TY - THES A1 - Sperfeld, Robert T1 - Decentralisation and establishment of local government in Lesotho N2 - This diploma thesis deals with the process of political and administrative decentralisation in the Kingdom of Lesotho. Although decentralization in itself does not automatically lead to development it became an integral part of reform processes in many developing countries. Governments and international donors consider efficient decentralized political and administrative structures as essential elements of “good governance” and a prerequisite for structural poverty alleviation. This paper seeks to analyse how the given decentralization strategy and its implementation is affecting different features of good governance in the case of Lesotho. The results of the analysis confirm that the decentralisation process significantly improved political participation of the local population. However, the second objective of enhancing efficiency through decentralisation was not achieved. To the contrary, in the institutional design of the newly created local authorities and in the civil service recruitment policy efficiency considerations did not matter. Additionally, the created mechanisms for political participation generate relevant costs. Thus it is impossible to judge unambiguously on the contribution of decentralisation to the achievement of good governance. Different subtargets of good governance are influenced contrarily. Consequently, the adequacy of the concept of good governance as a guiding concept for decentralisation policies can be questioned. The assessment of the success of decentralisation policies requires a normative framework that takes into account the relations between both participation and efficiency. Despite the partly reduced administrative efficiency the author’s overall impression of the decentralisation process in Lesotho is positive. The establishment of democratically legitimised and participatory local governments justifies certain additional expenditure. However, mistakes in the design and the implementation of the decentralisation strategy would have been avoidable. N2 - Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit befasst sich mit dem Prozess der politischen und administrativen Dezentralisierung im Königreich Lesotho, einem Entwicklungsland im Südlichen Afrika. Orientierung für die Dezentralisierungsstrategie bietet das in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit anerkannte Leitbild der „Good Governance“. Die Arbeit untersucht, wie die Umsetzung der Dezentralisierung im Falle Lesothos konkret zur Annäherung an das Leitbild der Good Governance beiträgt. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass sich die Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten der Bevölkerung an den lokalen politischen Prozessen durch die Dezentralisierung erheblich verbessert haben. Das gleichzeitig verfolgte Ziel, durch dezentrale Strukturen die Effizienz zu steigern, konnte nicht erreicht werden. Es ist, im Gegenteil, von geringerer Effizienz auszugehen. Grund hierfür sind sowohl die Kosten der Partizipation, als auch ein institutionelles Design und eine Personalpolitik, die Effizienzgesichtspunkte weitgehend vernachlässigen. Ein pauschales Urteil, ob der Dezentralisierungsprozess in Lesotho Good Governance befördert, ist somit nicht möglich. Die Auswirkungen auf verschiedene Unterziele von Good Governance sind sowohl positiv als auch negativ. Damit zeigt sich, dass Good Governance im Falle Lesothos nur bedingt als Leitbild und Zielsystem für Dezentralisierung geeignet ist. Um den Erfolg der Dezentralisierung einzuschätzen ist ein normativer Rahmen erforderlich, der die Beziehung beider Ziele nicht ausblendet. Der Autor plädiert im Falle Lesothos für eine bedingt positive Gesamteinschätzung des Dezentralisierungsprozesses, trotz der verringerten Effizienz. Der Aufbau von demokratisch legitimierten und beteiligungsintensiven kommunalen Strukturen rechtfertigt bestimmte Aufwendungen. Fehler bei Planung und Umsetzung der Dezentralisierungsstrategie wären jedoch vermeidbar gewesen. KW - Dezentralisation KW - Lesotho KW - Staatskunst KW - governance KW - Afrika KW - Partizipation KW - Effizienz KW - Verwaltung KW - governance KW - administration KW - participation KW - decentralisation KW - efficiency Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-10867 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yadav, Himanshu A1 - Husain, Samar A1 - Futrell, Richard T1 - Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies? JF - Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal N2 - In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness. KW - crossing dependencies KW - dependency length KW - dependency