Does the Dispersion of Unit Labor Cost Dynamics in the EMU Imply Long-run Divergence? Results from a Comparison with the United States of America and Germany

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Laender we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU, however, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are more pronounced in Europe and more persistent. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency.Unit labor costs, inflation, EMU, convergence, panel unit root tests, convergence clubs

Does the Dispersion of Unit Labor Cost Dynamics in the EMU Imply Long-Run Divergence?: Results from a Comparison with the United States of America and Germany

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Länder we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, co-integration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU, however, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are more pronounced in Europe and more persistent. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency.Unit labor costs, inflation, EMU, convergence, panel unit root tests, convergence clubs

How bad is Divergence in the Euro-Zone? Lessons from the United States of America and Germany

This paper compares relative unit labour cost developments in the countries of the euro-area since the beginning of the European Monetary Union (EMU) both with historical developments and with intra-regional unit labour cost developments in the United States of America and Germany. To this end, unit labour cost indices for the US states and census regions from 1977 to 1997 as well as for the German Länder from 1970 to 2004 have been constructed. Against this benchmark, it is found that unit labour cost increases since 1999 in Portugal and to a lesser extent in Spain and Greece can be judged as excessive, pointing at labour market rigidities which might impair smooth working of EMU in the future.Unit labor costs, divergence, convergence, Euro-zone, inflation

Determination of Bond Wire Failure Probabilities in Microelectronic Packages

This work deals with the computation of industry-relevant bond wire failure probabilities in microelectronic packages. Under operating conditions, a package is subject to Joule heating that can lead to electrothermally induced failures. Manufacturing tolerances result, e.g., in uncertain bond wire geometries that often induce very small failure probabilities requiring a high number of Monte Carlo (MC) samples to be computed. Therefore, a hybrid MC sampling scheme that combines the use of an expensive computer model with a cheap surrogate is used. The fraction of surrogate evaluations is maximized using an iterative procedure, yielding accurate results at reduced cost. Moreover, the scheme is non-intrusive, i.e., existing code can be reused. The algorithm is used to compute the failure probability for an example package and the computational savings are assessed by performing a surrogate efficiency study.Comment: submitted to Therminic 2016, available at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7748645

Modeling of Spatial Uncertainties in the Magnetic Reluctivity

In this paper a computationally efficient approach is suggested for the stochastic modeling of an inhomogeneous reluctivity of magnetic materials. These materials can be part of electrical machines, such as a single phase transformer (a benchmark example that is considered in this paper). The approach is based on the Karhunen-Lo\`{e}ve expansion. The stochastic model is further used to study the statistics of the self inductance of the primary coil as a quantity of interest.Comment: submitted to COMPE

Room temperature spin thermoelectrics in metallic films

Considering metallic films at room temperature, we present the first theoretical study of the spin Nernst and thermal Edelstein effects which takes into account dynamical spin-orbit coupling, i.e., direct spin-orbit coupling with the vibrating lattice (phonons) and impurities. This gives rise to two novel processes, namely a dynamical Elliott-Yafet spin relaxation and a dynamical side-jump mechanism. Both are the high-temperature counterparts of the well-known $T = 0$ Elliott-Yafet and side-jump, central to the current understanding of the spin Hall, spin Nernst and Edelstein effects at low $T$. We consider the experimentally relevant regime $T > T_D$, with $T_D$ the Debye temperature, as the latter is lower than room temperature in transition metals such as Pt, Au and Ta typically employed in spin injection/extraction experiments. We show that the interplay between intrinsic (Bychkov-Rashba type) and extrinsic (dynamical) spin-orbit coupling yields a nonlinear $T$- dependence of the spin Nernst and spin Hall conductivities.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

From Reports to Maps

In this paper, we will sketch a project in progress. The project aims at an application of a command and control system. The application is meant to process military reports written in natural language. It exploits computer linguistic techniques, especially information extraction and ontological augmentation. A prototype has already be completed. A real world application of report processing has to go beyond pure syntactic parsing. Semantic analysis is needed and the meaning of the report has to be constructed. Even more, the meaning has to be represented in a format such that it can be visualized within the so called ``common operational picture'' (COP). The COP is an interactive map displaying information. COP standards are provided by NATO. Since military operations of our days -- war operations as well as peace-keeping and nation building ones -- involve forces of many nations, the COP serves as main tool for synchronizing actions and plans. The paper at hand will provide some insights what kind of problems come along if language processing has to result in map visualization. It also will describe some solutions to overcome these problems