A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, December 2007

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, October 2007

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

A crónica no panorama literário cultural cabo-verdiano : da crítica social a uma preocupação humanitária : Salústio e Medina : dois casos paradigmático

Esta dissertação visou compreender o caráter temático e discursivo de algumas crónicas literárias de dois autores cabo-verdianos, Dina Salústio e Daniel Medina, e provar o carácter pedagógico e humanitário das composições. Fez-se, num primeiro momento, um estudo de conteúdos teóricos sobre a cronística portuguesa, visando recensear aspetos relacionados com a evolução do género ao longo dos tempos, desde a Idade Média até à Contemporaneidade, sempre numa perspetiva pragmática, e discutiram-se as características enformadoras do género, sendo assinaláveis a subjetividade, versatilidade, objetividade, estilo entre o oral e o literário, quotidianidade e dialogismo. De seguida, em termos metodológicos, optou-se por convocar o ethos de Amossy e Maingueneau para o estudo das composições. Num segundo momento, através de dez crónicas literárias cabo-verdianas, sendo cinco de cada autor, procedeu-se à análise crítica das quais se confirmou, a partir da análise temática, uma preocupação pedagógica e humanitária uma vez que se notou uma certa inquietação com problemas que envolvem a idiossincrasia do homem cabo-verdiano, como a perda de valores em termos educacionais e instrucionais, quer no seio familiar como escolar, a preocupação com os mais desfavorecidos materialmente, onde se destacam crianças órfãs de pais vivos, o descaso com os doentes mentais e as crianças de rua, a gravidez precoce, a prostituição infantil, entre outros. O modo, como os cronistas se posicionam face à abordagem dos temas, permitiu-nos projetar o ethos discursivo de duas personalidades sensíveis, sérias e comprometidas com os valores mais nobres que enformam o ser humano. Do mesmo modo, pôde constatar como características relevantes das composições a subjetividade e pessoalidade discursivas, a brevidade, o diálogo no estilo indirecto livre, a quotidianidade e literariedade aliados a alguns recursos retóricos que nos permitiram apurar os tons sério e irónico do sujeito enunciador ao tratar as questões temáticas.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, June 2008

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

Signalling, mating success and paternal investment in sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus): A theoretical model

I present an optimisation model that links paternal investment, male display and female choice. Although deviced for sticklebacks, it readily applies to other fish with male guarding behaviour. It relies on a few basic assumptions on the ways hatching success depends on paternal investment and clutch size, and male survival on paternal investment and signaling. Paternal investment is here a state-dependent decision, and signal a condition-dependent handicap by which males inform females of how much they are willing to invest. Series of predictions are derived on female and male breeding strategies, including optimal levels of signaling and paternal investment as functions of clutch size, own condition, and residual reproductive value, as well as alternative strategies such as egg kleptoparasitism. Some predictions already have empirical support, for which the present model provides new interpretations. Other might readily be tested, e.g. by simple clutch-size manipulations.

Health investment complementarities under competing risks

Applying the competing--risks model to multi--cause mortality,this paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the positive complementarities that occur between disease--specific policy interventions. We argue that since an individual cannot die twice, competing risks imply that individuals will not waste resources on causes that are not the most immediate, but will make health investments so as to equalize cause--specific mortality. However, equal mortality risk from a variety of diseases does not imply that disease--specific public health interventions are a waste. Rather, a cause--specific intervention produces spillovers to other disease risks, so that the overall reduction in mortality will generally be larger than the direct effect measured on the targeted disease. The assumption that mortality from non--targeted diseases remains the same after a cause--specific intervention under--estimates the true effect of such programs, since the background mortality is also altered as a result of intervention. Analyzing data from one of the most important public health programs ever introduced, the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) of the United Nations, we find evidence for the existence of such complementarities, involving causes that are not biomedically, but behaviorally, linked.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, July 2008

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

Pitfalls in the modeling of forward-looking price setting and investment decisions

The present paper makes progress in explaining the role of capital for inflation and output dynamics. We followWoodford (2003, Ch. 5) in assuming Calvo pricing combined with a convex capital adjustment cost at the firm level. Our main result is that capital accumulation affects inflation dynamics primarily through its impact on the marginal cost. This mechanism is much simpler than the one implied by the analysis in Woodford's text. The reason is that his analysis suffers from a conceptual mistake, as we show. The latter obscures the economic mechanism through which capital affects inflation and output dynamics in the Calvo model, as discussed in Woodford (2004).

