Memòria del plantejament del projecte PADICAT (Patrimoni Digital de Catalunya)

El projecte PADICAT té l'objectiu de dissenyar i produir un sistema que permeti a la Biblioteca de Catalunya compilar, processar i donar accés permanent a la producció digital catalana. En alguns països s'anomena "dipòsits digitals nacionals" a projectes similars, essent els més coneguts el gegant Internet Archive, l'australià Pandora o el suec Kulturarw3. D'acord amb la tendència generalitzada arreu de les biblioteques nacionals, el model de dipòsit que persegueix la Biblioteca de Catalunya és el sistema híbrid, consistent a: - Compilar massivament els recursos digitals publicats en obert a Internet - Impulsar el dipòsit sistemàtic de la producció web dels agents implicats a Catalunya - Promoure línies de recerca per mitjà de la integració dels recursos digitals de determinats esdeveniments de la vida pública catalana. L'any 2005 ha representat el període de planificació i proves del projecte que lidera la Biblioteca de Catalunya, que té previst sistematitzar el dipòsit digital de la producció web catalana en el període 2006-2008. La Memòria del plantejament del projecte PADICAT presenta el recull d'informes tècnics generats per la Biblioteca de Catalunya durant aquesta fase de planificació i proves. El projecte PADICAT compta amb la col·laboració del CESCA (Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya) i el DURSI (Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya).

The private and fiscal returns to schooling and the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education: a general framework and some results for the EU

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these countries, we construct estimates of the private return to an additional year of schooling for an individual of average attainment, taking into account the effects of education on wages and employment probabilities after allowing for academic failure rates, the direct and opportunity costs of schooling, and the impact of personal taxes, social security contributions and unemployment and pension benefits on net incomes. We also construct a set of effective tax and subsidy rates that measure the effects of different public policies on the private returns to education, and measures of the fiscal returns to schooling that capture the long-term effects of a marginal increase in attainment on public finances under c

On the weights of nations: assigning voting weights in a heterogenous union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model.

Human capital in a global and knowledge-based economy. Part 2. Asssessment at the EU country level.

This report is an extension and partial update of de la Fuente and Ciccone (2002). It constructs estimates of the private and social rates of return on schooling for fourteen EU countries using microeconometric estimates of Mincerian wage equations, the results of cross-country growth regressions and OECD data on educational expenditures, tax rates and social benefits. The results are used to draw some tentative conclusions regarding the optimality of observed investment patterns and educational subsidy levels.

El impacto de los fondos estructurales: convergencia real y cohesión interna

En este trabajo se presenta una estimación de la contribución de los Fondos Estructurales de la Unión Europea al crecimiento del producto y el empleo del conjunto de las regiones españolas Objetivo 1. Los resultados indican que las ayudas europeas han contribuido de forma muy significativa al acercamiento de la renta española al nivel medio de la UE y han ayudado a mitigar las disparidades internas, relajando de alguna forma el trade-off entre crecimiento agregado y cohesión territorial. La previsible pérdida de buena parte de estas ayudas en un futuro no muy lejano constituye un reto importante para el que convendría empezar a prepararse.

Human capital in growth regressions: how much difference does data quality make? An update and further results

We construct estimates of educational attainment for a sample of OECD countries using previously unexploited sources. We follow a heuristic approach to obtain plausible time profiles for attainment levels by removing sharp breaks in the data that seem to reflect changes in classification criteria. We then construct indicators of the information content of our series and a number of previously available data sets and examine their performance in several growth specifications. We find a clear positive correlation between data quality and the size and significance of human capital coefficients in growth regressions. Using an extension of the classical errors in variables model, we construct a set of meta-estimates of the coefficient of years of schooling in an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function. Our results suggest that, after correcting for measurement error bias, the value of this parameter is well above 0.50.

On the choice of an exchange rate regime: target zones revisited

From the classical gold standard up to the current ERM2 arrangement of the European Union, target zones have been a widely used exchange regime in contemporary history. This paper presents a benchmark model that rationalizes the choice of target zones over the rest of regimes: the fixed rate, the free float and the managed float. It is shown that the monetary authority may gain efficiency by reducing volatility of both the exchange rate and the interest rate at the same time. Furthermore, the model is consistent with some known stylized facts in the empirical literature that previous models were not able to produce, namely, the positive relation between the exchange rate and the interest rate differential, the degree of non-linearity of the function linking the exchage rate to fundamentals and the shape of the exchange rate stochastic distribution.

Bribes for faster delivery

The paper models the practice of charging bribes for faster delivery of essential services in third world countries. It then examines the possibility of curbing corruption by supervision, and secondly, by introducing competition among delivery agents. It is argued that a supervisory solution eludes the problem because no hard evidence of the reduction of corruption can be established for this type of offenses. It is also shown that using more than one supplier cannot eliminate the practice, and the bribe paying part of the market attains a determinate proportion as the number of suppliers increases. However the bribe rate and average waiting time come down at a diminishing rate with increase in the number of suppliers, and this property can be used to determine an optimal number of suppliers.

The Proposals for a European tax on CO2 and their implications for intercountry distribution

This paper analyzes the advantages and implications of the implementation of a European tax on carbon dioxide emissions as an own resource of the European Union. In contrast to a harmonized tax, which would only have distributive effects within each member state, a tax collected at European scale would also have important distributive effects among different countries. These effects would also depend on the use of tax revenues. The paper investigates the distributive effects among the member states of three tax models: a pure CO2

Es Barcelona una ciudad policéntrica ?

La Región Metropolitana de Barcelona (RMB) ha sido caracterizada como un sistema urbano policéntrico. Sin embargo, no existe un criterio comúnmente aceptado que haya permitido identificar con claridad los subcentros de la región. La investigación que aquí se presenta persigue un doble objetivo: en primer lugar identificar los subcentros de empleo de la RMB mediante un método objetivo y, en segundo lugar, valorar su grado de policentrismo. Para identificar los subcentros se procede siguiendo dos pasos: primero se identifican los municipios candidatos a subcentro utilizando criterios basados en la densidad de empleo y en el índice Empleos/Población, para a continuación estimar una función de densidad de población utilizando como variables explicativas, además de la distancia al CBD, la distancia a cada uno de los candidatos a subcentro. Los municipios identificados mediante este doble filtro sólo capturan un porcentaje relativamente reducido del total de puestos de trabajo debido a que elnúcleo ampliado (Barcelona más continuo urbano) concentra un porcentaje de empleos muy significativo, y a que el ratio Empleos/Población presenta unos valores muy homogéneos en todos los municipios con independencia de su tamaño.

Las Propuestas para un impuesto europeo sobre el CO2 y sus potenciales distributivas entre países

En el presente artículo se revisan las propuestas sobre fiscalidad energética y, en concreto, sobre un impuesto europeo que grave las emisiones de dióxido de carbono y las dificultades con que se han encontrado. Se estudian las posibles implicaciones que tendría un impuesto, no ya armonizado, sino recaudado a nivel del conjunto de la Unión Europea. Este tipo de impuesto tendría importantes efectos distributivos no solo a nivel de un país (como un impuesto armonizado) sino también entre diferentes países. El trabajo estudia dichos efectos potenciales según diferentes modelos concretos de implantación (un modelo puro sobre el CO2; un modelo 50%/50% energía-CO2; un modelo puro sobre el CO2 pero gravando también la energía nuclear) y de destino de los fondos recaudados.