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The 2015 Paris Agreement was widely greeted with enthusiasm. We assess the short-term and long-term potential effectiveness of Paris. Concerning short-term effectiveness, we contend that while Paris scores high on participation, and reasonably high on the depth of the parties' commitments (ambition), its Achilles' heel will likely be compliance. Concerning long-term effectiveness, we argue that Paris does little to restructure states' incentives so as to avoid free riding. At worst, it might end up as a failure, much like Kyoto did. On the other hand, domestic and international norms could continue to develop in a direction that makes it more and more difficult for individuals, firms, and states alike to ignore the plea to limit and reduce their carbon footprints. Technological progress that gradually reduces abatement costs, combined with leadership by major emitters such as the United States, might further strengthen climate cooperation and enhance other countries' willingness to follow through. However, deep political polarization continues to represent a significant barrier to U.S. leadership on climate change.

The 2015 Paris Agreement was widely greeted with enthusiasm. We assess the short-term and long-term potential effectiveness of Paris. Concerning short-term effectiveness, we contend that while Paris scores high on participation, and reasonably high on the depth of the parties' commitments (ambition), its Achilles' heel will likely be compliance. Concerning long-term effectiveness, we argue that Paris does little to restructure states' incentives so as to avoid free riding. At worst, it might end up as a failure, much like Kyoto did. On the other hand, domestic and international norms could continue to develop in a direction that makes it more and more difficult for individuals, firms, and states alike to ignore the plea to limit and reduce their carbon footprints. Technological progress that gradually reduces abatement costs, combined with leadership by major emitters such as the United States, might further strengthen climate cooperation and enhance other countries' willingness to follow through. However, deep political polarization continues to represent a significant barrier to U.S. leadership on climate change.

The 2015 Paris Agreement was widely greeted with enthusiasm. We assess the short-term and long-term potential effectiveness of Paris. Concerning short-term effectiveness, we contend that while Paris scores high on participation, and reasonably high on the depth of the parties' commitments (ambition), its Achilles' heel will likely be compliance. Concerning long-term effectiveness, we argue that Paris does little to restructure states' incentives so as to avoid free riding. At worst, it might end up as a failure, much like Kyoto did. On the other hand, domestic and international norms could continue to develop in a direction that makes it more and more difficult for individuals, firms, and states alike to ignore the plea to limit and reduce their carbon footprints. Technological progress that gradually reduces abatement costs, combined with leadership by major emitters such as the United States, might further strengthen climate cooperation and enhance other countries' willingness to follow through. However, deep political polarization continues to represent a significant barrier to U.S. leadership on climate change.

In the European Union States, household energy usage accounts on average for 40% of overall energy consumption and is responsible for a considerable amount of carbon dioxide emissions. The urgent need to take concrete action to identify solutions that can ensure more effective usage of energy in households, both because of environmental and political reasons, has been repeatedly stated by the European Parliament. White box, grey box and black box predictive models were demonstrated to be a feasible approach to predict the indoor temperature to implement an effective energy management strategy. This study has the purpose of illustrating the potentiality of an LSTM Artificial Neural Network in a short and long-term prediction of the indoor temperature in 15 offices distributed on three storeys of an existing building (Energy Center of Turin (Italy)). The indoor temperature was predicted two hours, five hours and one entire day ahead. The performance of these algorithms has been evaluated not only based on two main criteria (i.e., Root Mean Squared Error and Mean Absolute error) but also by considering the adaptability of the model between the three floors and in terms of different years. Moreover, the proposed work explains how parameters affect performances, aiming to properly identify the optimal model structure. Current results indicate that these models can provide accurate predictions for all the proposed time scales and could all potentially be used for predictive control purposes to optimise the energy demand. The novelty of this study is to show that these models can only be trained on data for a limited period and a specific plane, and then be reliable in predicting indoor temperature, both for different planes and for random periods, taking into account temperature and relative humidity. Furthermore, input parameters are limited to indoor HVAC variables, to ensure acceptable predictions regardless of outdoor parameters availability. The only exception is the outdoor temperature, because of its undeniable ...

ABSTRACTThis paper represents a case study in welfare state expansion. It takes an actor-centered point of view and reconstructs the long process which has ultimately led to a compromise solution to the problem of providing long-term care, especially for the elderly. It describes the previously means-tested arrangement of long-term care provision and its shortcomings. Furthermore, it sketches the different stages through which the political debate on this issue has passed during the last twenty years: from the initial phase of defining the "social problem", to the final stage when the approval of the compromise package became a question of "all or nothing". The analysis of the politics of long-term care insurance reveals that the difficulties of reaching an agreement mainly resulted from the complex decision-making situation. It was in essence a problem of decision-making under conditions of general uncertainty.

Long memory, robust statistics, locally stationary processes. - Langes Gedächtnis, robuste Statistik, lokal stationäre Prozesse