Knowledge of Catalan, public/private sector choice and earnings: Evidence from a double sample selection model

This paper explores the earnings return to Catalan knowledge for public and private workers in Catalonia. In doing so, we allow for a double simultaneous selection process. We consider, on the one hand, the non-random allocation of workers into one sector or another, and on the other, the potential self-selection into Catalan proficiency. In addition, when correcting the earnings equations, we take into account the correlation between the two selectivity rules. Our findings suggest that the apparent higher language return for public sector workers is entirely accounted for by selection effects, whereas knowledge of Catalan has a significant positive return in the private sector, which is somewhat higher when the selection processes are taken into account.

Public and private learning from prices, strategic substitutability and complementarity, and equilibrium multiplicity

We study a general static noisy rational expectations model where investors have private information about asset payoffs, with common and private components, and about their own exposure to an aggregate risk factor, and derive conditions for existence and uniqueness (or multiplicity) of equilibria. We find that a main driver of the characterization of equilibria is whether the actions of investors are strategic substitutes or complements. This latter property in turn is driven by the strength of a private learning channel from prices, arising from the multidimensional sources of asymmetric information, in relation to the usual public learning channel. When the private learning channel is strong (weak) in relation to the public we have strong (weak) strategic complementarity in actions and potentially multiple (unique) equilibria. The results enable a precise characterization of whether information acquisition decisions are strategic substitutes or complements. We find that the strategic substitutability in information acquisition result obtained in Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) is robust. JEL Classification: D82, D83, G14 Keywords: Rational expectations equilibrium, asymmetric information, risk exposure, hedging, supply information, information acquisition.

How much risk is mitigated by LTC Insurance? A case study of the public system in Spain

We present a methodology that allows to calculate the impact of a given Long-Term Care (LTC) insurance protection system on the risk of incurring extremely large individual lifetime costs. Our proposed methodology is illustrated with a case study. According to our risk measure, the current Spanish public LTC system mitigates individual risk by more than 30% compared to the situation where no public protection were available. We show that our method can be used to compare risk reduction of alternative LTC insurance plans.

The link between public support and private R&D effort: What is the optimal subsidy?

The effectiveness of R&D subsidies can vary substantially depending on their characteristics. Specifically, the amount and intensity of such subsidies are crucial issues in the design of public schemes supporting private R&D. Public agencies determine the intensities of R&D subsidies for firms in line with their eligibility criteria, although assessing the effects of R&D projects accurately is far from straightforward. The main aim of this paper is to examine whether there is an optimal intensity for R&D subsidies through an analysis of their impact on private R&D effort. We examine the decisions of a public agency to grant subsidies taking into account not only the characteristics of the firms but also, as few previous studies have done to date, those of the R&D projects. In determining the optimal subsidy we use both parametric and nonparametric techniques. The results show a non-linear relationship between the percentage of subsidy received and the firms’ R&D effort. These results have implications for technology policy, particularly for the design of R&D subsidies that ensure enhanced effectiveness.

Public Monitoring with Uncertainty in the Time Repetitions

This paper study repeated games where the time repetitions of the stage game are not known or controlled by the players. We call this feature random monitoring. Kawamori's (2004) shows that perfect random monitoring is always better than the canonical case. Surprisingly, when the monitoring is public, the result is less clear-cut and does not generalize in a straightforward way. Unless the public signals are sufficiently informative about player's actions and/or players are patient enough. In addition to a discount effect, that tends to consistently favor the provision of incentives, we found an information effect, associated with the time uncertainty on the distribution of public signals. Whether payoff improvements are or not possible, depends crucially on the direction and strength of these effects. JEL: C73, D82, D86. KEYWORDS: Repeated Games, Frequent Monitoring, Random Public Monitoring, Moral Hazard, Stochastic Processes.

