Social capital and government in the production of public goods

As a response to the rapidly growing empirical literature on social capital and the evidence of its correlation with government performance, we build a theoretical framework to study the interactions between social capital and government's action. This paper presents a model of homogeneous agents in an overlapping generations framework incorporating social capital as the values transmitted from parent to child. The government's role is to provide public goods. First, government expenditure is exogenously given. Then, it will be chosen at the preferred level of the representative agent. For both setups the equilibrium outcomes are characterized and the resulting dynamics studied. Briefly we include an analysis of the effect of productivity growth on the evolution of social capital. The results obtained caution caution against both the crowding out effect of the welfare state and the impact of sustained economic growth on social capital.

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.

Government consumption and private consumption correlations

This paper examines whether the introduction of government consumptionexpenditure in a standard one good model of the international real businesscycle is sufficient to reconcile the theory with the existing pattern ofinternational consumption and output correlations. I calibrate the model totwo different pairs of countries and generate the simulated distribution ofconsumption and output correlations implied by several specifications of themodel. It is shown that the model can account for existing internationalconsumption correlations only under very specific assumptions about the sizeof effect of government expenditure on agents' utility or the variabilityof government expenditure shocks. Crucial parameters are identified and thesensitivity of the results discussed.

Transversalitat i participació juvenil : estratègies per promoure que els joves esdevinguin agents actius en les polítiques locals de joventut : proposta d’intervenció al municipi de Caldes de Malavella

Proposta metodològica que té com a element central la participació juvenil. La participació entesa com l’impuls d’estructures democràtiques entre els joves. Aquest treball està centrat en el manteniment de la consolidació de les polítiques de joventut al municipi de Caldes de Malavella. La pèrdua de recursos econòmics és un element que dificulta la realització de projectes que incideixin de manera positiva en els joves. La creació d’estructures de participació entre els joves és una manera de motivar als joves i fer-los membres actius en el desenvolupament de les polítiques locals

Efficiency and quality in local government management: the case of Spanish local authorities

This study analyses efficiency levels in Spanish local governments and their determining factors through the application of DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) methodology. It aims to find out to what extent inefficiency arises from external factors beyond the control of the entity, or on the other hand, how much it is due to inadequate management of productive resources. The results show that on the whole, there is still a wide margin within which managers could increase local government efficiency levels, although it is revealed that a great deal of inefficiency is due to exogenous factors. It is specifically found that the size of the entity, per capita tax revenue, the per capita grants or the amount of commercial activity are some of the factors determining local government inefficiency.

Credit markets and the propagation of monetary policy shocks

This paper analyzes the propagation of monetary policy shocks through the creation of credit in an economy. Models of the monetary transmission mechanism typically feature responses which last for a few quarters contrary to what the empirical evidence suggests. To propagate the impact of monetary shocks over time, these models introduce adjustment costs by which agents find it optimal to change their decisions slowly. This paper presents another explanation that does not rely on any sort of adjustment costs or stickiness. In our economy, agents own assets and make occupational choices. Banks intermediate between agents demanding and supplying assets. Our interpretation is based on the way banks create credit and how the monetary authority affects the process of financial intermediation through its monetary policy. As the central bank lowers the interest rate by buying government bonds in exchange for reserves, high productive entrepreneurs are able to borrow more resources from low productivity agents. We show that this movement of capital among agents sets in motion a response of the economy that resembles an expansionary phase of the cycle.

Auctions for government securities: a laboratory comparison of uniform, discriminatory and spanish designs

The Bank of Spain uses a unique auction format to sell government bonds, which can be seen as a hybrid of a uniform and a discriminatory auction. For winning bids above the average winning bid, buyers are charged the average winning bid, otherwise they pay their respective bids. We report on an experiment that compares this auction format to the discriminatory format, used in most other countries, and to the uniform format. Our design is based on a common value model with multi-unit supply and two-unit demand. The results show significantly higher revenue with the Spanish and the uniform formats than with the discriminatory one, while volatility of prices over time is significantly lower in the discriminatory format than in the Spanish and uniform cases. Actual price dispersion is significantly larger in the discriminatory than in the Spanish. Our data also exhibit the use of bid-spreading strategies in all three designs.

The role of central bank operating procedures in an economy with productive government spending

The choice of either the rate of monetary growth or the nominal interest rate as the instrument controlled by monetary authorities has both positive and normative implications for economic performance. We reexamine some of the issues related to the choice of the monetary policy instrument in a dynamic general equilibrium model exhibiting endogenous growth in which a fraction of productive government spending is financed by means of issuing currency. When we evaluate the performance of the two monetary instruments attending to the fluctuations of endogenous variables, we find that the inflation rate is less volatile under nominal interest rate targeting. Concerning the fluctuations of consumption and of the growth rate, both monetary policy instruments lead to statistically equivalent volatilities. Finally, we show that none of these two targeting procedures displays unambiguously higher welfare levels.

The Key party in the catalan government

This paper analyzes the different compositions of the catalan governing coalitions during the current democratic period, and offers some predictions about the coalitions that can be expected in the future. During this period, in catalan politics, there have been two main political issues over which the different parties have taken positions: rightist versus leftist with respect to economic policy, and sovereign versus centralist with respect to the power distribution within the state. I find that for any allocation of parliament seats there is a key party: a party that has a clear advantage in terms of being able to decide the composition of the governing coalition. I show the features that allow a party to become the key party and those that affect the size of the advantage of the key party.

Pareto-improving optimal capital and labor taxes

We show a standard model where the optimal tax reform is to cut labor taxes and leave capital taxes very high in the short and medium run. Only in the very long run would capital taxes be zero. Our model is a version of Chamley??s, with heterogeneous agents, without lump sum transfers, an upper bound on capital taxes, and a focus on Pareto improving plans. For our calibration labor taxes should be low for the first ten to twenty years, while capital taxes should be at their maximum. This policy ensures that all agents benefit from the tax reform and that capital grows quickly after when the reform begins. Therefore, the long run optimal tax mix is the opposite from the short and medium run tax mix. The initial labor tax cut is financed by deficits that lead to a positive long run level of government debt, reversing the standard prediction that government accumulates savings in models with optimal capital taxes. If labor supply is somewhat elastic benefits from tax reform are high and they can be shifted entirely to capitalists or workers by varying the length of the transition. With inelastic labor supply there is an increasing part of the equilibrium frontier, this means that the scope for benefitting the workers is limited and the total benefits from reforming taxes are much lower.

Mobilitat inter-plataforma d'agents software: protocol de migració fragmentada

En aquest projecte s'ha realitzat l'anàlisi, disseny i implementació d'un protocol de migració d'agents software basat en l'enviament del codi dels agents fragmentat en múltiples missatges. Aquest protocol es troba dins d'una arquitectura de migració multi-protocol per a la mobilitat d'agents entre plataformes JADE. Finalment, s'ha realitzat un estudi que compara el rendiment assolit pel protocol i les prestacions que aporta.

MedIGS, un sistema segur basat en agents per al descobriment i obtenció de dades mèdiques distribuïdes: estudi i desenvolupament

En aquest projecte es desenvolupa en totes les seves fases(estudi, anàlisi, disseny, implementació i proves) l'aplicació MedIGS. MedIGS és una aplicació destinada a satisfer algunes de les necesitats actuals del sistema sanitari, la compartició d’informació i la màxima coordinació possible, utilitzant una tecnologia novedosa: els agents, i més concretament, els agents mòbils. Gràcies a aquesta tecnologia aconseguirem una integració segura de dades mèdiques distribuïdes. Està previst fer una prova pilot a Portugal, a partir dels resultats d’aquest projecte.