The public choice sedition: variations on the theme of scientific warfare

Given a significant element of truth in "Public Choice", a modest element must be found when a similar approach is made to the behavior of economic scientists. Harry Johnson found this in "The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution". Following him, I find more in the Public Choice "Revolution" itself. The basic visions, assumptions and methods of the latter are appraised within its time-space stream. "Variations on a theme by Buchanan" or "The B- and F-Twist" could have been suggestive subtitles for this paper -- an embrycnic Economics of Knowledge, a complement to the Sociology of Knowledge.

The insurance function of contracts

One of the central problems in contract law is to define the frontier between legal and illegal breaches of promises. The distinction between good and bad faith is perhaps the conceptual tool most commonly used to tell one from the other. Lawyers spend a lot of energy trying to frame better definitions of the concepts of good and bad faith based on principles of ethics or justice, but often pay much less attention to theories dealing with the incentives that can engender good faith behavior in contractual relationships. By describing the economics of what Stiglitz defined as “explicit” and “implicit” insurance, I highlight the “insurance function” hidden in any promise with basically no mathematical notation. My aim is to render the subject intelligible and useful to lawyers with little familiarity with economics.

Sports administration: an examination of the competitive balance concept through european and brazilian domestic soccer leagues comparison

A questão do Equilíbrio Competitivo é um tema importante da economia dos esportes profissionais nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Muitas pesquisas foram feitas para estabelecer os critérios mais relevantes para avaliar a competitividade das ligas profissionais de futebol. Esta pesquisa analisou a relevância do Equilíbrio Competitivo como determinante da competitividade comparando o Brasileirão Série A com as nove principais ligas na Europa (Bélgica, Inglaterra, Alemanha, Holanda, França, Itália, Portugal, Escócia e Espanha). A competitividade é a capacidade de uma empresa (um clube) ou de uma indústria de enfrentar a concorrência efetiva ou potencial. A medida da competitividade deve levar em consideração uma série de fatores importantes como a qualidade e a relação qualidade/preço, a gestão de recursos humanos e a organização empresarial. Esse trabalho visa demonstrar que, apesar da incerteza do resultado ter sido considerado por muito tempo como um fator positivo de atratividade/interesse dos fãs nos esportes, um campeonato equilibrado poderia ter um efeito insignificante, para não dizer desprezível sobre a competitividade das ligas de futebol a longo prazo. Os resultados mostraram que o aumento do Equilíbrio Competitivo pode ser relevante para os campeonatos mais fracos (Bélgica, Holanda, Portugal, Escócia), mas nao dos cincos melhores (Alemanha, Espanha, França, Inglaterra, Itália). Consequentemente, o Equilíbrio Competitivo deve ser contemplado como uma variável desprezível quanto à competitividade das ligas de futebol, apesar do interesse crescente pelo conceito na literatura. Baseado principalmente em pesquisas de Dell'Osso e Symanski (1991) e de Oughton e Michie (2004), o índice HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman) tem sido utilizado para determinar o nível de concentração de 11 ligas de futebol estudadas. Uma revisão da literatura sobre administração de futebol e esportes foi realizada.

The effect of using claim confirming product cues on the product claim credibility: is seeing believing?

The Cue Utilization Theory establishes that all products are made of multiples cues that may be seen as surrogates for the intangible attributes that make up any given product. However, the results of many years of research have yet yielded little consensus as to the impact generated by the use of such cues. This research aims to contribute to the discussion about the importance of intrinsic cues by investigating the effects that the use of product cues that confirm the product claim may have on Claim Credibility (measured through Ad Credibility), and also on consumers’ Purchase Intention and Perceived Risk toward the product. An experiment was designed to test such effects and the results suggest the effects of the use of Claim Confirming Product Cues depend on consumer’s level of awareness about such cue, and that when consumers are aware of it, Ad Credibility and Purchase Intention increase, as Perceived Risk decreases. Such results may have implications to academicians and practitioners, as well as may provide insights for future research.

