PE2 (496) Apply <label class='research-domain' title='Fundamental Constituents of Matter'>PE2</label> filter
(-) Remove <label class='research-domain' title='Individuals, Markets and Organisations'>SH1 (285)</label> filter SH1 (285)
(-) Remove <label class='research-domain' title='Cultures and Cultural Production'>SH5 (282)</label> filter SH5 (282)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 1614. Show 10 | 20 | 50 | 100 results per page.
Project acronym ACAP
Project Acency Costs and Asset Pricing
Researcher (PI) Thomas Mariotti
Summary The main objective of this research project is to contribute at bridging the gap between the two main branches of financial theory, namely corporate finance and asset pricing. It is motivated by the conviction that these two aspects of financial activity should and can be analyzed within a unified framework. This research will borrow from these two approaches in order to construct theoretical models that allow one to analyze the design and issuance of financial securities, as well as the dynamics of their valuations. Unlike asset pricing, which takes as given the price of the fundamentals, the goal is to derive security price processes from a precise description of firm's operations and internal frictions. Regarding the latter, and in line with traditional corporate finance theory, the analysis will emphasize the role of agency costs within the firm for the design of its securities. But the analysis will be pushed one step further by studying the impact of these agency costs on key financial variables such as stock and bond prices, leverage, book-to-market ratios, default risk, or the holding of liquidities by firms. One of the contributions of this research project is to show how these variables are interrelated when firms and investors agree upon optimal financial arrangements. The final objective is to derive a rich set of testable asset pricing implications that would eventually be brought to the data.
The main objective of this research project is to contribute at bridging the gap between the two main branches of financial theory, namely corporate finance and asset pricing. It is motivated by the conviction that these two aspects of financial activity should and can be analyzed within a unified framework. This research will borrow from these two approaches in order to construct theoretical models that allow one to analyze the design and issuance of financial securities, as well as the dynamics of their valuations. Unlike asset pricing, which takes as given the price of the fundamentals, the goal is to derive security price processes from a precise description of firm's operations and internal frictions. Regarding the latter, and in line with traditional corporate finance theory, the analysis will emphasize the role of agency costs within the firm for the design of its securities. But the analysis will be pushed one step further by studying the impact of these agency costs on key financial variables such as stock and bond prices, leverage, book-to-market ratios, default risk, or the holding of liquidities by firms. One of the contributions of this research project is to show how these variables are interrelated when firms and investors agree upon optimal financial arrangements. The final objective is to derive a rich set of testable asset pricing implications that would eventually be brought to the data.
Project acronym ACCUPOL
Project Unlimited Growth? A Comparative Analysis of Causes and Consequences of Policy Accumulation
Researcher (PI) Christoph KNILL
Summary ACCUPOL systematically analyzes an intuitively well-known, but curiously under-researched phenomenon: policy accumulation. Societal modernization and progress bring about a continuously growing pile of policies in most political systems. At the same time, however, the administrative capacities for implementation are largely stagnant. While being societally desirable in principle, ever-more policies hence may potentially imply less in terms of policy achievements. Whether or not policy accumulation remains at a 'sustainable' rate thus crucially affects the long-term output legitimacy of modern democracies. Given this development, the central focus of ACCUPOL lies on three questions: Do accumulation rates vary across countries and policy sectors? Which factors mitigate policy accumulation? And to what extent is policy accumulation really associated with an increasing prevalence of implementation deficits? In answering these questions, ACCUPOL radically departs from established research traditions in public policy. First, the project develops new analytical concepts: Rather than relying on individual policy change as the unit of analysis, we consider policy accumulation to assess the growth of policy portfolios over time. In terms of implementation, ACCUPOL takes into account the overall prevalence of implementation deficits in a given sector instead of analyzing the effectiveness of individual implementation processes. Second, this analytical innovation also implies a paradigmatic theoretical shift. Because existing theories focus on the analysis of individual policies, they are of limited help to understand causes and consequences of policy accumulation. ACCUPOL develops a novel theoretical approach to fill this theoretical gap. Third, the project provides new empirical evidence on the prevalence of policy accumulation and implementation deficits focusing on 25 OECD countries and two key policy areas (social and environmental policy).
