Introduction – Managing Welfare Expectations and Social Change: Policy Responses in Asia

The question whether Asian welfare types can be classified as distinctly ‘productivist’ has remained subject to lively debates: in East Asia, the recent implementation of social rights-based public policy innovations – including working family support – as a response to rising inequalities, welfare expectations and accelerating social change has been well documented; similarly, South East Asian and South Asian economies have featured much more frequently in comparative social policy analysis as policymakers have sought to address persisting chronic poverty, a diminishing demographic dividend and burdensome epidemiological transitions via integrating human capital formation with social protection measures. Yet, far from a unifying convergence of these social policy trends in the post-Millennium Development Goals era, the global perspective we take in this article suggests continued variation and difference, with a multiplicity of forms of globalizations encountered and/or engendered in diverse contexts. As a consequence, variegated and path-dependent patterns of social development continue to persist across Asian economies. These findings, in turn, address major issues of our time, for they speak to the broader question of what analytical bases and research strategies can best reveal the complexities of (and interactions between) national, extra-national and transnational drivers of welfare formation and development under contemporary but diverse conditions

Equal representation in two-tier voting systems

The paper investigates how voting weights should be assigned to differently sized constituencies of an assembly. The one-person, one-vote principle is interpreted as calling for a priori equal indirect influence on decisions. The latter are elements of a one-dimensional convex policy space and may result from strategic behavior consistent with the median voter theorem. Numerous artificial constituency configurations, the EU and the US are investigated by Monte-Carlo simulations. Penrose’s square root rule, which originally applies to preference-free dichotomous decision environments and holds only under very specific conditions, comes close to ensuring equal representation. It is thus more robust than previously suggested

Fair Representation and a Linear Shapley Rule

When delegations to an assembly or council represent differently sized constituencies, they are often allocated voting weights which increase in population numbers (EU Council, US Electoral College, etc.). The Penrose square root rule (PSRR) is the main benchmark for fair representation of all bottom-tier voters in the top-tier decision making body, but rests on the restrictive assumption of independent binary decisions. We consider intervals of alternatives with single-peaked preferences instead, and presume positive correlation of local voters. This calls for a replacement of the PSRR by a linear Shapley rule: representation is fair if the Shapley value of the delegates is proportional to their constituency sizes.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure

Can magnetic fields suppress convection in the atmosphere of cool white dwarfs? A case study on WD2105-820

Around 10% of white dwarfs exhibit global magnetic structures with fields ranging from 1 kG to hundreds of MG. Recently, the first radiation magnetohydrodynamics simulations of the atmosphere of white dwarfs showed that convection should be suppressed in their photospheres for magnetic fields with strengths B $\gtrsim$ 50 kG. These predictions are in agreement with our knowledge of stellar physics (e.g. energy transfer in strong magnetic field regions of the solar photosphere), but have yet to be directly confirmed from white dwarf observations. We obtained COS far-UV spectroscopy of the weakly magnetic, hydrogen-atmosphere, white dwarf WD2105-820 and of three additional non-magnetic, convective remnants (all in the $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$ range 9000-11,000 K). We fitted both the COS and the already available optical spectra with convective and radiative atmospheric models. As expected, we find that for two of the non-magnetic comparison stars only convective model fits predict consistent $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$ values from both the optical and the FUV spectra. In contrast, for WD2105-820 only the best fitting radiative model produced consistent results.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRA

Scanning Gate Imaging of quantum point contacts and the origin of the 0.7 Anomaly

The origin of the anomalous transport feature appearing at conductance G \approx 0.7 x (2e2/h) in quasi-1D ballistic devices - the so-called 0.7 anomaly - represents a long standing puzzle. Several mechanisms were proposed to explain it, but a general consensus has not been achieved. Proposed explanations are based on quantum interference, Kondo effect, Wigner crystallization, and more. A key open issue is whether point defects that can occur in these low-dimensional devices are the physical cause behind this conductance anomaly. Here we adopt a scanning gate microscopy technique to map individual impurity positions in several quasi-1D constrictions and correlate these with conductance characteristics. Our data demonstrate that the 0.7 anomaly can be observed irrespective of the presence of localized defects, and we conclude that the 0.7 anomaly is a fundamental property of low-dimensional systems

Imaging fractional incompressible stripes in integer quantum Hall systems

Transport experiments provide conflicting evidence on the possible existence of fractional order within integer quantum Hall systems. In fact integer edge states sometimes behave as monolithic objects with no inner structure, while other experiments clearly highlight the role of fractional substructures. Recently developed low-temperature scanning probe techniques offer today an opportunity for a deeper-than-ever investigation of spatial features of such edge systems. Here we use scanning gate microscopy and demonstrate that fractional features were unambiguously observed in every integer quantum Hall constriction studied. We present also an experimental estimate of the width of the fractional incompressible stripes corresponding to filling factors 1/3, 2/5, 3/5, and 2/3. Our results compare well with predictions of the edge-reconstruction theory

Erfolgsfaktoren von Investmentfonds aus Nachfragersicht

Die vorliegende Arbeit dient der Untersuchung des Marketing von Investmentfondsgesellschaften in Deutschland. Ein erstes Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf der Beschreibung des Marketingverhaltens von Fondsgesellschaften. Dabei wird eine Vorgehensweise anhand der vier klassichen Marketing-Mix-Instrumente Preis, Produkt, Distribution und Kommunikation gewählt. Es werden die jeweiligen Besonderheiten in der Anwendung im Vergleich zu anderen Dienstleistungen und aktuelle Entwicklungen dargestellt. Danach wird als zweiter Schwerpunkt auf das Kaufverhalten von Fondskonsumenten eingegangen; ein bislang vollkommen unerforschtes Gebiet. Der Markt für Investmentfonds wird also neben der Betrachtung der Anbieterseite nun auch nachfragerseitig beleuchtet. Interessante Ergebnisse sind z.B. die steigende Wichtigkeit der Reputation der Fondsgesellschaft und die unbedeutende Stellung der Fondsmanager im Kaufentscheidungsprozess von Anlegern. Abschließend werden anhand der analysierten anbieter- als auch nachfragerseitigen Entwicklungen Handlungsempfehlungen für deutsche Fondsgesellschaften abgeleitet