Public Governance, Health and Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper we diverge from the existing empirical literature on FDI determinants in two ways. First, we decompose the sources of the foreign direct investment (FDI) gap between Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and other developing regions. Once market size has been accounted for, we nd that SSA's FDI de cit is mostly explained by insufficient provision of public goods: low human capital accumulation, especially health, in SSA explains 100-140% of the inter-regional FDI gaps. Second, we estimate the indirect effect of infectious diseases on FDI through their direct impact on health. We find that a 1% point rise in HIV prevalence in the adult population is associated with a decrease in net FDI inflows of 3.5%, while a country in which 100% of the population is at risk of contracting deadly malaria receives about 16% less FDI than a similar country located in a malaria-free region.

Does Public Governance Always Matter? How Experience of Poor Institutional Quality Influences FDI to the South

This paper investigates whether the higher prevalence of South multinational enterprises (MNEs) in risky developing countries may be explained by the experience that they have acquired of poor institutional quality at home. We confirm the intuition provided by our analytical model by empirically showing that the positive impact of good public governance on foreign direct investment (FDI) in a given host country is moderated significantly, and even in some cases eliminated, when MNEs have been faced with poor institutional quality at home.

La utilización de los recursos actualmente existentes en Internet para la enseñanza de Ingeniería de Materiales

El presente trabajo describe la planificación y posterior puesta en marcha de distintos mecanismos para la realización de prácticas de simulación con ordenador a modo de asignatura virtual. Los contenidos pertenecen a distintas áreas de conocimiento del plan de estudios relativo a la Ingeniería de Materiales. Primeramente se hace un análisis de las causas que motivaron la realización del mismo, así como de las posibilidades y necesidad de utilización de los Laboratorios Virtuales en la enseñanza contemporánea. Posteriormente se presenta el sistema desarrollado, sus características y posibilidades de utilización. El objetivo del trabajo es doble: por un lado, crear una base de datos interactiva de consulta con la finalidad de que el alumno pueda asentar conceptos clave necesarios para cursar la titulación con éxito; por otro, crear un servidor de prácticas de simulación por computador haciendo uso de la World Wide Web y que permita a los alumnos acceder a las prácticas de forma remota, con las múltiples ventajas, tanto educativas como económicas, que ello supondría.

The Known Unknowns of Governance.

Empirical researchers interested in how governance shapes various aspects of economic development frequently use the Worldwide Governance indicators (WGI). These variables come in the form of an estimate along with a standard error reflecting the uncertainty of this estimate. Existing empirical work simply uses the estimates as an explanatory variable and discards the information provided by the standard errors. In this paper, we argue that the appropriate practice should be to take into account the uncertainty around the WGI estimates through the use of multiple imputation. We investigate the importance of our proposed approach by revisiting in three applications the results of recently published studies. These applications cover the impact of governance on (i) capital flows; (ii) international trade; (iii) income levels around the world. We generally find that the estimated effects of governance are highly sensitive to the use of multiple imputation. We also show that model misspecification is a concern for the results of our reference studies. We conclude that the effects of governance are hard to establish once we take into account uncertainty around both the WGI estimates and the correct model specification.

How collaboration could contribute to make Catalan journals visible on the Internet?

Cooperation between libraries is a universal language spoken in different dialects. In 1996 the libraries of the state-funded universities and the National Library of Catalonia (Spain) formed the Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia (CBUC) to act as a channel for cooperation. The organization and activities of CBUC are an example of how this universal language has been adapted to the specific characteristics of the Libraries of Catalonia. Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain with 7 million inhabitants with its own language, history and traditions and with a strong feeling of own identity that facilitates the cooperation. Thanks to this (and also to the hard work of the member libraries), since then, CBUC has created a union catalogue, an interlibrary lending program, the Digital Library of Catalonia, a cooperative store, different cooperatives repositories and other cooperation programs. One of these cooperatives repositories is RACO (Catalan Journals in Open Access, www.raco.cat) where can be consulted, in open access, the full-text articles of scientific, cultural and scholar Catalan journals. The main purpose of RACO is to increase the visibility and searches of the journals included and to spread the scientific and academic production published in Catalonia. This purpose makes specific in three aims: encourage the electronic edition of Catalan journals; be the interface that allows the whole search of all the journals and provide the instruments for its preservation. There are currently 244 journals in RACO, that includes more than 85.000 articles (80% in OA) from 50 publishing institutions. Since it got into operation it has had more than 4 millions of queries. These 244 journals offer the full-text of all the published issues. Nevertheless, some journal can have a delay between the introduction of the table of contents and the full-text for the recent issues. From 2005 we have a plan of retrospective digitization that has allowed to digitize more than 350.000 pages of back issues. The RACO repository works with the open source program OJS (Open Journal Systems, http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) and uses Dublin Core Metadata and the interoperability protocol created by Open Archives Initiative (OAI) which allows to increase the visibility of the articles published in journals offering oneself together with other international repositories.