treebanks KW - efficiency KW - language processing KW - syntax Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070 SN - 2199-174X VL - 7 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ; New York, NY ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Herbst, Eva‐Maria A1 - Maschler, Fabian A1 - Niephaus, Fabio A1 - Reimann, Max A1 - Steier, Julia A1 - Felgentreff, Tim A1 - Lincke, Jens A1 - Taeumel, Marcel A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert A1 - Witt, Carsten T1 - ecoControl T1 - ecoControl BT - Entwurf und Implementierung einer Software zur Optimierung heterogener Energiesysteme in Mehrfamilienhäusern BT - design and implementation of a prototype for optimizing heterogeneous energy systems in multi‐family residential buildings N2 - Eine dezentrale Energieversorgung ist ein erster Schritt in Richtung Energiewende. Dabei werden auch in Mehrfamilienhäusern vermehrt verschiedene Strom- und Wärmeerzeuger eingesetzt. Besonders in Deutschland kommen in diesem Zusammenhang Blockheizkraftwerke immer häufiger zum Einsatz, weil sie Gas sehr effizient in Strom und Wärme umwandeln können. Außerdem ermöglichen sie, im Zusammenspiel mit anderen Energiesystemen wie beispielsweise Photovoltaik-Anlagen, eine kontinuierliche und dezentrale Energieversorgung. Bei dem Betrieb von unterschiedlichen Energiesystemen ist es wünschenswert, dass die Systeme aufeinander abgestimmt arbeiten. Allerdings ist es bisher schwierig, heterogene Energiesysteme effizient miteinander zu betreiben. Dadurch bleiben Einsparungspotentiale ungenutzt. Eine zentrale Steuerung kann deshalb die Effizienz des Gesamtsystems verbessern. Mit ecoControl stellen wir einen erweiterbaren Prototypen vor, der die Kooperation von Energiesystemen optimiert und Umweltfaktoren miteinbezieht. Dazu stellt die Software eine einheitliche Bedienungsoberfläche zur Konfiguration aller Systeme zur Verfügung. Außerdem bietet sie die Möglichkeit, Optimierungsalgorithmen mit Hilfe einer Programmierschnittstelle zu entwickeln, zu testen und auszuführen. Innerhalb solcher Algorithmen können von ecoControl bereitgestellte Vorhersagen genutzt werden. Diese Vorhersagen basieren auf dem individuellen Verhalten von jedem Energiesystem, Wettervorhersagen und auf Prognosen des Energieverbrauchs. Mithilfe einer Simulation können Techniker unterschiedliche Konfigurationen und Optimierungen sofort ausprobieren, ohne diese über einen langen Zeitraum an realen Geräten testen zu müssen. ecoControl hilft darüber hinaus auch Hausverwaltungen und Vermietern bei der Verwaltung und Analyse der Energiekosten. Wir haben anhand von Fallbeispielen gezeigt, dass Optimierungsalgorithmen, welche die Nutzung von Wärmespeichern verbessern, die Effizienz des Gesamtsystems erheblich verbessern können. Schließlich kommen wir zu dem Schluss, dass ecoControl in einem nächsten Schritt unter echten Bedingungen getestet werden muss, sobald eine geeignete Hardwarekomponente verfügbar ist. Über diese Schnittstelle werden die Messwerte an ecoControl gesendet und Steuersignale an die Geräte weitergeleitet. N2 - The energy turnaround in Germany affects not only big industries but also smaller advocates who are interested in cost-efficient and regenerative energy supply. The observable signs of decentralized supply indicate that many individuals are eager to employ affordable energy devices, such as solar power systems, by themselves. Owners or managers of multi-family residential buildings, for example, install heterogeneous sets of devices that have to satisfy the varying demands of tenants. These devices are primarily influenced by environmental factors such as the weather. Independently, on-site cogeneration units are increasingly used to produce both electrical and thermal energy in a dependable and decentralized way. While having an arguably good efficiency on their own, such energy systems, however, are not built to cooperate in an heterogeneous installation. Hence they can negatively affect overall costs or impair the optimal ecological energy usage. We propose a centralized, extensible control platform that supports low-effort integration and efficient cooperation of heterogeneous energy production and storage units. Our prototype ecoControl shows that such a software system can be used to optimize the communication protocol of energy devices in multi-family residential buildings. In addition a simulation of the devices and forecasts of both energy supply and demand facilitate an advanced configuration of the system to enable an optimal drive. An intuitive user interface supports technicians, managers or owners to monitor and adjust the operation of installed devices to accommodate given conditions - even if not anticipated by the manufacturer. In several example cases, we illustrate how optimization algorithms can improve the use of heat storages to increase overall efficiency by a significant factor. Although further investigations with representative settings are needed, we argue that ecoControl can contribute to Germany's energy turnaround by projecting a novel perspective on the application of interdependent energy production and storage units. