On the joint production of research and training

Universities and research institutions have the responsibility to produce science and to provide training to new generations of researchers. In this paper, we propose a model to analyze the determinants of a senior scientist's decisions about allocating time between these tasks. The results of this decision depend upon the characteristics of the research project, the senior scientist's concern for training and the expected innate ability of the junior scientist involved. We analyze the role that a regulator can play in defining both the value of scientific projects and the future population of independent scientists.

The Simple Economics of Conglomeration with Bankruptcy Costs: Separate or Joint Financing?

Which projects should be financed through separate non-recourse loans (or limited- liability companies) and which should be bundled into a single loan? In the pres- ence of bankruptcy costs, this conglomeration decision trades off the benefit of co- insurance with the cost of risk contamination. This paper characterize this tradeoff for projects with binary returns, depending on the mean, variability, and skewness of returns, the bankruptcy recovery rate, the correlation across projects, the number of projects, and their heterogeneous characteristics. In some cases, separate financing dominates joint financing, even though it increases the interest rate or the probability of bankruptcy.

Conglomeration with bankruptcy costs: Separate or joint financing?

The paper analyzes the determinants of the optimal scope of incorporation in the presenceof bankruptcy costs. Bankruptcy costs alone generate a non-trivial tradeoff between thebenefit of coinsurance and the cost of risk contamination associated to joint financing corporate projects through debt. This tradeoff is characterized for projects with binary returns,depending on the distributional characteristics of returns (mean, variability, skewness, heterogeneity, correlation, and number of projects), the bankruptcy recovery rate, and the taxrate advantage of debt relative to equity. Our testable predictions are broadly consistentwith existing empirical evidence on conglomerate mergers, spin-offs, project finance, andsecuritization.

The Appraisal of projects with environmental impacts. Efficiency and Sustainability

It is usually assumed that the appraisal of the impacts experienced by present generations does not entail any difficulty. However, this is not true. Moreover, there is not a widely accepted methodology for taking these impacts into account. Some of the controversial issues are: the appropriate value for the discount rate, the choice of the units for expressing the impacts, physical or monetary units -income, consumption or investment- and the valuation of tangible and intangible goods. When approaching the problem of very long term impacts, there is also the problem of valuing the impacts experienced by future generations, through e.g., the use of an intergenerational discount rate. However, if this were the case, the present generation perspective would prevail, as if all the property rights on the resources were owned by them. Therefore, the sustainability requirement should also be incorporated into the analysis. We will analyze these problems in this article and show some possible solutions.

Clean Development Mechanism and Sustainable Development: a discussion on the link between the CDM and Sustainable Development, an analysis of the current status of the CDM portfolio, and an multicriteria evaluation of the effects of additional incentives in order to foster broad local Sustainable Development dividends from the CDM projects

vegeu resum en el fitxer adjunt a l'inici del treball de recerca

Inequality and a repeated joint project

Agents voluntarily contribute to an infinitely repeated joint project. We investigate the conditions for cooperation to be a renegotiation-proof and coalition-proof equilibrium before examining the influence of output share inequality on the sustainability of cooperation. When shares are not equally distributed, cooperation requires agents to be more patient than under perfect equality. Beyond a certain degree of share inequality, full efficiency cannot be reached without redistribution. This model also explains the coexistence of one cooperating and one free-riding coalition. In this case, increasing inequality can have a positive or negative impact on the aggregate level of effort.

Assessing the assignation of public subsidies: Do the experts choose the most efficient R&D projects?

The implementation of public programs to support business R&D projects requires the establishment of a selection process. This selection process faces various difficulties, which include the measurement of the impact of the R&D projects as well as selection process optimization among projects with multiple, and sometimes incomparable, performance indicators. To this end, public agencies generally use the peer review method, which, while presenting some advantages, also demonstrates significant drawbacks. Private firms, on the other hand, tend toward more quantitative methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), in their pursuit of R&D investment optimization. In this paper, the performance of a public agency peer review method of project selection is compared with an alternative DEA method.

Did the cooperative start life as a Joint-Stock company? business law and cooperatives in Spain, 1869–1931

Studies of Spanish cooperatives date their spread from the Law on Agrarian Syndicates of 1906. But the first legislative appearance of cooperatives is an 1869 measure that permitted general incorporation for lending companies. The 1931 general law on cooperatives, which was the first act permitting the formation of cooperatives in any activity, reflects the gradual disappearance of the cooperative’s "business" characteristics. In this paper we trace the Spanish cooperative’s legal roots in business law and its connections to broader questions of the freedom of association, the formation of joint-stock enterprises, and the liability of investors in business and cooperative entities. Our account underscores the similarities of the organizational problems approach by cooperatives and business firms, while at the same time respecting the distinctive purposes cooperatives served.

