eingefuehrt wird. Damit kann kreative Zerstoerung im Schumpeterschen Sinne auftreten. Ausserdem werden durch diese Modifikation die Skaleneffekte aus dem Romer(1990)- Modell eliminiert. Schliesslich wird gezeigt, dass die verkuerzte Form des Modells identisch ist zu einem neoklassischen Wachstumsmodell, wie z.B. dem Solow-Modell mit Cobb-Douglas Produktionsfunktion. Es hat aber die mikrooekomomische Fundierung bezueglich F&E von semi-endogenen Wachstumsmodellen

Argumentation and Compromise: Why the Republic of Ireland Selected the Territorial Status Quo Norm

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.How do states come to select norms? Kornprobst contends that, given a number of conditions are present, states select norms in three ideal-typical stages: innovative argumentation, persuasive argumentation, and compromise. Kornprobst is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mershon Center.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming vide

Мегаломанія, наївність чи провокація?

Рецензія на книгу: Святослав Семенюк: Український путівник по Словаччині (історично-краєзнавчі нариси). — Львів : Апріорі, 2007. — 348 с. — Тираж 1000 прим