Abortion in public reason

What abortion laws a liberal political community ought to have? Much has been said about the moral problem of abortion, but there has not been yet (to my knowledge) a fully articulate account of the bearing of the competing answers to this ethical problem on liberal public reason. The first part of my project consists in a critical review of the different attempts to solve the various philosophical puzzles, both metaphysical and moral, posed by the abortion problem. Why is it wrong to kill beings like you and me? By answering this question we shall gain a better insight into those properties we have that give us such strong reasons against killing beings like us. Here we face a tremendous philosophical diffuculty, for it is not possible to determine what the robustest account of the wrongness of killing is without dealing with deeper metaethical and metaphysical problems. Indeed, consequentialist and nonconsequentialist moral theories differ in what it is that makes an action morally wrong -is it just the outcome of the action as compared with the outcomes of its alternatives? Or is it something else? Also, what are we essentially? Is the foetus merely our precursor? Then killing a foetus is relevantly similar to contraception. Or is the foetus one of us? If so, when we kill it, are we depriving it of a future as valuable as ours? Perhaps the relation of identity (the fact that it is its future as opposed to someone else's) doesn't matter. That may be because the foetus is an aggregate of biological and psychological facts and perhaps aggregates are not substances. Or maybe it is a substance but only psychological realtions matter, not personal identity. The second part of my project has to do with the different status these metaphisical and ethical positions ought to have in liberal public reason. Though this is the part in which most research is still needed, my own intuition is that, given the depth of the philosphical views in competition, restrictive abortion laws ought to be considered unrespectful to citizens' autonomy.

Neither Private nor Public: The Effects of Communal Provision of Water on Child Health in Peru

The literature on local services has focused on the effects of privatization and, if anything, has compared the effects of private and mixed public-private systems versus public provision. However, alternative forms of provision such as cooperatives, which can be very prevalent in many developing countries, have been completely ignored. In this paper, we investigate the effects of communal water provison (Comités Vecinales and Juntas Administrativas de Servicios de Saneamiento) on child health in Peru. Using detailed survey data at the household- and child-level for the years 2006-2010, we exploit the cross-section variability to assess the differential impact of this form of provision. Despite controlling for a wide range of household and local characteristics, the municipalities served by communal organizations are more likely to have poorer health indicators, what would result in a downward bias on the absolute magnitude of the effect of cooperatives. We rely on an instrumental variable strategy to deal with this potential endogeneity problem, and use the personnel resources and the administrative urban/rural classi fication of the municipalities as instruments for the provision type. The results show a negative and signi cant effect of comunal water provision on diarrhea among under- five year old children. Keywords: water utilities, cooperatives, child health, regulation, Peru. JEL Classi fication Numbers: L33; L50; L95

Creació d'un sistema de gestió d'averies en un Sistema d'Informació Geográfica de distribució d'aigües creat amb Geomedia Public Works

L'objectiu d'aquest document serà el de desenvolupar, progressivament des dels aspectes genèrics fins el detall, la realització pràctica requerida a l'elaboració del SIG.

Creació d'un sistema de gestió d'avaries en un sistema d'informació geogràfica de distribució d'aigües creat amb GEOMEDIA PUBLIC WORKS

Aquesta memòria representa la documentacó d'un treball de recerca i desenvolupament sobre un sistema d'informació geogràfica (SIG)

E-government and Public Services : a Case Study of the Inter-administrative Portal CAT365. Research report (sythesis document)

Aquest estudi analitza els usos de les TIC a l'administració autonòmica catalana. De forma més específica, l'estudi se centra en la interacció entre l'ús d'un vessant concret de les TIC, la xarxa Internet, per part de l'administració pública, i determinats aspectes centrals d'aquest tipus d'institucions: la seva organització i estructura internes, la provisió de serveis públics o la relació amb altres agents socials. Hem analitzat, doncs, el fenomen del govern electrònic en el marc particular de la Generalitat de Catalunya, estudiant-ne el grau de desenvolupament i penetració, les seves característiques més remarcables i els problemes més importants que s'hi plantegen. El projecte de recerca es concreta en un estudi de cas sobre un projecte d'innovació específic però de gran abast, que es trobava en el moment de realització de l'estudi en la seva primera fase d'implementació: el projecte Administració Oberta de Catalunya (AOC). Concretament ens hem centrat en el vessant d'aquesta iniciativa pública que es concretava en la creació d'un portal interadministratiu a Internet, el portal www.cat365.net, destinat a proveir electrònicament serveis públics de totes les administracions que operen a Catalunya. L'estudi analitza les transformacions internes de l'administració que s'hi poden trobar associades i els elements que les condicionen, tant positivament com negativa. Igualment, intentem analitzem el que aquestes transformacions poden suposar per a la relació entre els ciutadans i les institucions públiques.

