Lengua familiar y conocimiento de la lengua escolar en Cataluña al finalizar la Educación Infantil = Home Language and Knowledge of the School Language in Catalonia at the end of Nursery School

La infancia extranjera se escolariza en Cataluña en un programa de cambio de lengua del hogar a la escuela. Las investigaciones afirman que este alumnado tarda un mínimo de seis años en equiparar sus habilidades lingüístico-cognitivas con sus pares autóctonos, no así las habilidades conversacionales, las cuales se adquieren antes de los dos años de residencia. Sin embargo, no existen estudios sobre los efectos de la escolarización en el parvulario del alumnado alófono, así como de su lengua familiar, en relación con la adquisición de la lengua escolar. El artículo es un estudio comparativo de la adquisición del catalán de 567 autóctonos y 434 alófonos, al final del parvulario, en 50 escuelas de Cataluña que escolarizan a alumnado de origen extranjero. Las lenguas del alumnado autóctono son el catalán, el castellano y el bilingüismo catalán-castellano y las lenguas del alumnado alófono son el árabe, el soninké y el castellano. Los factores utilizados más relevantes han sido el nivel socioprofesional y educativo de las familias, el tiempo de residencia y el momento de escolarización del alumnado, el porcentaje de alumnado catalanohablante y de alumnado alófono en el aula y el contexto sociolingüístico del centro escolar. Los resultados muestran que el alumnado autóctono sabe más catalán que el alumnado alófono, pero las diferencias desaparecen respecto a algunos factores, de los cuales los más relevantes son los relacionados con las características del alumnado de las aulas. La lengua familiar del alumnado alófono no incide en sus resultados

Lending to the borrower from hell: Debt and default in the age of Philip II, 1556-1598

What sustained borrowing without third-party enforcement, in the early days of sovereignlending? Philip II of Spain accumulated towering debts while stopping all payments tohis lenders four times. How could the sovereign borrow much and default often? Weargue that bankers ability to cut off Philip II s access to smoothing services was key. Aform of syndicated lending created cohesion among his Genoese bankers. As a result,lending moratoria were sustained through a cheat the cheater mechanism (Kletzer andWright, 2000). Our paper thus lends empirical support to a recent literature emphasizingthe role of bankers incentives for continued sovereign borrowing.

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.

Labor supply response to international migration and remittances in the Republic of Haiti

The Republic of Haiti is the prime international remittances recipient country in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). The downside of this observation may be that this country is also the first exporter of skilled workers in the world by population size. The present research uses a zero-altered negative binomial (with logit inflation) to model households' international migration decision process, and endogenous regressors' Amemiya Generalized Least Squares method (instrumental variable Tobit, IV-Tobit) to account for selectivity and endogeneity issues in assessing the impact of remittances on labor market outcomes. Results are in line with what has been found so far in this literature in terms of a decline of labor supply in the presence of remittances. However, the impact of international remittances does not seem to be important in determining recipient households' labor participation behavior, particularly for women.

Privatization and competition in the delivery of local services: An empirical examination of the dual market hypothesis

This paper empirically analyses the hypothesis of the existence of a dual market for contracts in local services. Large firms that operate on a national basis control the contracts for delivery in the most populated and/or urban municipalities, whereas small firms that operate at a local level have the contracts in the least populated and/or rural municipalities. The dual market implies the high concentration and dominance of major firms in large municipalities, and local monopolies in the smaller ones. This market structure is harmful to competition for the market as the effective number of competitors is low across all municipalities. Thus, it damages the likelihood of obtaining cost savings from privatization.

The Delta of Ebro: economic uses and changes in the ecosystems

El Delta del Ebro se halla situado en el Mediterráneo, en NE de la Península Ibérica (sur de Cataluña). Su formación ha sido resultado de la interacción del mar y del Ebro, un río que con sus 910 km de longitud drena una cuenca de unos 85.362 km2. Sus características dependen de los diferentes regímenes climáticos de su extensa cuenca, lo que explica la complejidad de su régimen. A lo largo del periodo estudiado el Delta fue siempre una realidad geológica aunque experimentó importantes cambios en su morfología. En consecuencia, sus recursos naturales siempre pudieron ser explotados, aunque estas actividades se hubieron de adaptar a su cambiante morfología y a sus peculiares condiciones naturales, diferentes de las zonas terrestres más inmediatas.

Cognition, Resources, and Institutions in the Explanation of Attitudes to Free Trade

This article proposes a framework for the analysis of attitudes to foreign trade policies that challenges the traditional skill-endowment approach. The traditional approach assumes informed individuals who calculate the costs and benefits of alternative policies. We propose that individuals lack information and that their positions rest on economic vulnerability, as mediated through risk-aversion. We also stress the role of environmental signals and political endorsements in guiding individuals' views on trade policy. We test this alternative approach with a Spanish survey conducted in May 2009 and the ISSP survey conducted in 2003 in a large number of less developed and more developed countries. The Spanish data show that the population is largely uninformed and that their ideas about the consequences of free trade policy do not explain attitudes among different socio-demographic groups. Meanwhile, the ISSP data contradict important aspects of the traditional approach and are consistent with the alternative approach.

