Is the ECB sufficiently accountable and transparent? CEPS Working Document No. 169, July 2001

More than two years after its inception, the ECB is still perceived as lacking transparency by many academics and market participants.1 Our analysis, based on a series of indicators, suggests instead that the ECB is, at least on paper, one of the most transparent and accountable central banks. The discrepancy between theory and public perception suggests that much remains to be done within the given institutional framework to improve the transparency of the ECB. What is the best way to achieve this goal? Several suggestions have been put forward, such as publishing the detailed minutes of the ECB Governing Council meetings. This would result in shifting the true debate to informal meetings of the Governing Council, while formal meetings would only record pre-packaged consensus with no or little discussion. In our view, the best way to make the ECB more accountable is to engage it in substantive discussions about its policy. The ECB should provide more information about the background analysis that leads to policy decisions. For example, the ECB should transform its ‘staff projections’ into true inflation forecasts and it should be more open about the arguments that shape the internal debates, which precedes decisions. Accountability cannot be ensured by the ECB alone. An important role has to be played by its counterparts, such as the European Parliament, the Council of EU Finance Ministers and the public at large

A semantic account of strong normalization in Linear Logic

We prove that given two cut free nets of linear logic, by means of their relational interpretations one can: 1) first determine whether or not the net obtained by cutting the two nets is strongly normalizable 2) then (in case it is strongly normalizable) compute the maximal length of the reduction sequences starting from that net.Comment: 41 page

The relational model is injective for Multiplicative Exponential Linear Logic (without weakenings)

We show that for Multiplicative Exponential Linear Logic (without weakenings) the syntactical equivalence relation on proofs induced by cut-elimination coincides with the semantic equivalence relation on proofs induced by the multiset based relational model: one says that the interpretation in the model (or the semantics) is injective. We actually prove a stronger result: two cut-free proofs of the full multiplicative and exponential fragment of linear logic whose interpretations coincide in the multiset based relational model are the same "up to the connections between the doors of exponential boxes".Comment: 36 page

Temporary factors that condition innovation: comparison between family and non-family businesses

Studies conducted on innovation in family businesses have offered very diverse and sometimes contradictory results. The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence of time-related variables on the innovative behavior of companies. Furthermore, we compare the behavior of family and non-family companies, the influence of the generation and the transference of management. To do this, companies are classified according to the stage of life in which they are and are compared using a mean difference test (Anova). Subsequently, already focused on family businesses, the effects of generating control in the case of family businesses are analyzed, considering the foundational and subsequent periods. The results show that the behavior towards the innovation of family businesses is conditioned by the temporal dimension

Public space regeneration strategies: the case of Salou

Salou, which is one of the many highly specialized tourist resorts located on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, is a hundred kilometres south of Barcelona. Within its narrow boundaries of 1.481 ha, Salou hosts 7.4 million overnight stays per year and is home to 52 hotels. A ratio which ranks Salou amongst the tenth most visited municipalities in Spain. Distance from Salou’s historical town centre, the area of Carles Buigas Avenue (CB) emerges as being the heart of the municipality’s tourism and leisure industry. Salou developed, as did so many other Spanish coastal touristic locations, during the sixties and seventies as a consequence of the increasing demand for sun and beach destinations amongst the European and Spanish middle classes. Unfortunately, the “ageing” of this built up area clamours for close attention today. The visible physi-cal degradation of the property is becoming a cause for concern and preoccupation amongst the main property owners and investors: public administration, hotel managers, shopkeepers and neighbours. Hotels emerge as the key problem within the set physical boundaries of this study. They occupy approximately 50% of the total land surface, 28 out of a total of 52 hotels within the town being con-centrated in that area. This accumulation of hotels also breaks the particularity of the predominance of second residences which is so customary along the Spanish Coast. This paper delves into the data and proposals obtained from analysing the public space of the CB area. Similarly, as a consequence of the previous analysis, a set of proposals for intervention are also presented. The proposals are conceived to be developed within different time scales, in response to political and social willingness and economic capacity. The objective of the work is to induce an urban and tourism paradigm shift in the area, thus facilitating the emergence of a new tourism model. Solu-tions are urgently needed to provide specific answers to a particular scenario, which has similitudes to those of other Mediterranean Coastal Developments specialized in tourism activities, which too, after being operative for more than forty years, are suffering from deterioration or abandonment. Despite it still being an open process, the study understands that due to the complexity of the com-mitted task and the scale of the area, the goal will require the active commitment and collaboration of the property owners (administration, hotel managers, investors and neighbours).Postprint (published version

Platforms and Protocols for the Internet of Things

Building a general architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) is a very complex task, exacerbated by the extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in such a system. In this paper, we identify the main blocks of a generic IoT architecture, describing their features and requirements, and analyze the most common approaches proposed in the literature for each block. In particular, we compare three of the most important communication technologies for IoT purposes, i.e., REST, MQTT, and AMQP, and we also analyze three IoT platforms: openHAB, Sentilo, and Parse. The analysis will prove the importance of adopting an integrated approach that jointly addresses several issues and is able to flexibly accommodate the requirements of the various elements of the system. We also discuss a use case which illustrates the design challenges and the choices to make when selecting which protocols and technologies to use

Transverse momentum dependent distributions in e+e−e^+e^- and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering using jets

The extraction of transverse momentum dependent distributions (TMDs) in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) is complicated by the presence of both initial- and final-state nonperturbative physics. We recently proposed measuring jets (instead of hadrons) as a solution, showing that for the Winner-Take-All jet axis the same factorization formulae valid for hadrons applied to jets of arbitrary size. This amounts to simply replacing TMD fragmentation functions by our TMD jet functions. In this paper we present the calculation of these jet functions at one loop. We obtain phenomenological results for $e^+e^- \to$ dijet (Belle II, LEP) and SIDIS (HERA, EIC) with a jet, building on the arTeMiDe code. Surprisingly, we find that the limit of large jet radius describes the full $R$ results extremely well, and we extract the two-loop jet function in this limit using Event2, allowing us to achieve N$^3$LL accuracy. We demonstrate the perturbative convergence of our predictions and explore the kinematic dependence of the cross section. Finally, we investigate the sensitivity to nonperturbative physics, demonstrating that jets are a promising probe of proton structure.Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures. v4: fixed an important typo in table 1 concerning the scaling of modes, together with minor typos across the tex