The Big Band Theory : català col·loquial i humor científic. Proposta de traducció del capítol pilot

Aquest treball elabora una proposta de traducció per al doblatge del capítol pilot de The Big Bang Theory, que combina llenguatge col•loquial i llenguatge científic.L’objectiu és doble: elaborar un llenguatge col•loquial creïble però a la vegada genuí i emprar els equivalents catalans adequats per als termes científics originals.

Capital, Wages, and Growth: Theory and Evidence

Returns to scale to capital and the strength of capital externalities play a key role for the empirical predictions and policy implications of different growth theories. We show that both can be identified with individual wage data and implement our approach at the city-level using US Census data on individuals in 173 cities for 1970, 1980, and 1990. Estimation takes into account fixed effects, endogeneity of capital accumulation, and measurement error. We find no evidence for human or physical capital externalities and decreasing aggregate returns to capital. Returns to scale to physical and human capital are around 80 percent. We also find strong complementarities between human capital and labor and substantial total employment externalities.

A note on schooling in development accounting

How much would output increase if underdeveloped economies were to increase their levels of schooling? We contribute to the development accounting literature by describing a non-parametric upper bound on the increase in output that can be generated by more schooling. The advantage of our approach is that the upper bound is valid for any number of schooling levels with arbitrary patterns of substitution/complementarity. Another advantage is that the upper bound is robust to certain forms of endogenous technology response to changes in schooling. We also quantify the upper bound for all economies with the necessary data, compare our results with the standard development accounting approach, and provide an update on the results using the standard approach for a large sample of countries.

Measurement with Some Theory: a New Approach to Evaluate Business Cycle Models

We propose a method to evaluate cyclical models which does not require knowledge of the DGP and the exact empirical specification of the aggregate decision rules. We derive robust restrictions in a class of models; use some to identify structural shocks and others to evaluate the model or contrast sub-models. The approach has good size and excellent power properties, even in small samples. We show how to examine the validity of a class of models, sort out the relevance of certain frictions, evaluate the importance of an added feature, and indirectly estimate structural parameters.

Social Security in Theory and Practice (II): Efficiency Theories, Narrative Theories, and Implications for Reform

166 countries have some kind of public old age pension. What economic forces create and sustain old age Social Security as a public program? Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1999b) document several of the internationally and historically common features of social security programs, and explore "political" theories of Social Security. This paper discusses the "efficiency theories", which view creation of the SS program as a full of partial solution to some market failure. Efficiency explanations of social security include the "SS as welfare for the elderly" the "retirement increases productivity to optimally manage human capital externalities", "optimal retirement insurance", the "prodigal father problem", the "misguided Keynesian", the "optimal longevity insurance", the "government economizing transaction costs", and the "return on human capital investment". We also analyze four "narrative" theories of social security: the "chain letter theory", the "lump of labor theory", the "monopoly capitalism theory", and the "Sub-but-Nearly-Optimal policy response to private pensions theory". The political and efficiency explanations are compared with the international and historical facts and used to derive implications for replacing the typical pay-as-you-go system with a forced savings plan. Most of the explanations suggest that forced savings does not increase welfare, and may decrease it.

Age-specific fitness components and their temporal variation in the barn owl.

Theory predicts that temporal variability plays an important role in the evolution of life histories, but empirical studies evaluating this prediction are rare. In constant environments, fitness can be measured by the population growth rate lambda, and the sensitivity of lambda to changes in fitness components estimates selection on these traits. In variable environments, fitness is measured by the stochastic growth rate lambda(S), and stochastic sensitivities estimate selection pressure. Here we examine age-specific schedules for reproduction and survival in a barn owl population (Tyto alba). We estimated how temporal variability affected fitness and selection, accounting for sampling variance. Despite large sample sizes of old individuals, we found no strong evidence for senescence. The most variable fitness components were associated with reproduction. Survival was less variable. Stochastic simulations showed that the observed variation decreased fitness by about 30%, but the sensitivities of lambda and lambda(S) to changes in all fitness components were almost equal, suggesting that temporal variation had negligible effects on selection. We obtained these results despite high observed variability in the fitness components and relatively short generation time of the study organism, a situation in which temporal variability should be particularly important for natural selection and early senescence is expected.

