Does decentralization matter for renewable energy sources? The impact of governmental decentralization on the renewable energy transition.

Treballs Finals del Màster d'Economia, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2021, Tutor: Enrique López-BazoThe human impact on the environment and climate is growing at an alarming speed, as about half of the cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions have occurred since the 1970’s. International efforts to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels are undertaken and the reduction of emissions in the energy sector plays a crucial role in this process. Based on the decentralized character of most clean technologies and the policy-based property of the energy transition, this study investigates the impact of (governmental) decentralization and its interdependency with institutional quality on the renewable energy development. For this purpose, a panel data sample, containing 63 developed and developing countries over the timeperiod of 1990 to 2015 is deployed and econometrically evaluated. The results indeed verify a promoting effect of decentralization and its crucial relationship with institutional quality, although, emphasizing its conditional robustness to alternative outcome variable and model specifications. Furthermore, the findings suggest a significantly heterogenous impact of decentralization depending on the level of development and the associated level of institutional quality. The results imply the importance of a simultaneous strengthening of the institutional quality in combination with decentralization to sustain an enhancing impact on the renewable energy deployment

Churn Analysis Using Deep Learning: Customer Classification from a Practical Point of View

The business relevance of customer churn analysis is increasing due to the growing availability of corresponding data and intensifying competition. Here, especially the predictive accuracy of modeling approaches is in the focus of researchers and practitioners alike, with deep neural networks recently becoming an attractive method due to their high performance in a variety of fields. However, from a practical point of view, other factors such as the ease of application and model interpretability are also to be considered. These aspects are generally viewed as shortcomings of deep neural networks. Therefore, a novel framework for the application of deep learning in churn analysis is developed and tested in a practical setting. It is shown, that a less complex application procedure and more easily interpretable prediction modeling can be achieved

Die Dekolonialisierung der Kritischen Theorie: Amy Allen versucht, das Begründungsproblem neu aufzurollen

Amy Allen: The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press 2016. 978023117324

Mission Impossible? Rezension zu "Kritische Theorie der Politik" von Ulf Bohmann und Paul Sörensen (Hg.)

Ulf Bohmann / Paul Sörensen (Hg.): Kritische Theorie der Politik. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, Bd. 2263. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2019. 978-3-518-29863-

Hannah Arendts Beitrag zur politischen Bildung Tonio Oeftering, Waltraud Meints-Stender, Dirk Lange (Hrsg): Hannah Arendt. Lektüren zur politischen Bildung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2020, 180 S., 44,99 €

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Dynamic Procedure for Filtered Gyrokinetic Simulations

Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of gyrokinetic plasma turbulence are investigated as interesting candidates to decrease the computational cost. A dynamic procedure is implemented in the GENE code, allowing for dynamic optimization of the free parameters of the LES models (setting the amplitudes of dissipative terms). Employing such LES methods, one recovers the free energy and heat flux spectra obtained from highly resolved Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). Systematic comparisons are performed for different values of the temperature gradient and magnetic shear, parameters which are of prime importance in Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG) driven turbulence. Moreover, the degree of anisotropy of the problem, that can vary with parameters, can be adapted dynamically by the method that shows Gyrokinetic Large Eddy Simulation (GyroLES) to be a serious candidate to reduce numerical cost of gyrokinetic solvers.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasma