Identity based encription with tate pairing

L'objectiu principal del projecte és l'estudi, la implementació d'algoritmes i protocols amb criptografia basada en la identitat. Aquesta o Identity Based Encryption (IBE) s'utilitza per simplificar el procés de comunicacions segures, com per exemple el correu electrònic. IBE permet a les polítiques de seguretat ser codificades directament sense la necessitat d'usar certificats. Aquests esquemes van ser proposats inicialment per A. Shamir a l'any 1984 i han estat objecte d'estudi per D. Boneh, S. Galbraith, etc. En aquest farem l'estudi dels emparellaments de Werl i Tate a través de l'algorisme de Miller, que ens permetrà implementar aquests emparellaments sobre corbes el·líptiques supersingulars.

Gènere i identitats en la construcció d'una comunitat colonial a Empúries (segles VI-V a.C.)

El projecte de recerca ha analitzat la complexitat ètnica, social i de gènere de l’assentament colonial d’Empúries a partir d’un exhaustiu estudi contextual dels materials ceràmics d’ús quotidià provinents de diferents sectors excavats als anys vuitanta a la Neàpolis empuritana (N-7000, N-5000 i N-1000). Aquests sectors datats els segles V i IV a.C., corresponen a un moment en el qual s’està construint una identitat colonial diferenciada en l’espai emporità. La comparació dels aixovars domèstics usats quotidianament pels habitants d’aquest tres sectors situats en punts distants de la Neàpolis mostra que estem davant d’un assentament colonial molt heterogeni, on conflueixen materialitats, tradicions tecnològiques i pràctiques quotidianes iberes, gregues i híbrides. Els estudis de materials confirmen que no va existir una segregació espacial entre poblacions d’origen grec i iber en aquest assentament i suggereixen la cohabitació de gent –tant d’homes com de dones- d’origen grec i iber a les diferents àrees estudiades d’aquest assentament portuari. En el registre material ceràmic de totes les zones estudiades s’observa un predomini dels productes ceràmics de tradició grega (colonials o àtics) en els serveis de taula, però no així en els estris utilitzats a la cuina, que són majoritàriament de tradició ibera. També els materials ceràmics relacionats amb l’emmagatzematge domèstic i amb el transport i el comerç (àmfores) són predominantment ibers. Aquest patró suggereix que els ibers que van cohabitar amb els grecs al port emporità no van assumir en tots els casos posicions subalternes, sinó que tingueren un rol rellevant en la gestió econòmica i comercial d’aquest espai portuari.

Gender inequality in health among elderly people in a combined framework of socioeconomic position, family characteristics and social support

This study analyses gender inequalities in health among elderly people in Catalonia (Spain) by adopting a conceptual framework that globally considers three dimensions of health determinants : socio-economic position, family characteristics and social support. Data came from the 2006 Catalonian Health Survey. For the purposes of this study a sub-sample of people aged 65–85 years with no paid job was selected (1,113 men and 1,484 women). The health outcomes analysed were self-perceived health status, poor mental health status and long-standing limiting illness. Multiple logistic regression models separated by sex were fitted and a hierarchical model was fitted in three steps. Health status among elderly women was poorer than among the men for the three outcomes analysed. Whereas living with disabled people was positively related to the three health outcomes and confidant social support was negatively associated with all of them in both sexes, there were gender differences in other social determinants of health. Our results emphasise the importance of using an integrated approach for the analysis of health inequalities among elderly people, simultaneously considering socio-economic position, family characteristics and social support, as well as different health indicators, in order fully to understand the social determinants of the health status of older men and women.

Symbolic meaning of local identity – A case study on Barcelona place brand representation

The core objective of this research process was to design an operational tool for place brand analysis. By modelling the emotional significance and the deeper-lying symbols associated to a specific place identity I expected to create a semiotic tool that could be applied, mutatis mutandis, on other similar place brands. As a field case study to develop the instrument, my choice of the research arena was Barcelona city, the capital of Catalonia Autonomous Community, Spain. Barcelona brand identity was approached in the line of the Chicago Urban Anthropology School. The research methods were designed according to the prescriptions of the urban anthropology, namely qualitative methods: in-depth interviews and discourse analysis. The final research outcome was a model summarizing a range of specific emotional values that support a place brand to position in the collective mindset and to assume a positively valued status and identity in the world order.