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 93 KW - Energiesparen KW - Prognosen KW - Effizienz KW - Optimierungen KW - Algorithmen KW - Blockheizkraftwerke KW - Mehrfamilienhäuser KW - energy savings KW - forecasts KW - efficiency KW - optimizations KW - algorithms KW - cogeneration units KW - multi-­family residential buildings Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-72147 SN - 978-3-86956-318-3 SN - 1613-5652 SN - 2191-1665 IS - 93 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kuhlmann, Sabine A1 - Wayenberg, Ellen T1 - Institutional impact assessment in multi-level systems BT - conceptualizing decentralization effects from a comparative perspective T2 - International review of administrative sciences N2 - Comparative literature on institutional reforms in multi-level systems proceeds from a global trend towards the decentralization of state functions. However, there is only scarce knowledge about the impact that decentralization has had, in particular, upon the sub-central governments involved. How does it affect regional and local governments? Do these reforms also have unintended outcomes on the sub-central level and how can this be explained? This article aims to develop a conceptual framework to assess the impacts of decentralization on the sub-central level from a comparative and policyoriented perspective. This framework is intended to outline the major patterns and models of decentralization and the theoretical assumptions regarding de-/re-centralization impacts, as well as pertinent cross-country approaches meant to evaluate and compare institutional reforms. It will also serve as an analytical guideline and a structural basis for all the country-related articles in this Special Issue. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 91 KW - administrative reform KW - comparison KW - coordination KW - effectiveness KW - efficiency KW - impact assessment KW - institutional reform, KW - local government Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405314 VL - 82 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kuhlmann, Sabine A1 - Wayenberg, Ellen T1 - Institutional impact assessment in multi-level systems: conceptualizing decentralization effects from a comparative perspective JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration N2 - Comparative literature on institutional reforms in multi-level systems proceeds from a global trend towards the decentralization of state functions. However, there is only scarce knowledge about the impact that decentralization has had, in particular, upon the sub-central governments involved. How does it affect regional and local governments? Do these reforms also have unintended outcomes on the sub-central level and how can this be explained? This article aims to develop a conceptual framework to assess the impacts of decentralization on the sub-central level from a comparative and policy-oriented perspective. This framework is intended to outline the major patterns and models of decentralization and the theoretical assumptions regarding de-/re-centralization impacts, as well as pertinent cross-country approaches meant to evaluate and compare institutional reforms. It will also serve as an analytical guideline and a structural basis for all the country-related articles in this Special Issue. Points for practitioners Decentralization reforms are approved as having a key role to play in the attainment of ‘good governance’. Yet, there is also the enticement on the part of state governments to offload an ever-increasing amount of responsibilities to, and overtask, local levels of government, which can lead to increasing performance disparities within local sub-state jurisdictions. Against this background, the article provides a conceptual framework to assess reform impacts from a comparative perspective. The analytical framework can be used by practitioners to support their decisions about new decentralization strategies or necessary adjustments regarding ongoing reform measures. KW - administrative reform KW - comparison KW - coordination KW - effectiveness KW - efficiency KW - impact assessment KW - institutional reform KW - local government Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852315583194 SN - 0020-8523 SN - 1461-7226 VL - 82 IS - 2 SP - 233 EP - 