Credit constraints, firms' precautionary investment and the business cycle

This paper studies the macroeconomic implications of firms' investment composition choices in the presence of credit constraints. Following a negative andpersistent aggregate productivity shock, firms shift into short-term investments because they produce more pledgeable output and because they help alleviate futureborrowing constraints. This produces a short-run dampening of the effects of theshock, at the expense of lower long-term investment and future output, relativeto an economy with no credit market imperfections. The effects are exacerbatedby a steepening of the term structure of interest rates that further encourages ashift towards short-term investments in the short-run. Small temporary shocks tothe severity of financing frictions generate large and long-lasting effects on outputthrough their impact on the composition of investment. A positive financial shockproduces much stronger effects than an identical negative shock, while the responsesto positive and negative shocks to aggregate productivity are roughly symmetric.Finally, the paper introduces a novel explanation for the countercyclicality of financing constraints of firms.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, August 2008

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

Balance Between Investment Protection and Sustainable Development in BITs: the Example of Switzerland

The objective of this article is to examine how substantive and procedural rights granted to foreign investors by Swiss bits are gradually being balanced with social and environmental provisions. Switzerland has enjoyed a long bit practice, as it signed its first treaty with Tunisia fifty years ago. Swiss bits rely on the post-establishment model and include usual standards of treatment. From 1981, they also systematically provide for a dispute settlement mechanism for disputes arising between an investor and a host State. Since the Switzerland - El Salvador bit in 1994, sustainable development concerns have been expressly inserted in some Swiss bits, as well as in several recent free trade agreements. Provisions on this theme are however far from being systematic in Switzerland's bit practice and essentially remain declaratory in nature. The trend towards wider inclusion of sustainable development provisions in bits still faces several practical and political challenges.

A-1 Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program, September 2008

A-1 - Monthly Public Assistance Statistical Report Family Investment Program

Firm investment in imperfect capital markets: A structural estimation

We set up a dynamic model of firm investment in which liquidity constraintsenter explicity into the firm's maximization problem. The optimal policyrules are incorporated into a maximum likelihood procedure which estimatesthe structural parameters of the model. Investment is positively related tothe firm's internal financial position when the firm is relatively poor. This relationship disappears for wealthy firms, which can reach theirdesired level of investment. Borrowing is an increasing function of financial position for poor firms. This relationship is reversed as a firm's financial position improves, and large firms hold little debt.Liquidity constrained firms may be unused credits lines and the capacity toinvest further if they desire. However the fear that liquidity constraintswill become binding in the future induces them to invest only when internalresources increase.We estimate the structural parameters of the model and use them to quantifythe importance of liquidity constraints on firms' investment. We find thatliquidity constraints matter significantly for the investment decisions of firms. If firms can finance investment by issuing fresh equity, rather than with internal funds or debt, average capital stock is almost 35% higher overa period of 20 years. Transitory shocks to internal funds have a sustained effect on the capital stock. This effect lasts for several periods and ismore persistent for small firms than for large firms. A 10% negative shock to firm fundamentals reduces the capital stock of firms which face liquidityconstraints by almost 8% over a period as opposed to only 3.5% for firms which do not face these constraints.

Entrepreneurial risk, investment and innovation

In this paper I develop a general equilibrium model with risk averse entrepreneurialfirms and with public firms. The model predicts that an increase in uncertainty reducesthe propensity of entrepreneurial firms to innovate, while it does not affect thepropensity of public firms to innovate. Furthermore, it predicts that the negativeeffect of uncertainty on innovation is stronger for the less diversified entrepreneurialfirms, and is stronger in the absence of financing frictions in the economy. In thesecond part of the paper I test these predictions on a dataset of small and mediumItalian manufacturing firms.