7,513 research outputs found
Do Institutions Cause Growth?
We revisit the debate over whether political institutions cause economic growth, or whether, alternatively, growth and human capital accumulation lead to institutional improvement. We find that most indicators of institutional quality used to establish the proposition that institutions cause growth are constructed to be conceptually unsuitable for that purpose. We also find that some of the instrumental variable techniques used in the literature are flawed. Basic OLS results, as well as a variety of additional evidence, suggest that a) human capital is a more basic source of growth than are the institutions, b) poor countries get out of poverty through good policies, often pursued by dictators, and c) subsequently improve their political institutions.
Deep inelastic scattering and factorization in the 't Hooft Model
We study in detail deep inelastic scattering in the 't Hooft model. We are
able to analytically check current conservation and to obtain analytic
expressions for the matrix elements with relative precision O(1/Q^2) for 1-x >>
\beta^2/Q^2. This allows us to compute the electron-meson differential cross
section and its moments with 1/Q^2 precision. For the former we find maximal
violations of quark-hadron duality, as it is expected for a large N_c analysis.
For the latter we find violations of the operator product expansion at
next-to-leading order in the 1/Q^2 expansion.Comment: 55 pages, 16 figure
The New Comparative Economics
In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. We argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to understand the basic tradeoff between the costs of disorder and those of dictatorship. We then apply this logic to study the structure of efficient institutions, the consequences of colonial transplantation, and the politics of institutional choice.
The New Comparative Economics
In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. We argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to understand the basic tradeoff between the costs of disorder and those of dictatorship. We then apply this logic to study the structure of efficient institutions, the consequences of colonial transplantation, and the politics of institutional choice.
The Stokes-Einstein Relation at Moderate Schmidt Number
The Stokes-Einstein relation for the self-diffusion coefficient of a
spherical particle suspended in an incompressible fluid is an asymptotic result
in the limit of large Schmidt number, that is, when momentum diffuses much
faster than the particle. When the Schmidt number is moderate, which happens in
most particle methods for hydrodynamics, deviations from the Stokes-Einstein
prediction are expected. We study these corrections computationally using a
recently-developed minimally-resolved method for coupling particles to an
incompressible fluctuating fluid in both two and three dimensions. We find that
for moderate Schmidt numbers the diffusion coefficient is reduced relative to
the Stokes-Einstein prediction by an amount inversely proportional to the
Schmidt number in both two and three dimensions. We find, however, that the
Einstein formula is obeyed at all Schmidt numbers, consistent with linear
response theory. The numerical data is in good agreement with an approximate
self-consistent theory, which can be used to estimate finite-Schmidt number
corrections in a variety of methods. Our results indicate that the corrections
to the Stokes-Einstein formula come primarily from the fact that the particle
itself diffuses together with the momentum. Our study separates effects coming
from corrections to no-slip hydrodynamics from those of finite separation of
time scales, allowing for a better understanding of widely observed deviations
from the Stokes-Einstein prediction in particle methods such as molecular
dynamics.Comment: Submitte
3D high definition video coding on a GPU-based heterogeneous system
H.264/MVC is a standard for supporting the sensation of 3D, based on coding from 2 (stereo) to N views. H.264/MVC adopts many coding options inherited from single view H.264/AVC, and thus its complexity is even higher, mainly because the number of processing views is higher. In this manuscript, we aim at an efficient parallelization of the most computationally intensive video encoding module for stereo sequences. In particular, inter prediction and its collaborative execution on a heterogeneous platform. The proposal is based on an efficient dynamic load balancing algorithm and on breaking encoding dependencies. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm's ability to reduce the encoding time for different stereo high definition sequences. Speed-up values of up to 90Ă— were obtained when compared with the reference encoder on the same platform. Moreover, the proposed algorithm also provides a more energy-efficient approach and hence requires less energy than the sequential reference algorith
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