Foreign Direct Investment and Political Uncertainty

Recent developments in the general equilibrium theory of multinationals emphasize the importance of multilateral considerations. Yet, existing explanations and corresponding estimations of FDI patterns have largely limited political and institutional investment impediments to a bilateral framework. Through the application of spatial econometric techniques, I demonstrate that the presence of both domestic and regional political uncertainty generate real options effects that lead to the delay or redirection of foreign direct investment. The magnitude and direction of these effects is conditional upon the host country regime type and the predominant multinational integration strategies in the region. Comparing these results with FDI of U.S. origin, I find evidence for divergent investment behavior by U.S. multinationals during regime changes in partner countries. Additionally, I find no evidence that multinationals from developing countries are more likely to complete cross-border deals in environments characterized by greater political risk or political uncertainty.

MOTION - A New On-line Model for Urban Traffic Signal Control.

This paper presents MOTION, a modular on-line model for urban traffic signal control. It consists of a network and a local level and builds on enhanced traffic state estimation. Special consideration is given to the prioritization of public transit. MOTION provides possibilities for the interaction with integrated urban management systems.

CSR Reporting in the Finnish Banking Sector – Status and Recent Development

This thesis reviews the development of CSR reporting in the Finnish banking sector. This was achieved by analyzing the content of specific CSR reports published by three banks during years 2012-2014. The banks selected represent the three largest banks operating in Finland according to their market share, constituting approximately 70 percent of the total perceived market share. The purpose of the analysis is to establish a clear descriptive overview of the status of CSR reporting and how it has thematically developed over the years. The research was conducted with the qualitative content analysis method. By analyzing the contents of the CSR reports it was found that CSR reporting is understood in 3 different themes that reflect the general CSR theory: economic, social and environmental responsibility. The following research focused on analyzing these three core themes separately during years 2012-2014 in order to find specific tendencies in the development of CSR reporting. The results confirm that CSR reporting is developing in the Finnish banking sector. Reporting about economic responsibility is based on core financial performance reporting, and it’s mainly developing in the assessment of the global recession and how the potential fiscal reforms affect to the bank sector’s performance. Economic responsibility is also being understood and reported as a wider concept, including intertwined and shared meanings with the other responsibility reporting themes. The research also suggests that banks value social responsibility reporting increasingly each year. Environmental responsibility reporting is the most standardized form of reporting, however, the reporting development includes the increased use of digitalization as source of lessening the environmental impact.

Cultural citizenship and its implications for citizenship education: Chinese university students’ civic experience in relation to mass media and the university citizenship curriculum

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

How can science contribute for the sustainable management of natural resource? : Praia da Vitória Bay and Guadiana Estuary, a comparative study

Tese de Doutoramento, Ciências do Ambiente (Ordenamento do Território), 5 de Abril de 2013, Universidade dos Açores.

MDP periodically time-varying convolutional codes

In this paper we use some classical ideas from linear systems theory to analyse convolutional codes. In particular, we exploit input-state-output representations of periodic linear systems to study periodically time-varying convolutional codes. In this preliminary work we focus on the column distance of these codes and derive explicit necessary and sufficient conditions for an (n, 2, 1) periodically time-varying convolutional code to have Maximum Distance Profile (MDP).

Al Redescubrimiento de los Usuarios en las Unidades de Información

Se presenta una serie de ideas en relación con la nueva concepción que deben seguir las empresas y por lo tanto las Unidades de Información, respecto al cliente, tomando como marco de referencia o fundamento la Teoría de Sistemas.Se concluye entre otras cosas, que el usuario es la razón de ser de nuestras organizaciones y será él quien última instancia decidirá la existencia o extinción de éstas.

Quantum Gate and Quantum State Preparation through Neighboring Optimal Control

Successful implementation of fault-tolerant quantum computation on a system of qubits places severe demands on the hardware used to control the many-qubit state. It is known that an accuracy threshold Pa exists for any quantum gate that is to be used for such a computation to be able to continue for an unlimited number of steps. Specifically, the error probability Pe for such a gate must fall below the accuracy threshold: Pe < Pa. Estimates of Pa vary widely, though Pa ∼ 10−4 has emerged as a challenging target for hardware designers. I present a theoretical framework based on neighboring optimal control that takes as input a good quantum gate and returns a new gate with better performance. I illustrate this approach by applying it to a universal set of quantum gates produced using non-adiabatic rapid passage. Performance improvements are substantial comparing to the original (unimproved) gates, both for ideal and non-ideal controls. Under suitable conditions detailed below, all gate error probabilities fall by 1 to 4 orders of magnitude below the target threshold of 10−4. After applying the neighboring optimal control theory to improve the performance of quantum gates in a universal set, I further apply the general control theory in a two-step procedure for fault-tolerant logical state preparation, and I illustrate this procedure by preparing a logical Bell state fault-tolerantly. The two-step preparation procedure is as follow: Step 1 provides a one-shot procedure using neighboring optimal control theory to prepare a physical qubit state which is a high-fidelity approximation to the Bell state |β01⟩ = 1/√2(|01⟩ + |10⟩). I show that for ideal (non-ideal) control, an approximate |β01⟩ state could be prepared with error probability ϵ ∼ 10−6 (10−5) with one-shot local operations. Step 2 then takes a block of p pairs of physical qubits, each prepared in |β01⟩ state using Step 1, and fault-tolerantly prepares the logical Bell state for the C4 quantum error detection code.

A relação entre o direito e a teoria econômica na jurisprudência do cade sobre tabelas médicas

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Direito, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito, 2015.