Salience theory of choice under risk

We present a theory of choice among lotteries in which the decision maker's attention is drawn to (precisely defined) salient payoffs. This leads the decision maker to a context-dependent representation of lotteries in which true probabilities are replaced by decision weights distorted in favor of salient payoffs. By endogenizing decision weights as a function of payoffs, our model provides a novel and unified account of many empirical phenomena, including frequent risk-seeking behavior, invariance failures such as the Allais paradox, and preference reversals. It also yields new predictions, including some that distinguish it from Prospect Theory, which we test.

Partitioning of reproduction in mother-daughter versus sibling associations : a test of optimal skew theory

A critical feature of cooperative animal societies is the reproductive skew, a shorthand term for the degree to which a dominant individual monopolizes overall reproduction in the group. Our theoretical analysis of the evolutionarily stable skew in matrifilial (i.e., mother-daughter) societies, in which relatednesses to offspring are asymmetrical, predicts that reproductive skews in such societies should tend to be greater than those of semisocial societies (i.e., societies composed of individuals of the same generation, such as siblings), in which relatednesses to offspring are symmetrical. Quantitative data on reproductive skews in semisocial and matrifilial associations within the same species for 17 eusocial Hymenoptera support this prediction. Likewise, a survey of reproductive partitioning within 20 vertebrate societies demonstrates that complete reproductive monopoly is more likely to occur in matrifilial than in semisocial societies, also as predicted by the optimal skew model.

Perioperative thirst: an analysis from the perspective of the Symptom Management Theory

A theoretical study aimed to analyze the existing knowledge in the literature on the perioperative thirst symptom from the perspective of Symptom Management Theory, and supplemented with the experience of the study group and thirst research. Thirst is described as a very intense symptom occurring in the perioperative period, and for this reason it cannot be ignored. The Symptom Management Theory is adequate for understanding the thirst symptom and is a deductive theory, focused on the domains of the Person, Environment and Health / Illness Status, as well as on the dimensions of Experience, Management Strategies and Symptom Outcomes. Using the theory leads us to consider perioperative thirst in its multifactorial aspects, analyzing the interrelation of its domains and dimensions in order to draw attention to this symptom that has been insufficiently valued, recorded and treated in clinical practice.

Determination or determinants? A debate based on the Theory on the Social Production of Health

This article aims to discuss the concepts of Social Determination of Health and Social Determinants of Health, by establishing a comparison between each of their guiding perspectives and investigating their implications on the development of health policies and health actions. We propose a historical and conceptual reflection, highlighting the Theory on the Social Production of Health, followed by a debate on the concepts, with a comparative approach among them.