La propiedad intelectual: el derecho de autor e Internet

La propietat intel•lectual,concretament el dret d’autor, en relació al nou entorn digital i tant la responsabilitat civil com penal que comporta la infracció dels seus drets. Fent especial esment als limits , exepcions i mesures de protecció tecnològica contemplades a l’ordenament jurídic.

Private Governance of Financial Markets: the US Regulatory Regime on Hedge Funds

The article investigates the private governance of financial markets by looking at the evolution of the regulatory debate on hedge funds in the US market. It starts from the premise that the privatization of regulation is always the result of a political decision and analyzes how this decision came about and was implemented in the case of hedge funds. The starting point is the failure of two initiatives on hedge funds that US regulators launched between 1999 an 2004, which the analysis explains by elaborating the concept of self-capture. Facing a trade off between the need to tackle publicly demonized issues and the difficulty of monitoring increasingly sophisticated and powerful private markets, regulators purposefully designed initiatives that were not meant to succeed, that is, they “self-captured” their own activity. By formulating initiatives that were inherently flawed, regulators saved their public role and at the same time paved the way for the privatization of hedge fund regulation. This explanation identifies a link between the failure of public initiatives and the success of private ones. It illustrates a specific case of formation of private authority in financial markets that points to a more general practice emerging in the regulation of finance.

Visor de mapes temàtics del servei Internet per a la consulta i publicació d’indicadors estadístics de l’Institut d’Estudis Regionals i Metropolitans de Barcelona (IERMB)

El projecte ha consistit en la construcció d’un visor de mapes temàtic com a part d’un servei Internet per a la consulta i publicació d’indicadors estadístics de l’Institut d’Estudis Regionals i Metropolitans de Barcelona (IERMB). El servei s’ha muntat amb programes de codi lliure i obert en un entorn HTML, utilitzant MapServer CGI com a servidor d’informació geogràfica i les llibreries JavaScript OpenLayers per a la implementació de les funcionalitats del servei de mapes. El visor s’ha dissenyat seguint l’estètica del Web de l’IERMB perquè l’usuari interactui amb una interfície familiar i coneguda que li faciliti l’adaptabilitat al servei donat

La industria cultural en Internet y las entidades gestoras de derechos de autor

En el presente trabajo de investigación realizamos un análisis sobre el impacto de la revolución digital en las industrias culturales. Reflejamos como el Derecho español se adapta a las nuevas necesidades de la tecnología para garantizar la protección de la Propiedad Intelectual (PI). Indagamos en las competencias de las entidades de gestión y que se encargan de la gestión de los derechos de autor así como la aplicación conjunta del canon digital. Nuestro objetivo general es mostrar cuales son las particularidades del nuevo contexto cultural-digital, esclareciendo cual es el papel que cada uno de los actores implicados desarrolla, así como mostrar cual es el valor económico, legal y social que esta tendencia de consumo representa para el desarrollo cultural y tecnológico en el territorio español. iv. Al present treball d’investigació realitzem un anàlisi sobre l’ impacte de la revolució digital a les indústries culturals. Reflectirem com el Dret espanyol s’adapta a les noves necessitats de la tecnologia per garantir la protecció de la Propietat Intel•lectual (PI). Indagarem en les competències de les entitats de gestió i que s’encarrega de la gestió dels drets d’autor, així com l’aplicació conjunta del canon digital. El nostre objectiu general és mostrar quines són les particularitats del nou context cultural-digital, aclarint quin és el paper que cadascú dels actors implicats desenvolupa, així com mostrar quin és el valor econòmic, legal i social que aquesta tendència de consum representa per al desenvolupament cultural i tecnològic al territorio espanyol.