Trust and Leadership in Higher Education in the Downturn

This Leadership Academy Workshop presentation focused on 'Trust and Leadership in the Downturn', with particular reference to the public sector and to education. The presentation discussed a range of definitions of trust, including the view of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) that trust can be described as 'the willingness of a person to be vulnerable to the actions of another, based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that action'. The presentation then focused on the reasons why this relational psychological state is important,particularly in an economic recession when people were facing job cuts and economic uncertainty in a wider political and social environment characterised by cynicism and a downturn in trust. If trust is defined in part as a belief in the honesty, competence and benevolence of others, it tends to act like 'social glue', cushioning difficult situations and enabling actions to take place easily that otherwise would not be permissible. A worrying state of affairs has recently been developing across the world, however, in the economic downturn, as reported in the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2009, in which there was a marked diminuition of trust in corporations, businesses and government, as a result of the credit crunch. While the US and parts of Europe was showing recovery from a generalised loss of trust by mid-year 2009, the UK had not. It seems that social attitudes in Britain may be hardening - it seems that from being a nation of sceptics we may be becoming a nation of cynics: for example, 69% of the population surveyed by Edelman trust the government less than six months ago. In this situation, there is a need to promote positive measures to build trust, including the establishment of more transparent and honest business practices and practices to ensure that employees are treated well. Following the presentation, a workshop was held to discuss the nature of a possible loss of trust in the downturn in the UK and its implications for leadership practices and development.

Gazes at the monster : courts, NGOs, and the UN Security Council

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Direito, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito, 2016.

Macrodynamics of economics: a bibliometric history

A history of specialties in economics since the late 1950s is constructed on the basis of a large corpus of documents from economics journals. The production of this history relies on a combination of algorithmic methods that avoid subjective assessments of the boundaries of specialties: bibliographic coupling, automated community detection in dynamic networks and text mining. these methods uncover a structuring of economics around recognizable specialties with some significant changes over the time-period covered (1956-2014). Among our results, especially noteworthy are (a) the clearcut existence of 10 families of specialties, (b) the disappearance in the late 1970s of a specialty focused on general economic theory, (c) the dispersal of the econometrics-centered specialty in the early 1990s and the ensuing importance of specific econometric methods for the identity of many specialties since the 1990s, (d) the low level of specialization of individual economists throughout the period in contrast to physicists as early as the late 1960s.

El agua como factor reordenador del territorio en el caso de las inundaciones de la Universidad de la Sabana en 2011

El objetivo de este estudio de caso es analizar el agua como factor reordenador del territorio, en el caso específico de las inundaciones sucedidas en el 2011 en el territorio de la Universidad de la Sabana. Durante la ola invernal del 2011 todo el país sufrió las consecuencias de los errores en la planeación de los asentamientos humanos. La no inclusión de la gestión del riesgo dentro del Ordenamiento Territorial, sumado la falta de comprensión de las dinámicas del territorio y del rol del agua como factor ordenador del territorio, causaron inundaciones y desastres naturales que afectaron la vida de miles de ciudadanos, entre eso los estudiantes, profesores y demás afectados por las inundaciones de la Universidad de la Sabana.

Relación entre la calificación de los elementos de un sistema de gestión y los indicadores de accidentalidad en empresas del sector de la construcción en Colombia

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo determinar la relación que existe entre la implementación de un sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo (SGSST), y la frecuencia y la severidad de la accidentalidad en la industria de la construcción en Colombia. Para ello se seleccionaron 35 empresas que realizan actividades relacionadas con la edificación, infraestructura e interventoría, que hubiesen implementado un SGSST para la intervención de los riesgos de accidentes y que contaran con la evaluación del mismo. La evaluación del SGSST está enmarcada en cinco dimensiones o criterios: planeación, política, implementación, manejo integral del accidente y revisión por la gerencia. Cada una evaluada a través de diferentes requisitos y se presentan en una escala de 1 a 10, siendo 10 el nivel más alto del cumplimiento por requisito. Teniendo los resultados de esta calificación, la tasa (proporción entre los accidentes reportados y los trabajadores de cada empresa) y los días de incapacidad (ausentismo por accidente de trabajo), se realizó un análisis de las medidas descriptivas consolidado por las empresas del estudio: tendencia central y dispersión para número de trabajadores, tasa de accidentalidad, días de incapacidad y el resultado de los totales de cada criterio de la evaluación y el gran total. Para estudiar la relación entre los resultados de la evaluación y los indicadores de tasa y días, se llevó a cabo un análisis de correlación y regresión lineal entre los indicadores de accidentalidad y los resultados de las puntuaciones de los criterios. Esta correlación se realizó tanto para la primera evaluación como para la segunda. En las dos mediciones las correlaciones fueron negativas mostrando que existe una disminución en la tasa de accidentalidad y días de incapacidad entre una evaluación y la otra. En el análisis de regresión, en la primera evaluación por cada unidad que aumentó la calificación global, se presentó una reducción de la tasa de frecuencia de 0.140. En la segunda evaluación por cada unidad que aumentó la calificación global, la tasa se redujo en 0.159. Ambos hallazgos soportan la necesidad de implementar un SGSST para ayudar a reducir el número inaceptable de lesiones y enfermedades en la industria de la construcción.

Fundamentos teóricos del Pensamiento complejo de Edgar Morin

In face of what he considered as the crisis of the Western paradigm of simplification and disjunction, based on the reduction and separation of knowledge, Edgar Morin posited the emergence of a new paradigm of complexity that would attempt to articulate and contextualize scientific, humanistic, and artistic cultures. To accomplish such purpose, Morin argued for an integration of ideas, concepts and notions drawing on different theoretical sources. Approaching complexity has required a dialectic and creative resignification of the legacy of such theories through a new synthesis that both integrates and surpasses them qualitatively.