877 research outputs found
Towards a meaningful prudential supervision dialogue in the Euro area?
In the context of the introduction of the Single Supervisory Mechanism ( SSM) as part of the
European Banking Union, the European Central Bank ( ECB) has been assigned specific supervisory
tasks relating to credit institutions established primarily in the euro area. One particularly remarkable
feature of this new legislation, notably when compared with the monetary policy tasks of the ECB, is
the introduction of an explicit accountability framework with a particular focus on the relationship
between the ECB and the European Parliament.
It is this relationship, and mainly the so-called
supervisory dialogue, that form the focal point of this contribution, which offers an assessment of the
legal framework, as well as of the actual practice in these first years of the existence of the SSM,
against a clearly defined notion of accountability. With regard to the actual practice, the contribution
focuses on the exchanges between the chair of the ECBās main decision-preparing body on SSM
matters, i.e. the Supervisory Board, and the European Parliamentās Committee on Economic and
Monetary Affairs
Binary Neutron Stars with Generic Spin, Eccentricity, Mass ratio, and Compactness - Quasi-equilibrium Sequences and First Evolutions
Information about the last stages of a binary neutron star inspiral and the
final merger can be extracted from quasi-equilibrium configurations and
dynamical evolutions. In this article, we construct quasi-equilibrium
configurations for different spins, eccentricities, mass ratios, compactnesses,
and equations of state. For this purpose we employ the SGRID code, which allows
us to construct such data in previously inaccessible regions of the parameter
space. In particular, we consider spinning neutron stars in isolation and in
binary systems; we incorporate new methods to produce highly eccentric and
eccentricity reduced data; we present the possibility of computing data for
significantly unequal-mass binaries; and we create equal-mass binaries with
individual compactness up to 0.23. As a proof of principle, we explore the
dynamical evolution of three new configurations. First, we simulate a
mass ratio which is the highest mass ratio for a binary neutron star evolved in
numerical relativity to date. We find that mass transfer from the companion
star sets in a few revolutions before merger and a rest mass of
is transferred between the two stars. This configuration
also ejects a large amount of material during merger, imparting a substantial
kick to the remnant. Second, we simulate the first merger of a precessing
binary neutron star. We present the dominant modes of the gravitational waves
for the precessing simulation, where a clear imprint of the precession is
visible in the (2,1) mode. Finally, we quantify the effect of an eccentricity
reduction procedure on the gravitational waveform. The procedure improves the
waveform quality and should be employed in future precision studies, but also
other errors, notably truncation errors, need to be reduced in order for the
improvement due to eccentricity reduction to be effective. [abridged]Comment: (37pages, 26 figures
SUBARU and e-Merlin observations of NGC3718. Diaries of an SMBH recoil?
NGC3718 is a LINER galaxy, lying at a distance of about
Mpc away from earth and its similarities with NGC5128 often award it the name
"northern Centaurus A". We use high angular resolution ( mas) e-Merlin
radio and SUBARU NIR ( mas) data, to take a detailed view of the
processes taking place in its central region. In order to preserve some
objectivity in our interpretation, we combine our results with literature
values and findings from previous studies. Our NIR maps suggest, on one hand,
that towards the stellar bulge there are no large scale absorption phenomena
caused by the apparent dust lane and, on the other, that there is a significant
(local) contribution from hot ( K) dust to the nuclear NIR emission.
The position where this takes place appears to be closer to the offset compact
radio emission from our e-Merlin cm map, lying offset by pc from
the center of the underlying stellar bulge. The shape of the radio map suggests
the presence of one (or possibly two, forming an X-shape) bipolar structure(s)
() arcsec across, which combined with the balance between the
gas and the stellar velocity dispersions and the presence of hard X-ray
emission, point towards effects expected by AGN feedback. We also argue that
NGC3718 has a "core" in its surface brightness profile, despite the fact that
it is a gas-rich galaxy and we discuss its mixed photometric and spectroscopic
characteristics. The latter combined with the observed spatial and radio
offsets, the relative redshift between the broad and the narrow
line, the limited star formation activity and AGN
feedback, strongly imply the existence of an SMBH recoil. Finally, we discuss a
possible interpretation, that could naturally incorporate all these findings
into one physically consistent picture.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publications in A&
Use of a Strongly Nonlinear Gambier Equation for the Construction of Exact Closed Form Solutions of Nonlinear ODEs
We establish an analytical method leading to a more general form of the exact solution of a nonlinear ODE of the second order due to Gambier. The treatment is based on the introduction and determination of a new function, by means of which the solution of the
original equation is expressed. This treatment is applied to another nonlinear equation,
subjected to the same general class as that of Gambier, by constructing step by step an
appropriate analytical technique. The developed procedure yields a general exact closed
form solution of this equation, valid for specific values of the parameters involved and
containing two arbitrary (free) parameters evaluated by the relevant initial conditions.
