Classical Yang-Baxter Equation and Low Dimensional Triangular Lie Bialgebras

All solutions of constant classical Yang-Baxter equation (CYBE) in Lie algebra $L$ with dim $L \le 3$ are obtained and the sufficient and necessary conditions which $(L, \hbox {[ ]}, \Delta_r, r)$ is a coboundary (or triangular) Lie bialgebra are given. The strongly symmetric elements in $L\otimes L$ are found and they all are solutions of CYBE in $L$ with $dim L \le 3$.Comment: 17page

Adjusting to Austrian Life

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Natalie Michaelis describes her observations during her study abroad program at the Austro-American Institute of Education in Vienna, Austria

The economics of greenhouse gas accumulation: A simulation approach

This article investigates efficient policies against global warming in the case of multiple greenhouse gases. In a dynamic optimization model conditions for an efficient combination of greenhouse gases are derived. The model is empirically specified and adapted to a simulation approach. By various simulation runs, the economics of greenhouse gas accumulation are illuminated; and in particular, it is shown that a CO2-policy alone would most likely lead to an allocation far from efficiency. These results indicate, that policy measures against global warming should allow for substituting between different greenhouse gases. Such a policy would mainly affect the agricultural sector because livestock and intensive farming techniques contribute significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases.

Incentives for Innovation in Pollution Control: Emission Standards Revisited

Conventional analysis of the economics of environmental policy usually claims that emission taxes induce a stronger incentive for an improvement in pollution abatement technologies compared to emission standards. In contrast, recent empirical studies reveal that there is no systematic relationship between improvements in pollution abatement technologies and the policy instrument chosen. The present paper tries to clarify this contradiction. In the first step the paper shows that the conventional model of innovation in pollution control under different policy regimes is deficient in at least two ways: It neglects policy impacts on the firms’ output level and it assumes a rather unrealistic type of emission standard. In the second step the paper presents a more elaborated model which tries to overcome these shortcomings. Using this model it is shown that the impact on innovation in pollution control caused by taxes and standards strongly depends on the scale of technical progress as well as on the cost structure of the firm under consideration such that there is no unique ranking of the two policies. Finally, the paper discusses the policy implications of these findings.emission standards, emission taxes, incentives to innovate

Strategic Environmental Policy and the Accumulation of Knowledge

Recent political discussions about the possible advantages of first-mover behaviour in terms of environmental policy again called attention to the well-established controversy about the effects of environmental regulation on international competitiveness. Conventional theory claims that the trade-off between regulation and competitiveness will be negative while the revisionist view, also known as the Porter Hypothesis, argues for the opposite. Several previous attempts that analysed this quarrel by means of strategic trade game settings indeed support the former claim and conclude that, to increase a firm’s competitiveness, ecological dumping is the most likely outcome in a Cournot duopoly configuration. However, these results were derived from one period games in which so-called innovation offsets are unlikely to occur. The present paper considers a two-period model that includes an intertemporally growing firm-level knowledge capital. In doing so the accumulation of knowledge is modelled in a unilateral and a bilateral variant. It is shown that for both scenarios in period 1 the domestic government will set a higher emission tax rate compared to its foreign counterpart. Furthermore, we identify conditions for which the domestic tax rate will be set above the Pigouvian level in period 1 in both model variants.first-mover behaviour, Porter Hypothesis, strategic environmental policy, environmental regulation, international competitiveness

The Fixed Wage Puzzle: Why Profit Sharing Is So Hard to Implement

It is well known that profit sharing arrangements Pareto-dominate fixed wage contracts. Share agreements are (far) less than ubiquitous, however. This paper offers a solution of this "fixed wage puzzle“ by adopting a perspective of bounded rationality. We show that share arrangements that fulfill ”plausible“ constraints are not generally acceptable to both firms and unions.Profit Sharing, Share Economy, Remuneration Systems