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Both practices, with and without stiffness modifiers, are followed to decide about the reinforcement requirement against the design forces. Both approaches will lead to a stable structure as long as mechanics holds. Having said that, the stiffness-modifier approach is more conservative, and is better representation of the actual conditions in most cases; one would expect columns to be less cracked than beams, and consequently will attract larger share of unbalanced moments at beam-column joint as compared to un-cracked scenario.