13,322 research outputs found
First-order directional ordering transition in the three-dimensional compass model
We study the low-temperature properties of the classical three-dimensional
compass or orbital model on simple-cubic lattices by means of
comprehensive large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. Our numerical results give
evidence for a directionally ordered phase that is reached via a first-order
transition at the temperature . To obtain
our results we employ local and cluster update algorithms, parallel tempering
and multiple histogram reweighting as well as model-specific screw-periodic
boundary conditions, which help counteract severe finite-size effects.Comment: 8.5 pages, 7 figures, 2 table
For-Profit Public Enforcement
This Article investigates an important yet undertheorized phenomenon: financial incentives in public enforcement. Each year, public enforcers assess billions of dollars in penalties and other financial sanctions for violations of state and federal law. Why? If the awards in question were the result of private lawsuits, the answer would be obvious. We expect that private enforcersāthe victims of law violations and their fee-seeking attorneysāwill attempt to maximize financial recoveries. Record recoveries come as no surprise in private class actions, for example. But dollar signs are harder to explain in the context of public enforcement. Unlike private attorneys, public enforcers are paid by salary. They have no direct financial stake in successful enforcement efforts. We assume that public enforcers pursue financial awards only for their deterrent value, not for the benefits that such recoveries can bring the enforcement agency itself.
Or do they? This Article argues, contrary to the conventional wisdom on the division between public and private enforcement, that public enforcers often seek large monetary awards for self-interested reasons divorced from the public interest in deterrence. The incentives are strongest when enforcement agencies are permitted to retain all or some of the proceeds of enforcementāan institutional arrangement that is common at the state level and beginning to crop up in federal law. Yet even when public enforcers must turn over their winnings to the general treasury, they may have reputational incentives to focus their efforts on measurable units like dollars earned. Financially motivated public enforcers are likely to behave more like private enforcers than is commonly appreciated: they will undertake more enforcement actions, focus on maximizing financial recoveries rather than securing injunctive relief, and compete with other would-be enforcers for lucrative cases. Those effects will often be undesirable, particularly in circumstances where the risk of over-enforcement is high. But financial incentives might provide a valuable spur to action for agencies that currently are performing well below optimal levels. Policymakers recognize as much when they seek to boost private enforcement by promising prevailing plaintiffs supra-compensatory damages. We show that financial incentives can serve a similar purpose in the public sphere, offering policymakers an additional tool for calibrating the level of public enforcement
Malpractice Reform Through Consumer Choice and Consumer Education: Are New Concepts Marketable?
Strong Nash Equilibria in Games with the Lexicographical Improvement Property
We introduce a class of finite strategic games with the property that every
deviation of a coalition of players that is profitable to each of its members
strictly decreases the lexicographical order of a certain function defined on
the set of strategy profiles. We call this property the Lexicographical
Improvement Property (LIP) and show that it implies the existence of a
generalized strong ordinal potential function. We use this characterization to
derive existence, efficiency and fairness properties of strong Nash equilibria.
We then study a class of games that generalizes congestion games with
bottleneck objectives that we call bottleneck congestion games. We show that
these games possess the LIP and thus the above mentioned properties. For
bottleneck congestion games in networks, we identify cases in which the
potential function associated with the LIP leads to polynomial time algorithms
computing a strong Nash equilibrium. Finally, we investigate the LIP for
infinite games. We show that the LIP does not imply the existence of a
generalized strong ordinal potential, thus, the existence of SNE does not
follow. Assuming that the function associated with the LIP is continuous,
however, we prove existence of SNE. As a consequence, we prove that bottleneck
congestion games with infinite strategy spaces and continuous cost functions
possess a strong Nash equilibrium
Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Mass Transfer through Semi-Permeable Membranes
A discontinuous Galerkin (dG) method for the numerical solution of
initial/boundary value multi-compartment partial differential equation (PDE)
models, interconnected with interface conditions, is presented and analysed.
The study of interface problems is motivated by models of mass transfer of
solutes through semi-permeable membranes. More specifically, a model problem
consisting of a system of semilinear parabolic advection-diffusion-reaction
partial differential equations in each compartment, equipped with respective
initial and boundary conditions, is considered. Nonlinear interface conditions
modelling selective permeability, congestion and partial reflection are applied
to the compartment interfaces. An interior penalty dG method is presented for
this problem and it is analysed in the space-discrete setting. The a priori
analysis shows that the method yields optimal a priori bounds, provided the
exact solution is sufficiently smooth. Numerical experiments indicate agreement
with the theoretical bounds and highlight the stability of the numerical method
in the advection-dominated regime
Optimal dividend policies with random profitability
We study an optimal dividend problem under a bankruptcy constraint. Firms
face a trade-off between potential bankruptcy and extraction of profits. In
contrast to previous works, general cash flow drifts, including
Ornstein--Uhlenbeck and CIR processes, are considered. We provide rigorous
proofs of continuity of the value function, whence dynamic programming, as well
as comparison between the sub- and supersolutions of the
Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman equation, and we provide an efficient and convergent
numerical scheme for finding the solution. The value function is given by a
nonlinear PDE with a gradient constraint from below in one dimension. We find
that the optimal strategy is both a barrier and a band strategy and that it
includes voluntary liquidation in parts of the state space. Finally, we present
and numerically study extensions of the model, including equity issuance and
credit lines
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