A non-possibility theorem for joint-stability in interindustry models

Joint-stability in interindustry models relates to the mutual simultaneous consistency of the demand-driven and supply-driven models of Leontief and Ghosh, respectively. Previous work has claimed joint-stability to be an acceptable assumption from the empirical viewpoint, provided only small changes in exogenous variables are considered. We show in this note, however, that the issue has deeper theoretical roots and offer an analytical demonstration that shows the impossibility of consistency between demand-driven and supply-driven models.

Joint Ventures en China

El present Treball de Fi de Carrera tracta dur a terme un estudi sobre els projectes de col.laboració inter-empresarial. Fruit d'aquest fenomen de diversificació d'àmbit societari, sorgeix la joint venture com un sistema d'internacionalització en el món empresarial. Per analitzar les peculiaritats d'aquesta figura contractual ens centrarem en l'anàlisi de la seva implantació i desenvolupament al país del drac que desperta, investigant sobre les repercussions des del prisma de la ciència jurídica en la convergència de Dret Societari Internacional i dels contractes. Així mateix, es farà referència als aspectes econòmics, i polítics presents a la Xina, així com de l'objecte i de l'existència i transcendència de la joint venture per a l'economia internacional.

Free Technology Academy : a Joint Venture of Free Software and OER

The decision to publish educational materials openly and under free licenses brings up the challenge of doing it in a sustainable way. Some lessons can be learned from the business models for production, maintenance and distribution of Free and Open Source Software. The Free Technology Academy (FTA) has taken on these challenges and has implemented some of these models. We briefly review the FTA educational programme, methodologies and organisation, and see to which extent these models are proving successful in the case of the FTA.

Open video tools to support the production of online collaborative audiovisual projects : how to promote collective creation in e-learning

This paper analyses the use of open video editing tools to support the creation and production of online collaborative audiovisual projects for higher education. It focuses on the possibilities offered by these tools to promote collective creation in virtual environments.

Examining the sustainability issues in UKOER projects : Developing a sustainable OER ecosystem in HE

The development of open educational resources (OERs) is becoming a strategic priority for governments and education institutions around the world, in response to funding cuts and rising costs in educational provision. In the United Kingdom, a government-sponsored Pilot Programme on Open Educational Recourses (JISC/HEA, 2009) was launched in 2009 with an initial budget of £5.7m. This paper reviews the key sustainability issues identified by the projects including the different approaches and models that have been adopted in order to sustain the continuing development and release of OER once funding has ended. The analysis also considers the challenges relating to the development and implementation of policies and processes for sustainable OER practice within institutions and among academics. The paper concludes by drawing on the experiences from the wider United Kingdom and international OER communities to develop a sustainable OER ecosystem model that can facilitate discussions on future development of OER initiatives.

What do academic libraries have to do with Open Educational Resources? Theme : Long term sustainability of open education projects first steps to start up

This paper will discuss the possible roles of academic libraries in promoting, supporting, and sustaining institutional Open Educational Resource initiatives. It will note areas in which libraries or librarians have skills and knowledge that intersect with some of the needs of academic staff and students as they use and release OERs. It will also present the results of a brief survey of the views of some OER initiatives on the current and potential role of academic libraries.

WePreserve 2009: DPE/Planets/CASPAR/nestor Joint Training Event: The Preservation challenge: basic concepts and practical applications (Barcelona, 23-27 març 2009)

Reseña del congreso WePreserve 2009 que tuvo lugar los pasados 23 al 27 de marzo en Barcelona, organizadopor la Facultad de Biblioteconomía y Documentación de la Universitat de Barcelona, con la colaboración del Institut d'Estudis Catalans, la Biblioteca de Catalunya y el Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona. El seminario 2009 WePreserve se celebra anualmente desde el año 2007 y participan todas las figuras de referencia europeas en materia de investigación en sistemas y metodologías que garantizan la preservación digital de los documentos: Digital Preservation Europe (DPE), Preservation and Long-term Access Through Networked Services (Planets), Cultural Artistic and Scientific Knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval (CASPAR), y Network of expertise in Digital long-term preservation (nestor).