Public screens

Creació d'un sistema amb terminals repartits per diverses ubicacions. Aquests terminals serviran per mostrar informació en determinats establiments comercials segons les necessitats del client.

Let's talk: public evaluation of large projects: variational inequialities, bilevel programming and complementarity. a survey

Large projects evaluation rises well known difficulties because -by definition- they modify the current price system; their public evaluation presents additional difficulties because they modify too existing shadow prices without the project. This paper analyzes -first- the basic methodologies applied until late 80s., based on the integration of projects in optimization models or, alternatively, based on iterative procedures with information exchange between two organizational levels. New methodologies applied afterwards are based on variational inequalities, bilevel programming and linear or nonlinear complementarity. Their foundations and different applications related with project evaluation are explored. As a matter of fact, these new tools are closely related among them and can treat more complex cases involving -for example- the reaction of agents to policies or the existence of multiple agents in an environment characterized by common functions representing demands or constraints on polluting emissions.

La Gestió policial als esdeveniments públics en espais urbans a l'Àfrica: situació actual i perspectives = Policing public events in urban spaces in Africa : an analysis of the current situation and a perspective on follow-up action

L’informe que es presenta en aquest llibre és el resultat d’un nou acord de col·laboració entre el Programa de les Nacions Unides per als Assentaments Humans (ONU-Habitat) i l’Institut de Seguretat Pública de Catalunya, impulsat amb l’objectiu de millorar la seguretat en esdeveniments públics en els espais urbans a l’Àfrica. La fase pilot es va dur a terme el 2010, durant els dos seminaris de formació realitzats a Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona) com a part de la Plataforma Policia per al Desenvolupament Urbà (PPUD). En aquest informe es descriuen els orígens i l’estat de la iniciativa i resumeix els resultats. També s’inclouen algunes recomanacions per a millorar la seguretat d’esdeveniments públics. Font d'informació: http://www.onuhabitat.org.

Debt enforcement and relational contracting

We examine how third-party debt enforcement affects the emergence and performance ofrelational contracts in credit markets. We implement an experiment with finitely repeatedcredit relationships in which borrowers can default. In the weak enforcement treatmentdefaulting borrowers can keep their funds invested. In the strong enforcement treatmentdefaulting borrowers have to liquidate their investment. Under weak enforcement fewerrelationships emerge in which loans are extended and repaid. When such relationships doemerge they exhibit a lower credit volume than under strong enforcement. These findingssuggest that relational contracting in credit markets requires a minimum standard of thirdpartydebt enforcement.

The migration towards Digital Terrestrial Television: challenges for public policy and public broadcasters

This paper initially identifies the main transformations of the television system that are caused by digitalization. Its development in several broadcasting platforms is analyzed as well as the particular obstacles and requirements that are detected for each of them. Due to its technical characteristics and its historical link to the public services, the terrestrial network requires migration strategies different from those strictly commercial, and public intervention might be needed. The paper focuses on such migration strategies towards DTT and identifies the main issues for public intervention in the areas of the digital scenario: technology, business and market transformation and the reception field. Moreover, it describes and classifies the challenges that public broadcasters should confront due to digitalization. This paper finally concludes that the leadership of the public broadcasters during the migration towards DTT is an interesting tool for public policy. The need for foster the digitalization of the terrestrial platform and to achieve certain social and public goal besides the market interest brings an opportunity for public institutions and public broadcasters to work together. That leading role could also be positive for the public service to face its necessary redefinition and reallocation within the digital context.