Free University of Berlin

About: Free University of Berlin is a education organization based out in Berlin, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 35195 authors who have published 66525 publications receiving 2094403 citations. The organization is also known as: FU Berlin.

Inflation and growth: new evidence from a dynamic panel threshold analysis

Abstract: We introduce a dynamic panel threshold model to estimate inflation thresholds for long-term economic growth. Advancing on Hansen (J Econom 93:345–368, 1999) and Caner and Hansen (Econom Theory 20:813–843, 2004), our model allows the estimation of threshold effects with panel data even in case of endogenous regressors. The empirical analysis is based on a large panel-dataset including 124 countries. For industrialized countries, our results confirm the inflation targets of about 2% set by many central banks. For non-industrialized countries, we estimate that inflation rates exceeding 17% are associated with lower economic growth. Below this threshold, however, the correlation remains insignificant.

FLAIR: An Easy-to-Use Framework for State-of-the-Art NLP

Abstract: We present FLAIR, an NLP framework designed to facilitate training and distribution of state-of-the-art sequence labeling, text classification and language models. The core idea of the framework is to present a simple, unified interface for conceptually very different types of word and document embeddings. This effectively hides all embedding-specific engineering complexity and allows researchers to “mix and match” various embeddings with little effort. The framework also implements standard model training and hyperparameter selection routines, as well as a data fetching module that can download publicly available NLP datasets and convert them into data structures for quick set up of experiments. Finally, FLAIR also ships with a “model zoo” of pre-trained models to allow researchers to use state-of-the-art NLP models in their applications. This paper gives an overview of the framework and its functionality. The framework is available on GitHub at https://github.com/zalandoresearch/flair .

Functional roles of social support within the stress and coping process: A theoretical and empirical overview

Abstract: This article reports four longitudinal field studies and one experimental study designed to shed light on the functional roles of social support within the stress and coping context. First, the enabling hypothesis is examined that assumes a facilitating effect of support on self‐efficacy, which, in turn, promotes coping with the aftermath of cardiac surgery. Second, we discuss the support cultivation hypothesis that regards support as a mediator between self‐efficacy and various outcomes, such as depressive mood, as illustrated by a finding on the experience of macrosocial stress during the East German transition. Third, support is highlighted as a coping resource by specifying provided partner support as a predictor of patients' coping with cancer. It was found that the direct effect of provided support on coping needs to be mediated by received support in order to become effective. Fourth, coping efforts of a target person are found to be predictive of support intentions of a potential provider. The bet...