A Atitude do Contabilista perante Dilemas Éticos

Casos de fraudes têm ocorrido, frequentemente no mercado mundial. Diversos são os profissionais envolvidos nesses casos, inclusive os da contabilidade. Os escândalos contabilísticos, especialmente os mais famosos, como os incidido nas empresas Enron e Wordcom, acenderam para uma maior preocupação em relação a conduta ética dos profissionais da contabilidade. Como consequência há uma maior exigência quanto a transparência e a fidedignidade das informações prestadas por estes profissionais. Esta preocupação visa, sobretudo, manter a confiança das empresas, investidores, fornece-dores e sociedade em geral, de entre outras, na responsabilidade ética do contabilista, de-negrida pelo envolvimento nas fraudes detectadas. Desta forma, o presente estudo teve como objectivo verificar a conduta ética dos contabilistas, quando, no exercício da sua profissão, depararem com questões relacionadas a fraudes. Nesse sentido considerou-se factores que podem vir a influenciar o processo decisório ético de um indivíduo, demonstrados através do modelo de tomada de decisão, desenvolvido por Alves, quanto a motivar um indivíduo a cometer uma fraude, evidenciada através do modelo desenvolvido por Cressey. Tentando responder a questão norteadora desta pesquisa, executou-se a análise descritiva e estatística dos dados. Em relação a análise descritiva, foram elaboradas tabelas de frequência. Para a análise estatística dos dados foi utilizado o teste não paramétrico de Spearman. Os resultados demonstraram que a maioria dos contabilistas, da amostra pesquisada, reconhece a questão moral inserida nos cenários, e discordam dos actos dos agentes de cada cenário, e, ainda os classificam como graves ou muito graves. A pesquisa revelou maior aproximação desses profissionais a corrente teleológica, uma vez que a intenção de agir é mais influenciada por alguns factores como a oportunidade, a racionalização e principalmente a pressão. Alguns factores individuais apresentam influências sob o posicionamento ético dos contabilistas entrevistados nesta pesquisa. Cases of fraud have occurred, in the word market. Several are involved in these cases, including the accounting class. The accounting scandals, especially the most famous, such as focusing on companies and Enron Word Com, kindled to greater concern about the ethical conduct of professional accounting. As a result there is a greater demand on the transparency and reliability of information provide by these professionals This concern is aimed, primarily, to maintain the confidence of businesses, investor, suppliers and society, among others, the ethical responsibility of the meter, denigrated, by involvement in the fraud detected. Thus, this study aimed to verify the ethical conduct of accounts in when, in the exercise of their professional activities, is confronted with issues related to fraud. This is considered some factors that can both come to influence the ethical decision making of an individual, demonstrated by the model of decision making, developed by Alves, as a motivated individual to commit a fraudulent act, developed by Cressey. Seeking to answer question, guiding this study, performed to exploratory and confirmatory analysis of data. For exploratory data analysis were made table of frequencies. For confirmatory analysis of data, were used non parametric tests of Spearman. The results showed that the majority of accountings professionals, the sample, recognizing the moral issue included in the scenarios, disagrees the acts of agents of each scenario, and also classifies such acts as serious and very serious. However, we found that these accounting professionals tend to have a position more toward the teleological theory, since the intention to act is influenced by factors as opportunity, rationalization and particularly the pressure. Some individual factors also had influence on the ethical position of the professional interviewed is this research.

Aplicação da Teoria dos Constrangimentos ao Sector de Transporte Público Colectivo – O Caso Da Transcor-Sv, S.A. –

Com a necessidade de adaptação às crescentes mudanças no mundo dos negócios, ao longo dos últimos anos a contabilidade de gestão tem sido criticada, pois os métodos de custeio tradicionalmente utilizados, não estão acompanhando estas mudanças, incapacitando a utilização destes como instrumentos de gestão eficazes. Na busca de ferramentas de gestão para auxiliar na tomada de decisão, foi desenvolvida a Teoria dos Constrangimentos (TOC) ou das Restrições, uma ferramenta de gestão cuja premissa é a identificação de constrangimentos que limitem a capacidade da empresa no alcance da sua meta. Muito se tem escrito sobre a aplicação desta teoria em empresas industriais, uma vez que, nessas organizações a existência de constrangimentos está mais presente. Tendo como objectivo verificar a viabilidade de aplicação desta teoria na actividade de prestação de serviços, o presente trabalho refere-se ao estudo de caso numa empresa de prestação de serviço de transporte público colectivo de passageiros TRANSCOR-SV,S.A., localizada na ilha de São Vicente. Para tal, identificámos factores considerados constrangimentos nos sistemas de transporte colectivo, através da aplicação de um questionário. Com estes factores em mãos, aplicámos a metodologia baseada no Processo de Raciocínio (PR) da OC. With the need of adaption to the growing changes happening in the business world, throughout the last few years, management accounting has been much criticized for the methods of costing used are not following such changes, turning the use of these meth-ods powerless to help provide an effective management in companies. In the search for creating useful tools to help guarantee effectiveness in decision making in companies, the Constraint Theory, or Restriction Theory, was created as a management tool in which the fundamental objective is to identify constraints that limit the capacity of a company to reach its goals successfully. Much has been written about the application of this theory in corporate industries, once in such business the existence of constraints is very present. With the aim of verifying the viability of its use in service rendered in collective public transport, this work is characterized by the case study of one such company in São Vicente. Initially, some factors that can be seen as constraints were identified in the public transport service, through the use of a questionnaire. With the results, follows the employ of the Thinking Process methodology in the analysis based in the Theory of Constraint.