Some Considerations Concerning Regulation and Competition in the Port Sector

The aim of this paper is to discuss the circumstances in which the process of competition between ports takes place in Spain − circumstances arising from the way the port system is currently set up and from the regulations governing it. The importance of this matter lies both in the fact that intensified competition between ports is the way to set about boosting the efficiency of the Spanish port sector and in the relevance of this business to the economies of the regions in which the ports are located. It is precisely for this reason that the reform instituted in 1992 aimed to combine balanced development of the national port system with the defence of the interests of autonomous regions. To this end the current regulatory framework provides for the possibility of port authorities drawing up their own competitive strategies, but makes their implementation conditional upon approval of their business plan by the Spanish state port authority. The latter body coordinates the national port system to ensure the guidelines set by the central government authorities are followed in the field of transport. However, the scale of the differences which exist among both the size of facilities and their relevant markets on the one hand, and the financial and economic circumstances of each of them on the other, suggest that each port authority's needs must be very different. Consequently, their competitive strategies must also be very different. It is therefore valid to ask whether coping with this diversity calls for different guidelines to regulate their freedom of action. Key words: Competition, regulation, port sector JEL classification numbers: L1, L5, L9

Vigilance behavior of Pyrenean chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica pyrenaica): Effect of sex and position in the herd

The Pyrenean chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica pyrenaica) is a mountain-dwelling ungulate with an extensive presence in open areas. Optimal group size results from the trade off between advantages (a reduction in the risk of predation) and disadvantages (competition between members of the herd) of group living. In addition, advantages and disadvantages of group living may vary depending on the position of each individual within the herd. Our objective was to study the effect of central vs. peripheral position in the herd on feeding and vigilance behavior in male and female Pyrenean chamois and to ascertain if a group size effect existed. We used focal animal sampling and recorded social interactions when a focal animal was involved. With males, vigilance rate was higher in the central part of the group than at the periphery, probably due to a higher density of animals in the central part of the herd and a higher probability of being disturbed by conspecifics. With females, vigilance rate did not differ according to position in the herd. Females spent more time feeding than males, and males showed a higher frequency of the vigilance behavior than females. We did not observe a clear relationship between group size and vigilance behavior. The differences in vigilance behavior might be due to social interactions.

Industrial district effects and innovation in the Tuscan shipbuilding industry

The aim of the present work is to investigate innovative processes within a geographical cluster, and thus contribute to the debate on the effects of industrial clusters on innovation capacity. In particular, we would like to ascertain whether the advantages of industrial districts in promoting innovation, as already revealed by literature (diffusion of knowledge, social capital and trust, efficient networking), are also keys to success in the Tuscan shipbuilding industry of pleasure and sporting boats. First, we verify the existence of clusters of shipbuilding in Tuscany, using a specific methodology. Next, in the identified clusters, we analyse three innovative networks financed in a policy to support innovation, and examine whether the typical features of a cluster for promoting innovation are at work, using a questionnaire administered to 71 actors. Finally, we develop a performance analysis of the cluster firms and ascertain whether their different behaviours also lead to different performances. The analysis results show that our case records effects of industrial clustering on innovation capacity, such as the important role given to trust and social capital, the significant worth put in interfirm relations and in each partner’s specific competencies, or even the distinctive performance of firms belonging to a cluster.

The Role of model uncertainty and learning in the U.S. postwar policy response to oil prices

This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a framework that explicitly accounts for policymakers' uncertainty about the channels of transmission of oil prices into the economy. More specfically, I examine the robust response to the real price of oil that US monetary authorities would have been recommended to implement in the period 1970 2009; had they used the approach proposed by Cogley and Sargent (2005b) to incorporate model uncertainty and learning into policy decisions. In this context, I investigate the extent to which regulator' changing beliefs over different models of the economy play a role in the policy selection process. The main conclusion of this work is that, in the specific environment under analysis, one of the underlying models dominates the optimal interest rate response to oil prices. This result persists even when alternative assumptions on the model's priors change the pattern of the relative posterior probabilities, and can thus be attributed to the presence of model uncertainty itself.

Elections in 2009? Progress and obstacles in the construction of peace in the Ivory Coast

In 2002 in the Ivory Coast three months of armed conflict ended with the division of the country. Two regions were separated by an interposition line controlled by the French Forces Licorne. This significant peace process was maintained over time, but characterized for lack of mutual confidence and political immobility, which led to an impasse and the continuation of Laurent Gbagbo in the presidency. Moreover, the peace building process was less successful because the different political agreements failed to address some of the main national problems, such as land property and identity issues. The following paper aims first to analyze the main facts and causes that instigated the conflict since the coup d’état in 2002. Secondly, the paper will analyze the peace process and point out the key elements of the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement (2007): the creation of a new and unique armed forces structure, as well as the identification of the population and implementation of an electoral process. The main goal is to provide the International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP) a working tool in order to send an electoral observation mission to this African country by November 2009.

Calderón-Zygmund kernels and rectifiability in the plane

Vegeu el resum a l'inici del document del fitxer adjunt.