 Pelle Ahlerup, Ola Olsson, David Yanagizawa-Drott, Social capital vs institutions in the growth process, European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 25 (1), 2009. (Journal Article)
 
Is social capital a substitute or a complement to formal institutions for achieving economic growth? A number of recent micro studies suggest that interpersonal trust has its greatest impact on economic performance when court institutions are relatively weak. The conventional wisdom from most macro studies, however, is that social capital is unconditionally good for growth. On the basis of the micro evidence, we outline an investment game between a producer and a lender in an incomplete-contracts setting. A key insight is that social capital will have the greatest effect on the total surplus from the game at lower levels of institutional strength and that the effect of social capital vanishes when institutions are very strong. When we bring this prediction to an empirical cross-country growth regression, it is shown that the marginal effect of social capital (in the form of interpersonal trust) decreases with institutional strength. Our results imply that a one standard deviation rise in social capital in weakly institutionalized Nigeria should increase economic growth by 1.8 percentage points, whereas the same increase in social capital only increases growth by 0.3 percentage points in strongly institutionalized Canada. |
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Jonas Bösch, Prashant Goswami, Renato Pajarola, RASTeR : simple and efficient terrain rendering on the GPU, In: EUROGRAPHICS 2009, 2009-02-28. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
This paper introduces RASTeR, a GPU based LOD technique for interactive rendering of large terrains based on
a paired multi-resolution tree structure. Our approach uses regular height-data blocks and terrain independent triangle patches, which are used to efficiently subdivide the terrain data. At run time, continuous LODs can simply be generated by tiling a limited set of triangle patches, the indices to which are pre-computed, over height-field blocks, thereby minimizing the amount of data to be transferred to the graphics card. RASTeR maintains a constant frame rate through asynchronous and a priori fetching of raw or compressed elevation and texture data. The efficiency of our method is validated by presenting experimental results on large elevation models. |
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T Hübner, Renato Pajarola, Realtime vision-based lateral drift correction, In: EUROGRAPHICS, 2009-02-28. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
A major drawback in many robotics projects is the dependance on a specific environment and the otherwise uncertain behavior of the hardware. Simple navigation tasks like driving in a straight line can lead to a strong lateral drift over time in an unknown environment. In this paper we propose a fast and simple solution for the lateral drift problem for vision guided robots by real-time scene analysis. Without an environment-specific calibration of the
robot’s drive system, we balance the differential drive speed on the fly. Therefore, a feature detector is used on
consecutive images. Detected feature points determine the focus of expansion (FOE) that is used for locating and
correcting the robot’s lateral drift. Results are presented for an unmodified real-world indoor environment that
demonstrate that our method is able to correct most lateral drift, solely based on real-time vision processing. |
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R Kato, H Yokoi, A Hernandez Arieta, W Yu, T Arai, Mutual adaptation among man and machine by using f-MRI analysis, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 57 (2), 2009. (Journal Article)
A prosthetic device for disabled people requires new and reliable robotics technology. This paper describes the interesting reaction of our brain to an adaptable prosthetic system. The adaptable prosthetic system is composed of an EMG signal controlled robot hand with an EMG pattern recognition learning function for Transradial (below elbow) prostheses. The mutual adaptation between the system and the human body is analyzed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (f-MRI) in order to clarify the plasticity of the motor and sensory cortex area according to the changes in the prosthetic system. The developed prosthetic hand has 13 DOF: three motors on the thumb, two motors for each finger, and two motors for the wrist. The tactile feedback is applied by using surface electrical stimulus. The f-MRI data shows the process of replacement from a phantom limb image to the prosthetic hand image. |
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E M Aulich, Forschung intuitiv verstehen können, In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 49, p. 73, 28 February 2009. (Newspaper Article)
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Steffen Blaschke, Dennis Schoeneborn, David Seidl, Studying organizations as networks of communications: A methodological proposal, In: Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft - Kommission Organisation (VHB WK ORG). 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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C Göth, R Joss, Gerhard Schwabe, Ein mobiles Spiel wird zum Eventmarketinginstrument, In: Wirtschaftsinformatik 2009, 2009-02-25. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
Der mExplorer ist ein an der Universität Zürich entwickeltes mobiles Lernspiel, welches Erstsemestrigen den Campus einer Universität auf spielerische Art und Weise näher bringen soll.