Identity formation in social networks websites: facebook and the interaction between young individuals in the cases of Slovenia and Catalonia

This paper lays down some theoretical framework for further research to be made on the subject of how identity of young Slovenian and Catalan users is forming within the social networking website Facebook. The author pursues his interest based on observation of how communicationand thus interaction between users is changing and how this is reflected in everyday practices. In so doing he tries to identify the connections between the individual, society and technology, asthese are more and more interwoven, and we cannot think one without the other in thecontemporary globalised world.

Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers

This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associatelawyers in the United States. Unlike most high-skilled professions, the legal professionhas widely-used objective methods to measure and reward lawyers' productivity: thenumber of hours billed to clients and the amount of new-client revenue generated. Wefind clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to bothmeasures. Male lawyers bill ten-percent more hours and bring in more than double thenew-client revenue. We show that the differential impact across genders in the presenceof young children and the differences in aspirations to become a law-firm partneraccount for a large part of the difference in performance. These performance gaps haveimportant consequences for gender gaps in earnings. While individual and firmcharacteristics explain up to 50 percent of earnings gap, the inclusion of performancemeasures explains most of the remainder.

Let's (not) talk about sex: The effect of information provision on gender differences in performance under competition

We study how gender differences in performance under competition areaffected by the provision of information regarding rival s gender and/ordifferences in relative ability. In a laboratory experiment, we use two tasks thatdiffer regarding perceptions about which gender outperforms the other. Weobserve women s underperformance only under two conditions: 1) tasks areperceived as favoring men and 2) rivals gender is explicitly mentioned. Thisresult can be explained by stereotype-threat being reinforced when explicitlymentioning gender in tasks in which women already consider they are inferior.Omitting information about gender is a safe alternative to avoid women sunderperformance in competition.

Globalization and wage inequality in South and East Asia, and Latin America: A gender approach

In this paper we analyse the reasons behind the evolution of the gender gap and wage inequality in South and East Asian and Latin American countries. Health human capital improvements, the exposure to free market openness and equal treatment enforcement laws seem to be the main exogenous variables affecting women s economic condition. During the second globalization era (in the years 1975-2000) different combinations of these variables in South East Asian and Latin American countries have had as a result the diminution of the gender gap. The main exception to this rule according to our data is China where economic reforms have been simultaneous to the increase of gender differences and inequality between men and women.This result has further normative consequences for the measure of economic inequality. Theimprovement of women s condition has as a result the diminution of the dispersion of wages.Therefore in most of the countries analysed the consequence of the diminution of the gender gapduring the second global era is the decrease of wage inequality both measured with Gini and Theil indexes.

An investigation of the relationship between job characteristics and the gender wage gap

This paper re-examines gender wage differences, taking into account notonly worker characteristics but also job characteristics. Considerationof a wide set of job quality indicators can explain a fraction of thewage gap that would otherwise be attributed to pure wage discrimination.In any case, the fraction of the wage gap that remains associated todifferential rewards for identical factors across sexes is stillsubstantial. Our results suggest that in order to avoid overestimationof the fraction of the wage gap attributable to discrimination, it isnecessary to control for job characteristics.

Gender gaps in policy making: Evidence from direct democracy in Switzerland

In spite of increasing representation of women in politics, little is known about their impact onpolicies. Comparing outcomes of parliaments with different shares of female members does not identifytheir causal impact because of possible differences in the underlying electorate. This paper usesa unique data set on voting decisions to sheds new light on gender gaps in policy making. Ouranalysis focuses on Switzerland, where all citizens can directly decide on a broad range of policiesin referendums and initiatives. We show that there are large gender gaps in the areas of health,environmental protection, defense spending and welfare policy which typically persist even conditionalon socio-economic characteristics. We also find that female policy makers have a substantial effect onthe composition of public spending, but a small effect on the overall size of government.

Beyond the glass ceiling: Does gender matter?

The representation of women in top corporate officer positions is steadily increasing. However, little is known about the impact this will have. A large literature documents that women are different from men in their choices and in their preferences, but most of this literature relies on samples of college students or workers at lower levels in the corporate hierarchy. If women must be like men to break the glass ceiling, we might expect gender differences to disappear among top executives. In contrast, using a large survey of all directors of publicly-traded corporations in Sweden, we show that female and male directors differ systematically in their core values and risk attitudes. While certain population gender differences disappear at the director level, others do not. Consistent with the findings for the Swedish population, female directors are more benevolent and universally concerned, but less power-oriented than men. However, they are less traditional and security-oriented than their male counterparts. Furthermore, female directors are slightly more risk-loving than male directors. This suggests that having a women on the board need not lead to more risk-averse decision-making.

How wide is the gap? An investigation of gender wage differences using quantile regression

In this paper we examine the determinants of wages and decompose theobserved differences across genders into the "explained by differentcharacteristics" and "explained by different returns components"using a sample of Spanish workers. Apart from the conditionalexpectation of wages, we estimate the conditional quantile functionsfor men and women and find that both the absolute wage gap and thepart attributed to different returns at each of the quantiles, farfrom being well represented by their counterparts at the mean, aregreater as we move up in the wage range.

The impact of gender composition on team performance and decision-making: Evidence from the field

We investigate whether the gender composition of teams affect theireconomic performance. We study a large business game, played in groups ofthree, where each group takes the role of a general manager. There are twoparallel competitions, one involving undergraduates and the other involvingMBAs. Our analysis shows that teams formed by three women aresignificantly outperformed by any other gender combination, both at theundergraduate and MBA levels. Looking across the performancedistribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams areoutperformed throughout, but by as much as 10pp at the bottom and by only1pp at the top. For MBAs, at the top, the best performing group is two menand one woman. The differences in performance are explained bydifferences in decision-making. We observe that three women teams are lessaggressive in their pricing strategies, invest less in R&D, and invest more insocial sustainability initiatives, than any other gender combination teams.Finally, we find support for the hypothesis that it is poor work dynamicsamong the three women teams that drives the results.

Gender specialization in households: An empirical analysis

This paper studies the effect of parental education on the educational attainmentof children in the US for cohorts born after 1910. Importantly, we allow for cohort-specificdifferences by gender. Our estimates show that paternal education has been more importantfor the attainment of male children (paternal specialization on sons). However, maternalspecialization (on daughters) seems to have appeared only for cohorts born after 1955. Weinterpret these results as evidence that fathers are more important role models for sonswhile mothers are a more important reference for daughters. We argue that our results arerobust to the presence of hereditary unobserved ability and conjecture that both types ofgender specialization may have been present in earlier cohorts too.

Globalization and culture shaping the gender gap: A comparative analysis of urban Latin America and East Asia (1970 - 2000)

In this paper we present: 1. The available data on comparative gender inequality at themacroeconomic level and 2. Gender inequality measures at the microeconomic and case studylevel. We see that market openness has a significant effect on the narrowing of the human capitalgender gap. Globalization and market openness stand as factors that improve both the humancapital endowments of women and their economic position. But we also see that the effects ofculture and religious beliefs are very different. While Catholicism has a statistically significantinfluence on the improvement of the human capital gender gap, Muslim and Buddhist religiousbeliefs have the opposite effect and increase human capital gender differences.In the second global era, some Catholic Latin American countries benefited from market opennessin terms of the human capital and income gender gap, whereas we find the opposite impact inBuddhist and Muslim countries like China and South Korea where women s economic positionhas worsened in terms of human capital and wage inequality.