272 PB - Sage CY - London ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Borck, Rainald A1 - Oshiro, Jun A1 - Satō, Yasuhiro T1 - Property tax competition BT - A quantitative assessment T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxa-tion regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and “rent seeking” regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently high tax rates, whereas centralized taxation yields a common optimal tax rate, and tax rates in the rent-seeking regime can be either inefficiently high or low. We quantify the effects of switching from the observed tax system to the three regimes for Japan and Germany. The decentralized or rent-seeking regime best describes the Japanese tax system, whereas the centralized regime does so for Germany. We also quantify the welfare effects of regime changes. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 52 KW - property taxes KW - tax competition KW - efficiency Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562228 SN - 2628-653X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zhong, Yufei A1 - Causa, Martina A1 - Moore, Gareth John A1 - Krauspe, Philipp A1 - Xiao, Bo A1 - Günther, Florian A1 - Kublitski, Jonas A1 - BarOr, Eyal A1 - Zhou, Erjun A1 - Banerji, Natalie T1 - Sub-picosecond charge-transfer at near-zero driving force in polymer:non-fullerene acceptor blends and bilayers JF - Nature Communications N2 - Organic photovoltaics based on non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) show record efficiency of 16 to 17% and increased photovoltage owing to the low driving force for interfacial charge-transfer. However, the low driving force potentially slows down charge generation, leading to a tradeoff between voltage and current. Here, we disentangle the intrinsic charge-transfer rates from morphology-dependent exciton diffusion for a series of polymer:NFA systems. Moreover, we establish the influence of the interfacial energetics on the electron and hole transfer rates separately. We demonstrate that charge-transfer timescales remain at a few hundred femtoseconds even at near-zero driving force, which is consistent with the rates predicted by Marcus theory in the normal region, at moderate electronic coupling and at low re-organization energy. Thus, in the design of highly efficient devices, the energy offset at the donor:acceptor interface can be minimized without jeopardizing the charge-transfer rate and without concerns about a current-voltage tradeoff. KW - organic solar cell KW - electron-transfer KW - Donor-Acceptor (DA) interface KW - transfer dynamics KW - donor KW - seperation KW - efficiency KW - impact KW - energy KW - photovoltaics Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14549-w SN - 2041-1723 VL - 11 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Nature Publishing Group UK CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zhong, Yufei A1 - Causa, Martina A1 - Moore, Gareth John A1 - Krauspe, Philipp A1 - Xiao, Bo A1 - Günther, Florian A1 - Kublitski, Jonas A1 - BarOr, Eyal A1 - Zhou, Erjun A1 - Banerji, Natalie T1 - Sub-picosecond charge-transfer at near-zero driving force in polymer:non-fullerene acceptor blends and bilayers T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Organic photovoltaics based on non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) show record efficiency of 16 to 17% and increased photovoltage owing to the low driving force for interfacial charge-transfer. However, the low driving force potentially slows down charge generation, leading to a tradeoff between voltage and current. Here, we disentangle the intrinsic charge-transfer rates from morphology-dependent exciton diffusion for a series of polymer:NFA systems. Moreover, we establish the influence of the interfacial energetics on the electron and hole transfer rates separately. We demonstrate that charge-transfer timescales remain at a few hundred femtoseconds even at near-zero driving force, which is consistent with the rates predicted by Marcus theory in the normal region, at moderate electronic coupling and at low re-organization energy. Thus, in the design of highly efficient devices, the energy offset at the donor:acceptor interface can be minimized without jeopardizing the charge-transfer rate and without concerns about a current-voltage tradeoff. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1422 KW - organic solar cell KW - electron-transfer KW - Donor-Acceptor (DA) interface KW - transfer dynamics KW - donor KW - seperation KW - efficiency KW - impact KW - energy KW - photovoltaics Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-511936 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Yin, Chunhong T1 - The interplay of nanostructure and efficiency of polymer solar cells T1 - Einfluss der Nanostruktur auf die Effizienz von Polymer-Solarzellen N2 - The aim of this thesis is to achieve a deep understanding of the working mechanism of polymer based solar cells and to improve the device performance. Two types of the polymer based solar cells are studied here: all-polymer solar cells comprising macromolecular donors and acceptors based on poly(p-phenylene vinylene) and hybrid cells comprising a PPV copolymer in combination with a novel small molecule electron acceptor. To understand the interplay between morphology and photovoltaic properties in all-polymer devices, I compared the photocurrent characteristics and excited state properties of bilayer and blend devices with different nano-morphology, which was fine tuned by using solvents with different boiling points. The main conclusion from these complementary measurements was that the performance-limiting step is the field-dependent generation of free charge carriers, while bimolecular recombination and charge extraction do not compromise device performance. These findings imply that the proper design of the donor-acceptor heterojunction is of major importance towards the goal of high photovoltaic efficiencies. Regarding polymer-small molecular hybrid solar cells I combined the hole-transporting polymer M3EH-PPV with a novel Vinazene-based electron acceptor. This molecule can be either deposited from solution or by thermal evaporation, allowing for a large variety of layer architectures to be realized. I then demonstrated that the layer architecture has a large influence on the photovoltaic properties. Solar cells with very high fill factors of up to 57 % and an open circuit voltage of 1V could be achieved by realizing a sharp and well-defined donor-acceptor heterojunction. In the past, fill factors exceeding 50 % have only been observed for polymers in combination with soluble fullerene-derivatives or nanocrystalline inorganic semiconductors as the electron-accepting component. The finding that proper processing of polymer-vinazene devices leads to similar high values is a major step towards the design of efficient polymer-based solar cells. N2 - Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es, die grundlegende Arbeitsweise von polymerbasierten Solarzellen zu verstehen und ihre Leistungsfähigkeit zu erhöhen. Zwei Arten von organischen Solarzellen werden untersucht: Solarzellen, bei denen sowohl Elektronendonator und akzeptor auf Poly(p-phenylen-vinylen) basieren sowie Zellen, bei denen ein PPV-Copolymer als Elektronendonator und organische kleine Moleküle als Elektronenakzeptor fungierten. Um die Zusammenhänge zwischen Morphologie und photovoltaischen Eigenschaften zu verstehen, untersuchte ich Photoströme sowie die Eigenschaften angeregter Zustände in Zweischicht- und Mischsolarzellen mit unterschiedlicher Nano-Morphologie, welche durch die Verwendung von Lösungsmitteln mit unterschiedlichen Siedetemperaturen modifiziert wurde. Die Hauptschlussfolgerung aus diesen Messungen ist, dass der effizienzlimitierende Faktor die feldabhängige Generation freier Ladungsträger ist, wohingegen bimolekulare Rekombination oder die Extraktion der Ladungsträger die Leistungsfähigkeit von Polymer-Polymer- Solarzellen nicht beeinträchtigen. Diese Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die gezielte Einstellung der Donator-Akzeptor-Grenzfläche von besonderer Bedeutung zum Erreichen hoher Effizienzen ist. In Hybridsolarzellen aus Polymeren und kleinen Molekülen kombinierte ich das lochleitende konjugierte Polymer M3EH-PPV mit einem neuartigen Vinazen-Molekül als Elektronen-akzeptor. Dieses Molekül bietet die Möglichkeit, entweder aus einer Lösung heraus verarbeitet oder im Hochvakuum verdampft zu werden, wodurch eine Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Probenstrukturen realisiert werden kann. Dadurch konnte ich zeigen, dass die Struktur der aktiven Schicht einen großen Einfluss auf die photovoltaischen Eigenschaften hat. Die Solarzellen erreichten einen Füllfaktor von bis zu 57% und eine Kurzschluss¬spannung von 1 V. In der Vergangenheit konnten bei polymerbasierten Solarzellen Füllfaktoren über 50% nur in Verbindung mit Fullerenen oder nanokristallinen anorganischen Halbleitern als Akzeptoren erreicht werden. Das Resultat, dass bei geeigneter Präparation der Polymer-Vinazen-Schicht vergleichbare Ergebnisse erzielt werden können, ist ein bedeutender Schritt hin zu effizienteren Polymersolarzellen. KW - Nanostruktur KW - Polymer-Solarzelle KW - Effizienz KW - Morphologie KW - Polymer solar cells KW - nanostructure KW - efficiency KW - morphology Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-29054 ER -