In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, wie das Spiel für das Eventmarketing eingesetzt werden kann und welche Wirkungen es dabei hat. Bei einem Feldtest wird gezeigt, dass ähnliche Probleme wie beim mobilen Lernen auftreten, aber auch ähnliche emotionale Wirkungen erzielt werden. Aus den
unübersehbaren Ähnlichkeiten zwischen mobilem Lernen und Eventmarketing schliessen wir auf eine Konvergenz unterschiedlicher Lebensbereiche durch mobile Anwendungen. |
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J Novak, Mine, yours... ours? Designing for principal-agent collaboration in interactive value creation, In: Wirtschaftsinformatik 2009, 2009-02-25. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
The paper introduces a theoretically-grounded conceptual framework for the design of collaborative systems which support expert-mediated interactive value creation involving end-users as active participants in the creation of products and services in principal-agent settings. We show how the problems of information asymmetry and burden of choice in interactive value creation can be addressed by integrating the principal-agent perspective with CSCW models of collaboration between heterogeneous actors. Results of a preliminary application and evaluation through the design of a concrete system for cooperative travel advisory in a real-world setting suggest its usefulness and illustrate how it can inform design practice. |
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Teodoro D Cocca, Wie den Banken-Standort stärken, In: Finanz und Wirtschaft, 15, p. 23, 25 February 2009. (Newspaper Article)
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Teodoro D Cocca, Strategische Falle, In: Finanz und Wirtschaft, 14, p. 1, 21 February 2009. (Newspaper Article)
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Béatrice Hasler, Vania Guerra Correa, Nathan Labhart, Andy Zbinden, Rolf Pfeifer, The ShanghAI Lectures: Using virtual worlds for intercultural student collaboration, In: ACM Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration, 2009. (Conference or Workshop Paper)
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Simon Broda, Marc Paolella, Evaluating the density of ratios of noncentral quadratic forms in normal variables, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Vol. 53 (4), 2009. (Journal Article)
Two computable expressions for the exact density of a ratio of quadratic forms in Gaussian random vectors are derived, one of which is restricted to special cases of the problem. Ratios of this type are ubiquitous in econometrics, but their density, unlike the corresponding cumulative distribution function, has not received much attention to date. The new algorithms complement those available for the latter. The included performance study demonstrates the accuracy of the two algorithms, both absolute and relative to each other, and allows general recommendations on their use to be made. |
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R Stoyan, Challenges of selecting IT personnel online, In: PROF-09: ICT Professionalism: a Global Challenge, 2009-02-12. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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R Stoyan, T Ito, H Schauer, E-coaching for project communication to increase IT project success, In: PROF-09: ICT Professionalism: a Global Challenge, 2009-02-12. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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Burkhard Stiller, BoD Applications and B-o-D vs. B-no-D, In: Dagstuhl Seminar on "Bandwidth-on-Demand". 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Martin Waldburger, Bandwidth on Demand Contract(s), In: Dagstuhl Seminar 09072 Bandwidth on Demand. 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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David Hausheer, Virtual Networks on Demand, In: Dagstuhl Seminar on Bandwidth on Demand. 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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Burkhard Stiller, AoD, BoD, CoD, ..., RoD, SoD, ..., and XoD, In: Dagstuhl Seminar on "Bandwidth-on-Demand". 2009. (Conference Presentation)
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D Hausheer, 09072 Executive Summary -- Bandwidth on Demand, In: Dagstuhl Seminar 09072, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, Germany, Dagstuhl, Germany, 2009-02-08. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
This paper is the executive summary of the Dagstuhl Semi-
nar 09072 "Bandwidth on Demand" which was held from February 8-11,
2009, in Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics. |
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P Antoniadis, D Hausheer, K Shiomoto, Burkhard Stiller, J Walrand, 09072 Abstracts Collection - Bandwidth on Demand, In: Dagstuhl Seminar 09072 ``Bandwidth on Demand'', Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, Germany, Dagstuhl, Germany, 2009-02-08. (Conference or Workshop Paper published in Proceedings)
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