We finally verify this technique by applying it to two specific sets of parameter values of
the equation under consideration
Exact Solutions for Certain Nonlinear Autonomous Ordinary Differential Equations of the Second Order and Families of Two-Dimensional Autonomous Systems
Certain nonlinear autonomous ordinary differential equations of the second order are reduced to Abel equations of the first kind ((Ab-1) equations). Based on the results of a previous work, concerning a closed-form solution of a general (Ab-1) equation, and introducing an arbitrary function, exact one-parameter families of solutions are derived for the original autonomous equations, for the most of which only first integrals (in closed or parametric form) have been obtained so far. Two-dimensional autonomous systems of differential equations of the first order, equivalent to the considered herein autonomous forms, are constructed and solved by means of the developed analysis
Cooperative games with overlapping coalitions
In the usual models of cooperative game theory, the outcome of a coalition formation process is either the grand coalition or a coalition structure that consists of disjoint coalitions. However, in many domains where coalitions are associated with tasks, an agent may be involved in executing more than one task, and thus may distribute his resources among several coalitions. To tackle such scenarios, we introduce a model for cooperative games with overlapping coalitionsāor overlapping coalition formation (OCF) games. We then explore the issue of stability in this setting. In particular, we introduce a notion of the core, which generalizes the corresponding notion in the traditional (non-overlapping) scenario. Then, under some quite general conditions, we characterize the elements of the core, and show that any element of the core maximizes the social welfare. We also introduce a concept of balancedness for overlapping coalitional games, and use it to characterize coalition structures that can be extended to elements of the core. Finally, we generalize the notion of convexity to our setting, and show that under some natural assumptions convex games have a non-empty core. Moreover, we introduce two alternative notions of stability in OCF that allow a wider range of deviations, and explore the relationships among the corresponding definitions of the core, as well as the classic (non-overlapping) core and the Aubin core. We illustrate the general properties of the three cores, and also study them from a computational perspective, thus obtaining additional insights into their fundamental structure
Complexity of Strong Implementability
We consider the question of implementability of a social choice function in a
classical setting where the preferences of finitely many selfish individuals
with private information have to be aggregated towards a social choice. This is
one of the central questions in mechanism design. If the concept of weak
implementation is considered, the Revelation Principle states that one can
restrict attention to truthful implementations and direct revelation
mechanisms, which implies that implementability of a social choice function is
easy to check. For the concept of strong implementation, however, the
Revelation Principle becomes invalid, and the complexity of deciding whether a
given social choice function is strongly implementable has been open so far. In
this paper, we show by using methods from polyhedral theory that strong
implementability of a social choice function can be decided in polynomial space
and that each of the payments needed for strong implementation can always be
chosen to be of polynomial encoding length. Moreover, we show that strong
implementability of a social choice function involving only a single selfish
individual can be decided in polynomial time via linear programming
Undominated Groves Mechanisms
The family of Groves mechanisms, which includes the well-known VCG mechanism (also
known as the Clarke mechanism), is a family of efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms.
Unfortunately, the Groves mechanisms are generally not budget balanced. That is, under
such mechanisms, payments may flow into or out of the system of the agents, resulting
in deficits or reduced utilities for the agents. We consider the following problem: within
the family of Groves mechanisms, we want to identify mechanisms that give the agents the
highest utilities, under the constraint that these mechanisms must never incur deficits.
We adopt a prior-free approach. We introduce two general measures for comparing
mechanisms in prior-free settings. We say that a non-deficit Groves mechanism M in-
dividually dominates another non-deficit Groves mechanism Mā² if for every type profile,
every agentās utility under M is no less than that under Mā², and this holds with strict
inequality for at least one type profile and one agent. We say that a non-deficit Groves
mechanism M collectively dominates another non-deficit Groves mechanism Mā² if for every
type profile, the agentsā total utility under M is no less than that under Mā², and this holds
with strict inequality for at least one type profile. The above definitions induce two partial
orders on non-deficit Groves mechanisms. We study the maximal elements corresponding
to these two partial orders, which we call the individually undominated mechanisms and
the collectively undominated mechanisms, respectively
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