ACCUPOL systematically analyzes an intuitively well-known, but curiously under-researched phenomenon: policy accumulation. Societal modernization and progress bring about a continuously growing pile of policies in most political systems. At the same time, however, the administrative capacities for implementation are largely stagnant. While being societally desirable in principle, ever-more policies hence may potentially imply less in terms of policy achievements. Whether or not policy accumulation remains at a 'sustainable' rate thus crucially affects the long-term output legitimacy of modern democracies. Given this development, the central focus of ACCUPOL lies on three questions: Do accumulation rates vary across countries and policy sectors? Which factors mitigate policy accumulation? And to what extent is policy accumulation really associated with an increasing prevalence of implementation deficits? In answering these questions, ACCUPOL radically departs from established research traditions in public policy. First, the project develops new analytical concepts: Rather than relying on individual policy change as the unit of analysis, we consider policy accumulation to assess the growth of policy portfolios over time. In terms of implementation, ACCUPOL takes into account the overall prevalence of implementation deficits in a given sector instead of analyzing the effectiveness of individual implementation processes. Second, this analytical innovation also implies a paradigmatic theoretical shift. Because existing theories focus on the analysis of individual policies, they are of limited help to understand causes and consequences of policy accumulation. ACCUPOL develops a novel theoretical approach to fill this theoretical gap. Third, the project provides new empirical evidence on the prevalence of policy accumulation and implementation deficits focusing on 25 OECD countries and two key policy areas (social and environmental policy).
Project acronym ACO
Project The Proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils from Oral Utterance to Manuscript Edition as Evidence for Late Antique Persuasion and Self-Representation Techniques
Researcher (PI) Peter Alfred Riedlberger
Host Institution (HI) OTTO-FRIEDRICH-UNIVERSITAET BAMBERG
Summary The Acts of the Ecumenical Councils of Late Antiquity include (purportedly) verbatim minutes of the proceedings, a formal framework and copies of relevant documents which were either (allegedly) read out during the proceedings or which were later attached to the Acts proper. Despite this unusual wealth of documentary evidence, the daunting nature of the Acts demanding multidisciplinary competency, their complex structure with a matryoshka-like nesting of proceedings from different dates, and the stereotype that their contents bear only on Christological niceties have deterred generations of historians from studying them. Only in recent years have their fortunes begun to improve, but this recent research has not always been based on sound principles: the recorded proceedings of the sessions are still often accepted as verbatim minutes. Yet even a superficial reading quickly reveals widespread editorial interference. We must accept that in many cases the Acts will teach us less about the actual debates than about the editors who shaped their presentation. This does not depreciate the Acts' evidence: on the contrary, they are first-rate material for the rhetoric of persuasion and self-representation. It is possible, in fact, to take the investigation to a deeper level and examine in what manner the oral proceedings were put into writing: several passages in the Acts comment upon the process of note-taking and the work of the shorthand writers. Thus, the main objective of the proposed research project could be described as an attempt to trace the destinies of the Acts' texts, from the oral utterance to the manuscript texts we have today. This will include the fullest study on ancient transcript techniques to date; a structural analysis of the Acts' texts with the aim of highlighting edited passages; and a careful comparison of the various editions of the Acts, which survive in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Coptic, in order to detect traces of editorial interference.
The Acts of the Ecumenical Councils of Late Antiquity include (purportedly) verbatim minutes of the proceedings, a formal framework and copies of relevant documents which were either (allegedly) read out during the proceedings or which were later attached to the Acts proper. Despite this unusual wealth of documentary evidence, the daunting nature of the Acts demanding multidisciplinary competency, their complex structure with a matryoshka-like nesting of proceedings from different dates, and the stereotype that their contents bear only on Christological niceties have deterred generations of historians from studying them. Only in recent years have their fortunes begun to improve, but this recent research has not always been based on sound principles: the recorded proceedings of the sessions are still often accepted as verbatim minutes. Yet even a superficial reading quickly reveals widespread editorial interference. We must accept that in many cases the Acts will teach us less about the actual debates than about the editors who shaped their presentation. This does not depreciate the Acts' evidence: on the contrary, they are first-rate material for the rhetoric of persuasion and self-representation. It is possible, in fact, to take the investigation to a deeper level and examine in what manner the oral proceedings were put into writing: several passages in the Acts comment upon the process of note-taking and the work of the shorthand writers. Thus, the main objective of the proposed research project could be described as an attempt to trace the destinies of the Acts' texts, from the oral utterance to the manuscript texts we have today. This will include the fullest study on ancient transcript techniques to date; a structural analysis of the Acts' texts with the aim of highlighting edited passages; and a careful comparison of the various editions of the Acts, which survive in Greek, Latin, Syriac and Coptic, in order to detect traces of editorial interference.
Project acronym ActionContraThreat
Project Action selection under threat: the complex control of human defense
Researcher (PI) Dominik BACH
Summary Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation. To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects. This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.
Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation. To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects. This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.