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Tree approximation with anisotropic decompositions
(2010)SAM Research ReportIn recent years anisotropic transforms like the shearlet or curvelet transform have received a considerable amount of interest due to their ability to efficiently capture anisotropic features in terms of nonlinear N -term approximation. In this paper we study tree-approximation properties of such transforms where the N -term approximant has to satisfy the additional constraint that the set of kept indices possesses a tree structure. The ...Report -
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Reconstruction of a polygon from angles without prior knowledge of the size
(2010)Technical reportWe consider a simple agent exploring a polygon by moving from vertex to vertex along the boundary. At every vertex, the agent observes all angles between pairs of edges of the visibility graph, i.e. the angle between all pairs of visible vertices. The goal of the agent is to reconstruct the shape of the polygon, or equivalently its visibility graph. A polynomial time algorithm exists if the agent knows the total number of vertices a priori. ...Report -
Generierung und Übernahme von Energietechnologien und energiepolitische Förderung in der Schweiz
(2010)KOF StudiesDiese Forschungsarbeit stützt sich auf eine in ihrer Art einmalige Befragung Schweizer Unternehmungen, um empirische Einsichten zu relevanten Themen im Bezug auf die Nutzung und Generierung energieeffzienter Technologien zu gewinnen. Dabei werden folgende Fragen bearbeitet: welches sind die Bestimmungsfaktoren der Innovation (der Erschaung zuvor nicht verfügbarer neuer Technologien) sowie des Verbreitung (also des Einsatzes solcher ...Report -
Factsheet
(2010)CRN ReportsThe impact of disasters understood as extreme events that cause great damage, destruction, and human suffering is not the same on all people. Disaster losses are only at first sight the result of the respective events. At second sight, they are reflections of human vulnerabilities that arise from physical, social, economic, and political conditions and inequalities that have little to do with the event itself. The concept of social ...Report -
Quantitative Bedeutung der «Sans Papiers» für die externe Hausarbeit in Privathaushalten im Kanton Zürich
(2010)KOF StudiesReport -
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And Action: TV Sentiment and the US Consumer
(2010)KOF Working PapersThe average American watches over five hours of television per day. We test whether sentiment in TV news shows influences the ordinary consumer in the US, and whether the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is better at explaining changes in private consumption than TV news sentiment. TV news sentiment, we find, can better explain the consumption behavior of US households, especially when combined with personal income and savings.Working Paper -
From Rags to Riches: How Robust is the Influence of Culture on Entrepreneurial Activity?
(2010)KOF Working PapersEntrepreneurial activity differs substantially across countries. While cultural differences across countries have often been proposed as an explanation, measuring a country's cultural characteristics suffers from various problems. This paper offers new evidence on the relative importance of cultural and institutional determinants of economic activity. In order to test the hypothesis that cultural factors influence entrepreneurial behavior, ...Working Paper -
The information content of capacity utilisation rates for output gap estimates
(2010)KOF Working PapersFrom a theoretical perspective, the output gap is probably the most comprehensive and convincing concept to describe the cyclical position of an economy. Unfortunately, for practical purposes, the concept depends on the determination of potential output, which is an inherently unobservable variable. In this paper, we examine whether the real-time estimates of the output gap as published by the OECD can be improved by referring to measures ...Working Paper