Measurements of the Top Quark Mass at ATLAS and CMS

We present recent measurements of the top quark mass by the ATLAS and CMS experiments in the $\mathrm{t}\overline{\mathrm{t}}$ lepton+jets, all-hadronic, and dilepton channels. In addition, we present a measurement using a topology enriched in t-channel single top events. The analyses include observables whose sensitivity to the top mass is calibrated using Monte Carlo simulation before they are utilized to extract the value of $\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{t}}$ in data. The measurements outlined here enter into recent combinations by ATLAS and CMS that yield a sub-GeV precision on the top mass.Comment: 6 pages, 18 figures. To be published in the LHCP 2015 proceeding

A postulated law for the masses of the elementary particles

Postulated law for masses of elementary particle

Endogenous Public Policy and Long-Run Growth

. We study the determinants of voting outcomes on the provision of public consumption through marginal income taxes in the context of the simple linear growth model. We focus on how the dynamic politicoeconomic equilibrium maps the economic fundamentals to policies and long-run growth. We find that in a deterministic growth environment voters internalize, although imperfectly, the deadweight losses of taxation and vote for lower taxes when the productivity of capital is higher. Therefore, the politicoeconomic channel reinforces the positive role of productivity for growth. In a stochastic environment, we find that if business cycles are driven by productivity shocks in the endogenous growth framework, equilibrium policies imply that taxes should fall in high growth periods and rise in low-growth periods. In line with existing evidence, our model predicts procyclical public consumption and countercyclical public consumption GDP shares.voting, second-best taxation, endogenous growth

A Provable Defense for Deep Residual Networks

We present a training system, which can provably defend significantly larger neural networks than previously possible, including ResNet-34 and DenseNet-100. Our approach is based on differentiable abstract interpretation and introduces two novel concepts: (i) abstract layers for fine-tuning the precision and scalability of the abstraction, (ii) a flexible domain specific language (DSL) for describing training objectives that combine abstract and concrete losses with arbitrary specifications. Our training method is implemented in the DiffAI system

Firms, Shareholders, and Financial Markets

We study the influence of the financial market on the decisions of firms in the real market. To that end, we present a model in which the shareholders portfolio selection of assets and the decisions of the publicly-traded firms are integrated through the market process. Financial access alters the objective function of the firms, and the market interaction of shareholders substantially influences firms behavior in the real sector. After characterizing the unique equilibrium, we show that the financial sector integrates the preferences of all shareholders into the decisions for production and ownership structure. The participation from investors in the financial market also limits the firms’ ability to manipulate real prices, i.e., there is a loss of market power in the real sector. Note that, while the loss of market power changes expected profits, it is not detrimental to shareholders since the expected return of equity share depends on the variance (and not the mean) of profits. Indeed, any change in expected profits is absorbed by the financial price. We also show that financial access increases production, thereby altering the distribution of profits. In particular, financial access induces firms to take on more risk. Finally, financial access makes the relationship between risk-aversion and risk-taking ambiguous. For example, it is possible that an increase in risk-aversion leads to more risk-taking, i.e., the variance of real profits increases.Financial sector, Firm behavior, Market power, Monopoly, Perfect competition, Publicly-traded firm, Shareholder behavior, Risk aversion, Risk taking