Efeito do policiamento sobre a criminalidade: uma análise em painel para o municípios paulistas e estados brasileiros

This work had the aim of investigating the effect of policing over crime rates, analyzing both the municipalities of São Paulo as well the Brazilian states. The analysis of counties developed for four types of criminal practices classified as theft, burglary, robbery and vehicle theft and murders, while the second analysis of the Brazilian states was restricted to murders. The São Paulo counties crime data were extracted from the Bureau of Public Security of the State of São Paulo and the Brazilian state data has the Datasus/SIM as the main source. The model used is based on the economic theory of crime proposed by Becker (1968). The attempt of measuring the police effect over crime was carry on for 2 variables: the police force and the public security expenditure. Besides those variables, control variables were added to the regressions such as demographic and socio-economics, compiled from various sources. Models were estimated with fixed effects panel methodology, controlling for the simultaneity bias of the relationship between policing and crime in a two stages regression. The results, especially in the regressions for the Brazilian states, illustrate the positive bias of simultaneity between police and crime, once the firsts regressions, that did not control for this endogeneity, resulted in positive parameters, while all regressions in two stages resulted in negative coefficients for the police variable, which are significant when expenditure is used as public security measure. The São Paulo counties regressions, we found evidence that the existence of a municipality guard may have a reduction effect over thefts rate.

What causes violent crime?

This study uses a new data set of crime ratesfor a large sample of countriesfor the period 1970- 1994, based on information from the United Nations World Crime Surveys, to ana/yze the determinants ofnational homicide and robbery rates. A simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed, which explicit/y considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time (criminal inertia). Several econometric mode/s are estimated, attempting to capture the . determinonts of crime rates across countries and over time. The empirical mode/s are first run for cross-sections and then applie'd to panel data. The former focus on erplanatory variables that do not change markedly over time, while the panel data techniques consider both the eflect of the business cyc1e (i.e., GDP growth rate) on the crime rate and criminal inertia (accountedfor by the inclusion of the /agged crime rate as an explanatory variable). The panel data techniques a/so consider country-specific eflects, the joint endogeneity of some of the erplanatory variables, and lhe existence of some types of measurement e"ors aJjlicting the crime data. The results showthat increases in income inequality raise crime rates, dete"ence eflects are significant, crime tends to be counter-cyclical, and criminal inertia is significant even after controlling for other potential determinants of homicide and robbery rates.

An economic model of gun control

Guns stolen from law-abiding households provide the principal source of guns for criminals. The lethality of crime instruments increases with the availability of guns, so the gun market is subject to externalities that generate excessive ownership and inadequate spending on protective measures to deter gun theft. One motive for gun ownership is self defense, and the gun market is subject to coordination failure: the more guns purchased lawfully, the more will be stolen by criminals, so the greater the incentive for lawful . consumers to purchase guns for self defense. As a result, there may be multiple equilibria in the gun market and more than one equilibrium crime rate. We show that a simple refundable deposit for guns will internalize the externalities in the gun market and may cause large downward jumps in gun ownership, the lethality of crime instruments, and the social costs of crime.

Rhamnolipids and PHAs: Recent reports on Pseudomonas-derived molecules of increasing industrial interest

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Multiobjective optimization of economic balances of sugarcane harvest biomass

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A bio-economic appraisal of pair trawl fisheries off southeastern Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A comparative evaluation of open loop and closed loop drug administration strategies in the treatment of AIDS.

In recent years, many researchers in the field of biomedical sciences have made successful use of mathematical models to study, in a quantitative way, a multitude of phenomena such as those found in disease dynamics, control of physiological systems, optimization of drug therapy, economics of the preventive medicine and many other applications. The availability of good dynamic models have been providing means for simulation and design of novel control strategies in the context of biological events. This work concerns a particular model related to HIV infection dynamics which is used to allow a comparative evaluation of schemes for treatment of AIDS patients. The mathematical model adopted in this work was proposed by Nowak & Bangham, 1996 and describes the dynamics of viral concentration in terms of interaction with CD4 cells and the cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which are responsible for the defense of the organism. Two conceptually distinct techniques for drug therapy are analyzed: Open Loop Treatment, where a priori fixed dosage is prescribed and Closed Loop Treatment, where the doses are adjusted according to results obtained by laboratory analysis. Simulation results show that the Closed Loop Scheme can achieve improved quality of the treatment in terms of reduction in the viral load and quantity of administered drugs, but with the inconvenience related to the necessity of frequent and periodic laboratory analysis.

Theory and practice of industrial policy: evidence from the Latin American experience

Includes bibliography

Exploring policy linkages between poverty, crime and violence: a look at three Caribbean states

Includes bibliography

In memory of Pedro Vuskovic

For those of us who shared many years of friendship and professional collaboration with Pedro Vuskovic, the news of his recent death in Mexico has been the cause of great sorrow, not only because of the circumstances of his death, following a cruel disease that gradually sapped his physical -but not intellectual- strength, but also because it signifies the loss of a great Latin American, of a teacher who helped shape so many generations of young people in our region, and of a companion during so many days of intellectual strivings and political struggle. Pedro joined the Commission in 1950, shortly after its birth as an institution. For nearly 20 years he served it brilliantly in a professional capacity, with his career in ECLAC culminating in the position of Director of the Development Division. He played a crucial role in structuring and disseminating the thinking of ECLAC during a time when the very air teemed with the ideas and concerns of a pleiad of gifted economists and social scientists. These were the post-war years, the 1950s and 1960s, when we all had to "construct" Latin America. Pedro Vuskovic laid many of the bricks in that collective theoretical and political edifice which has been of such importance to the countries of the region. Concurrently, he served as a professor in ECLAC and ILPES training programmes while at the same time teaching classes at the schools of economics and sociology at the University of Chile and the School of Economics at the University of Concepción. When he left ECLAC, Pedro plunged wholeheartedly into the academic world, serving as the Director of the Institute of Economics of the University of Chile, and then went on to claim a position at the forefront of Chilean politics. In November 1970 he was named Minister of Economic Affairs by President Salvador Allende and in June 1972, took over the cabinet-level position of Executive Vice President of the Production Development Corporation (CORFO);, where he served until September 1973. When political events carried him into exile in Mexico, which generously welcomed him as it did so many other Latin Americans who faced similar problems, Pedro carried on his valuable academic work, first at the Economic Research and Teaching Centre (CIDE);, where he directed the Institute of Economic Studies of Latin America, and later at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities at the National University of Mexico (UNAM);, where he was named to the position of Coordinator for a programme on poverty and development options in various countries of Latin America. Although he will be remembered for his important political role, Pedro's work as a scholar and as an economist deserve special mention. He was a brilliant speaker, at the same time both methodical and incisive, who mastered his subjects with great wisdom and intellectual breadth, and he derived a special joy from being with young people, from providing them with intellectual stimulation and receiving it from them in turn. The many generations of Latin American students who were fortunate enough to have him as a teacher can attest to this. Pedro Vuskovic brought to his work as a researcher and teacher a deep sense of political and social responsibility which moved him to espouse the cause of Latin America 's poor and dispossessed, whose position he had come to understand very early on in his life through the many studies he carried out in this area while at ECLAC. He was tenacious in upholding his ideas and principles, he lived in accordance with them, and he championed them in all the forums open to him, in both the political and academic worlds, to the end of his days. His friends and colleagues also remember his geniality, his sense of humour and great personal warmth -traits which were coupled with an unshakable loyalty to his principles and values. Our farewell is deeply felt; Pedro Vuskovic has left us a legacy of memories and lessons that we will always hold close to our hearts. On behalf of his friends and colleagues, Jacobo Schatan, former Director of the Joint ECLAC/FAO, Agriculture Division

Prevention or repression? The false dilemma of citizen security

Includes bibliography